The Invasion of Europe

For the invasion of Europe I was sent to a ship called the Empire Duke, she had been recently launched as a wartime cargo ship. I was overwhelmed when I first went aboard her; such luxury I thought never existed in a cargo boat. There were only three to a cabin, laundry room, showers; even sheets on the bunks and each bunk had a reading light fitted.

On the first trip to the Normandy Beaches with troops and their light equipment, we could hear the noise of the battle going on the shore. This was Juno beach, which I was to see many times over the next few weeks.

Our trips were from the London and Tilbury docks from where we took Canadians and British troops mainly to Juno beach. There we saw the full horrors of war, the dead bodies floating in the sea. There were two battle ships quite close to us, one was H M S Rodney and the other one I believe was the Warspite.

On our trips back to Dover and then on to the beaches, the Thames river banks were lined and crowded with mainly women waving banners saying "God bless our troops and keep them safe". Most of the troops seemed to be in good spirit and waved back to the girls on the riverbank. The rest played “:Crown and Anchor”, which was very popular with the troops especially with the Canadians. I watched one soldier win fifty pounds, which I thought was a small fortune I only hoped he survived long enough to spend it.

In the English Channel we saw many aircraft, British and American, some badly shot up, coming back from their raids on the enemy. Although there seemed little opposition from the enemy once we got to the beaches. Some times at night German planes flew over the over the shipping, dropping magnetic mines.

In the channel at night we could see the flying bombs sent against England, and the spitfires chasing them and a great cheer would go up when they shot on down. At the same time we saw without realizing it, that the first RAF jets were firing at them.

As time went on and the army pushed farther in land we stayed longer near the beaches. We saw the two battle ships and cruisers shelling the enemy positions on the shore. We were most surprised at the enemy retaliation just as we were unloading ammunition. Our captain move the ship further out from the beaches without permission from the Navy who told him not to move the ship again and to stay put

The allies had air superiority, the only time we saw the German Air Force was at night; unfortunately the only casualty I saw was a landing craft, which seemed to be going down by the port bow. After hitting a mine. We could hear the cries of the wounded on board her as we passed at some distance off her port side. Later we were told they were wounded German prisoners of war. In retrospect now I hope most of them survived.

I sympathized with the soldiers on one trip when the weather was too rough for them to reach the shore and they were kept on board for a few days. Of course the ship was unable to cope with so many and most of them were seasick. However, this did give the beach master time to clear up the backlog of equipment, which was piling up on the beach.

On my last trip to the beaches I was hit in the face while unloading lorries, when a piece of wood snapped off and hit me in the face and broke my nose. I was sent to the Dreadnaught Hospital in Greenwich. On my discharge from the hospital, I was given some leave, and my next ship was a tanker to America.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.