Category Archives: Current Affairs

‘Do to me just as you promised,’ she says. Words from the mouth of a young girl in ancient Israel, a virgin, never married, facing news that would shake her to the core.

However, this isn’t the story we expect. She is not Mary. Instead, a girl we don’t know; I wish I knew her name. We know a little of her story from Judges 11 and our hearts ache when we read it. Her story was told and retold for thousands of years: after her father’s battle victory he had to fulfil a conditional vow he’d made. A cruel and foolish promise that he would sacrifice in thanksgiving a burnt offering of whatever came out of the door of his house on his return to greet him first.

Perhaps a goat would run out. A lamb. Or a working animal, like an ox. How did this military man not calculate or expect his only child, his daughter could be the one?

That she would run to meet him singing?

What is the sound of victory if it costs you all you have?

So his heart broke. If only he had vowed differently. If only an animal had come through the door first. But now the doorframe must be painted with the blood of his daughter.

For a couple of months this unnamed girl goes away with her friends to weep. She is denied her future and she asks for the opportunity to grieve. I don’t know how she does it, but she accepts her fate. In her words I heard echoes of Mary’s words in Luke 1: ‘May it be to me as you have said.’

Two girls, two futures changed by events outside their control. They each get a few months to ponder and get away. One stops singing to grieve what is lost and the other learns about pregnancy and birth, singing and silence.

The sacrifice of the warrior Jephthah’s daughter comes after a victory, and although it seems senseless to us, in his eyes it must have felt connected. The sacrifice of Mary’s son many years later looks senseless as well, but is a necessary step in a victory too.

The grief and the love go hand in hand. The victory and the sacrifice.

Today we see the children of Aleppo being sacrificed and we grieve lost futures, lost hopes and foolish promises. They did not opt in to this. Their sacrifice is not necessary. Their blood on doorframes is a violation and an outrage. What kind of victory can possibly happen here?

‘Nothing is impossible with God,’ the angel tells Mary.

‘He has lifted up the humble,’ she sings later as she understands.

God alone turns things around from chaos to order and from despair to hope.

O Lord God, lift and bless the children of Aleppo today. Free them from the fighting and the fear and the mess and the madness. End this senseless war and plant peace, deep, life-giving and fulfilling in every heart in the region. Show us doors of life instead of broken buildings. 

This is the third and final part of my Grandad’s memoirs on his experiences landing in Normandy 70 years ago. See Part One and Part Two first.

Pleased and Blest

A few days later we had passed through the village and took up a new position adjacent to the River Odon. Our function there was to repair a slight amount of damage to a small road bridge, and to stay on hand if it was further damaged, including building a replacement bridge if necessary. On the morning of our arrival the OC decided he wanted a reconnaissance patrol sent out across the river to try to detect the position and activities of the enemy.

My platoon commander, Lt Bob Martin at the age of 40 was the oldest officer in the company, and for some reason seemed to want to prove himself by volunteering personally or on behalf of his platoon for anything which was a bit dodgy. So it was that a corporal who I disliked greatly was detailed to lead this patrol. He reacted by producing an attack of hay fever, which if genuine would certainly have precluded him for the job, which had to be carried out with stealth and in complete silence. A substitute had to be found, and guess who drew the short straw!

So, having smudged our faces, put on our woolly hats and plimsolls, tied down the shackles of our rifle slings with string and synchronised our watches, off we went to spy out the land. We did not come across anything of great significance, although we did hear activity and some movement of vehicles and equipment, but it would not have been worth the risk of exposure to have ventured closer. So we returned at the appointed time and place and I duly reported.

Once again our quarters for the night were slit trenches in an orchard, this time adjacent to the bridge. Fortunately some excellent slit trenches had been left for us by the Canadians. They even had a partial sawn log roof across the centre portion. But there was little enough room for two men, with one hunched up at each end. The next day we were instructed to dig more slit trenches on the bank across the river. This was easier said than done. At the spot where I was digging I struck rock at about 12 inches, and there was no hope of getting deeper, except perhaps with a couple of gun-cotton primers! I gave up at lunch time, deposited my small kit in the shallow hole, returned to the bridge site and consumed a cooked lunch. It was a Thursday, 7th July. What happened next is something I will always remember.

We were standing on the bridge, myself and two other NCO’s, Jimmy and Bill. Suddenly we heard the noise of mortar bombs coming in our direction, and these were not the ordinary single mortar bombs, but the dreaded ‘Nebelwerfers’, from multi-barrelled projectors, whose bombs were fitted with a brilliantly conceived siren causing them to wail as they flew through the air, with a terrifying effect.

These Nebelwerfers came in three sizes, and could deliver bombs weighing 75lbs, 248lbs and 277lbs respectively. I didn’t wait to see which size had been selected for us but as the hedge between the road and the orchard where we had spent the night had conveniently been cut back close to the embankment I took a running jump and cleared it, forgetting the 2m drop on the other side! The bomb blast caught me in mid-air and I landed in a crumpled heap on the lower slope of the embankment. My left leg was very painfully bent, inwards from the knee, at a right angle! I was unable to move, so as soon as the firing had stopped I called out for help. Cpl Jimmy was first on the scene, soon to be joined by some men from my section, two of whom we sent off to get a stretcher. I sent another man to fetch my small-kit from the partially dug slit trench where I had left it. He quickly returned, holding the mangled remains of my mess tin, all that was left of my small-kit. It seems that one of the mortar bombs had scored a direct hit on my little excavation.

Then a second salvo was on its way to us. I ordered my Sappers to get back under cover, but Jimmy refused to leave me, and I was not in a position to pull rank on him anyway. As the bombs started to land around us Jimmy crouched over me on all fours, a noble and brave action to try to protect me from further injury.

The firing stopped again, and it was only much later that I learned that the other Cpl, Bill, had been killed when a large fragment of one of that second salvo had decapitated him. He was the guy who had been married just ten weeks earlier, on the same day as me.

The lads arrived back with a stretcher, and together with Jimmy and my platoon officer, Bob Martin, they carried me shoulder high to a first aid post a couple of hundred yards away. There an MO and a couple of orderlies had set up a tent to cope with anything at the front line. When they had removed my gaiter and boot he ran his scissors the length of my trouser leg to reveal a knee that was beginning to swell like a football. They applied a wooden splint behind the knee, and waited for an ambulance to pass me further back up the line. I had to say good-bye and thanks to my comrades from 553, and they left me.

The next stop for me was a casualty clearing station set up in an empty house, still very much within range of the battle, and we could hear shell-fire, some distant, some close. One of the casualties was a soldier suffering from severe battle fatigue, who became hysterical at every loud explosion. Eventually, after at least a couple of hours an ambulance was available to move us on. There was only room for one more stretcher case in the back, so I was asked by the MO if I could sit on a chair and in the absence of the orderly whose presence was needed by the driver, to restrain the shell-shock patient if he became alarmed by explosions on the way. This proved to be necessary when we drove along Banana Ridge where I had seen the Sherman tank knocked out. Once again the Germans seemed to have that area in there sights. I cannot remember whether or not we made another stop before reaching Bayeux, where at the south-west outskirts of the town the RAMC had set up the only hospital available within the area cleared of the enemy. This was a MASH-type of hospital entirely under canvas, including canvas flooring. It must have been about midnight when we arrived. All casualties were seen quickly by an MO, I think we were given a hot drink and then laid out on our stretchers on the floor, almost shoulder to shoulder and told to get to sleep.

I don’t think I managed any sleep that night. My knee was continuing to swell and the bandage became too tight. One of the nursing sisters kindly loosened the bandage for me. But the main problem was that it happened to be the night of the 900 bomber raid on Caen, and as they crossed the coast the Germans put a a tremendous barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and I lay there waiting for jagged chunks of red-hot shrapnel to come through the canvas roof. From my experience of the Blitz in London I knew these were usually a little larger than one’s middle finger, very jagged and very hot. The saddest thing about that raid was, as we learned later, the Germans had by then almost evacuated from the centre of Caen, and the main people to suffer from that enormous air-raid were the French civilians.

The next morning at 6am the MO was round again, and after taking a quick look at my knee told me to my astonishment, ‘We’ll send you home today’.

After a good breakfast, which included some excellent French white crusty bread, we were moved outside to make room for the next lot, and to lie in the sunshine to await the arrival of the hospital ship. It was a long wait, and the sun was very hot. Eventually the ship arrived, and we were taken the short way down to the little port of Port-en-Bessin, transferred to launches which conveyed us to the hospital ship a mile or so off shore.

This ship turned out to be one of the former Northern Ireland ferries, the ‘Duke of Lancaster’ with the passenger lounges converted to hospital wards, and cot beds screwed down to the floor. I was put into one of these and instructed by the orderly to get some sleep. I had been deprived of most of my sleep for at least three weeks, but in spite of the luxury of clean sheets and a pillow I could not fall asleep. The orderly came round again, and asked me if I had any pain. I most certainly had, so he went away and came back with a hypodermic needle, and administered a large dose of morphine. Oh my word, I could get hooked on that stuff! Within next to no time I was free of pain, and drifting away into a state of euphoria and sound sleep.

I woke up, still very drowsy, as the ship was being unloaded under arc-lights at Southampton, ignoring the black-out regulations. Then we were transferred to a hospital train, a converted Royal Mail sorting train for a fairly short journey to Haslemere, Surrey. It was dawn on the Saturday morning as we were off-loaded at Haslemere and handed over to the RCAMC, who drove us at high speed up into the surrounding woods to the 22nd Canadian General Hospital, a 1600 bed fully equipped hospital, all in large wooden huts scattered around the site. Once again a quick look over by the MO, and tucked up into a real bed with white sheets and pillows, but still filthy and unwashed. But after another injection of euphoria I couldn’t care less, and I slept.

It was the hymn-singing that woke me up. At first I wasn’t sure where I was or when it was. But soon I realised it was Sunday morning, and the morning service was on the radio. The hymn being sung was an old Isaac Watts hymn, ‘How pleased and blest was I’. I had been asleep for more than 24 hours. Soon an orderly came round, handing out Christian tracts as it happened. After introducing myself as a fellow Christian I asked him to procure for me some ablution kit so that I could wash and shave at last and begin to feel like a civilised human being again. After I had done that, he brought me some writing materials so that I could write to Pat.

As I lay there, reflecting on the past few weeks, it came home to me that I was a survivor, and was unlikely to have any further part in Operation Overlord. I felt grateful to God for having brought me through it almost unscathed, at the same time I felt glad and proud to have been involved in this tremendous event. We felt even at the time that we were making history.

A week later a train load of us were sent up to Wakefield, where I spent the next eleven weeks in Pinderfields Hospital. My treatment there included manipulation of the knee under anaesthetic, followed by two weeks in traction in a Thomas’s splint. I was discharged and posted to the RE Depot at Halifax at the end of September.

This follows on from yesterday’s Part One of my Grandad Sid Marfleet’s memoirs about the Second World War, which should be read first.

Into the Line of Fire

I had better say something about that ship. It was one of the many ‘Liberty Ships’ built at very great speed in America. It was named Fort Livingstone. The worst thing about it was the sanitary arrangements which for OR’s consisted of temporary wooden huts on the decks, containing bucket latrines, which by the end of the first day were overflowing, and no one seemed to have been detailed to empty them. The other problem was the compo-rations issued to us. There should have been a different variety for each day. Ours were all the same, comprising mainly hard biscuits, tinned sardines and tinned potato salad. Many of the blokes had been sea-sick, and the sight of potato mayonnaise did nothing to enhance our appetites. When eventually an American landing ship came alongside to off-load us we managed to con them into believing that our rations were better than theirs, and they agreed to swap a couple of boxes. Later that day we had a good chuckle at their expense as we tucked into their tins of chicken!

On a more sombre note, as we waited on our ship we saw in the water around us a dozen or more corpses of American servicemen, wearing small life-jackets, all floating face downwards. These were no doubt casualties from Omaha beach, on our right flank, where a few days earlier their landing had gone disastrously wrong, although their comrades at Utah beach had almost a walk-over. We also watched as one of our own aircraft was shot down over the beaches by anti-aircraft fire.

Then it was our turn to go down the scrambling nets at the side of the ship on to the landing craft and away to the beach where it was high tide and we went ashore through four feet of water. A couple of hundred yards inland we were directed by Redcaps to a stretch of unmade road where we paused to remove all the water-proofing from our vehicles. Apart from the flexible hoses to the air intake and from the exhausts, there was a doughy sort of stuff around the electrics, largely asbestos fibre mixed with some sort of gunge. This was dumped on to a long stretch of road where it served a useful purpose in suppressing dust. We were continually warned that ‘Dust is Dangerous’.

A mile or two further on we arrived at our first location for an overnight stay, a pleasant little orchard. Close at hand was a lovely little stream, about the size of Hilden Brook, running between steep banks. This was sufficiently tempting for another NCO to agree with me that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, but on the boat it had been next to impossible. So we grabbed our ablution kit, and a change of underwear, and took ourselves off to the stream. It was neither a bath nor a shower, but a sort of mutual chuck-over, but so very welcome. As we stood there congratulating ourselves that we were probably the two cleanest soldiers in 21 Army Group, we heard a whine and a ping as rifle bullets started thudding into the bank above our heads. The Germans might have retreated but they had left a sniper in the area. We hastily found a safer corner where we could get into our clothes, and rejoined the rest of the company, and reported the presence of the sniper and the general direction he was firing from. Our platoon commander took note of it and was able to tell us later that the culprit had been located and appropriately dealt with. There was no more small arms fire, but the noise from the artillery was non-stop, day and night, some of it from our large battleships firing 15 inch shells over our heads towards Caen, about 8 miles away.   Not far from there we noticed the bodies of four German soldiers lying on a bank. It was more than 24 hrs later that I saw a padre conducting a burial service there.

It would have been bad for morale to leave any British corpses unburied, but there were quite a number of roadside graves where the fallen had been hastily buried in shallow graves. Each had an improvised cross, with one of the soldier’s two identity discs nailed to it. Some had green commando berets on the top of the crosses. The German dead had been buried in a similar way. Whereas our identity discs, one green and one red, supposedly fireproof and waterproof respectively, were made of a hard fibre-like material, the German equivalent was an oval aluminium token perforated in the middle so that one portion could be nailed to the cross and the other retained for the record. After the war all these temporary burials were disinterred, and the bodies given a more dignified burial in one of the vast war cemeteries.

We were soon on the move again, to the outskirts of the village of Cheux, which had been re-taken by the enemy in a counter attack, but had just been recaptured. On our way there we drove down the long straight road which runs between Bayeux and Caen. Somehow we missed the turning on the right which we should have taken and were surprised to find that we were well within sight of Caen. We were quite unaware at the time of the strong German defences screening Caen and its surroundings on a 15-mile front on that side, including the 12th SS Panzer Division whose armoured regiment was under the command of the legendary 33-year-old Colonel Kurt Meyer, a charismatic and ruthless leader, and a fanatical Nazi. He was supported by other Panzer units and had 158 88mm guns and 228 tanks. Even had we known all this we could not have produced a faster three-point turn in the road and departure at full throttle as the shells were bursting on the road behind us.

On arrival near Cheux we took occupation of another small orchard, and were given instructions to dig slit trenches in case of a further break-through. My location was at the edge of the orchard, beside the small road leading to the village. Artillery fire continued during the night, mostly directed towards the Germans. Some time after midnight the Germans hit back, and landed a shell on the other side of the orchard about 50 or 60 yards from me, but right where our HQ section were positioned. There were several casualties, the worst being a member of that section who was hit in the lower abdomen by a very large piece of shrapnel, causing horrific injuries. We could not help feeling relieved in the morning when we learned that he had not survived the night. Our OC caught much of the blast, and became very deaf, certainly for some days.

In the morning we moved into the village, which was already badly damaged. Our job was to add to the damage by demolishing a house on the corner of the narrow main street, where it was considered to be an obstruction to the field of view, and an obstacle to the tanks of the 11th Armoured Division, now being brought into action in the area. A pound or two of plastic explosive, a big bang and all we had was a heap of rubble to shovel into trucks. As we did so our divisional commander passed through, and paused to congratulate us on doing a good job in keeping the road clear. He had no idea that we were responsible for just blocking it. A little later at the same location we were alarmed by hearing machine-gun fire close at hand. A moment or two later a Canadian soldier appeared from one of the nearby cottages, holding a Sten gun and two very scrawny and very dead chickens, which had vainly sought refuge behind a settee!

Later that day a large group of infantry soldiers from the 15th Scottish Division passed through the village in single file. They had obviously just come out of action, and were all traumatised. We tried to engage them in conversation, but they did not respond, and simply walked on staring ahead of them like zombies. This must have been about 28th June, halfway through Operation Epsom, Montgomery’s ill fated attempt to penetrate and hold territory across the little river Odon, later described by some as a bloody stream. That operation cost VIII Corps 4020 men, 2331 from 15th Scottish Division, and 1256 from 11th Armoured Division and 43rd Wessex Division.

Something which will always be remembered by anyone who saw action in that part of France is the large number of cattle that were killed by artillery fire. Their bloated carcasses, legs in the air, lay around in the hot sun, polluting the atmosphere with the small of decaying flesh. Fortunately, as Engineers, we had access to mechanical equipment, and at times were able to call in a section of Sappers with a D4 Bulldozer to cover up any that were too close to us.

Day by day we were gradually being moved south- eastwards into the salient from which Montgomery had hoped for a complete breakthrough, led by the 15th Scottish, 11th Armoured and the 43rd Wessex Divisions. The tanks had managed to force a crossing of the little river Odon, but the infantry of the 43rd, especially the Dorsets and the Somerset Light Infantry had paid a very heavy price in the battle for Hill 112 which changed hands several times in the course of a few days. In the 15th Scottish Division casualties were running at 50%. The River Odon in one place was blocked by corpses. This was a price too high, even for Monty and on 30th June he ordered an end to Epsom.

As we edged our way forwards towards Mouen we were very much aware of the fierce battle still raging around us. The Germans still held the little airfield at Carpiquet, 5 miles west of Caen, in spite of attacks by rocket-firing Typhoons, which we witnessed from close quarters, and the Canadian infantry were repulsed several times after bitter hand-to-hand fighting with fanatical SS troops. We were halted within sight of Mouen, on a stretch of open road running between two large fields of ripe corn, containing masses of poppies. Believing the village to have been cleared of the enemy, a small group of us entered the outskirts but very soon came under mortar fire, so beat it back as fast as I dare drive the truck to ‘Banana Ridge’, where we found the rest of our platoon, also under fire. We hastily poured out of the truck and dived for the nearest slit trenches. The one I jumped into was already occupied by two men, one bleeding profusely from a shrapnel wound in the neck, the other trying to control the bleeding with a single wound dressing in his muddy hand. I gave him my own personal wound dressing, which we all carried, and left them to find another hole. By now a few Sherman tanks had arrived on the scene, and from my slit trench I watched with envy as they took shelter in their tank when the firing started again. My envy turned to horror as the tank just 50 yards from me took a direct hit and immediately burst into flames. Two of the crew managed to get out and rolled themselves on the ground to extinguish the flames from their clothing. The others must have died.

Final part to follow tomorrow.

Sidney Marfleet

Seventy years ago my Grandad Sid Marfleet arrived in Normandy shortly after D Day, just a few weeks after his wedding.

I am utterly proud of and immeasurably grateful for what he and his generation did for those of us who follow. A few years before he died Sid wrote his memoirs and included a chapter on Normandy.  He had always been reticent about talking about the war; he had not been involved very long before he was injured and returned to the UK, but his four sons, 12 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren (at last count) are very glad that he did. So many others did not return to wives and family.

Arriving at Omaha

So, here is part one of Sid’s Normandy account. Hastings and Beyond…

I have related in the early pages of these memoirs how is came about that I was transferred from a comparatively safe job as an instructor at the training battalion to join a unit whose function as part of the 43rd Wessex Division was to spearhead the breakout from the few square miles which had been painfully seized behind the landing beaches.

But first of all I must say something about my new base on the south-east coast. Hastings is now a rather run-down resort, and even in 1944 its former glory had departed. It was part of a 10 mile area around much of the south coast where entry was restricted to residents, and the boundaries were monitored by police, for example checking rail passengers at Robertsbridge. The beaches were mined and fenced off with barbed wire. The only consolation which I noticed was that the weather that spring was an improvement on Clitheroe.

At 1 TBRE we had a whole battalion accommodated in a large multi-storey stone cotton mill, about 200 years old, but the straw-filled palliases on which we slept were mainly two-tier bunks, although NCOs has singles. But we did have hot and cold water, and adequate showers. At Hastings, 553 Field Company were accommodated in various vacated boarding-houses around the appropriately named Warrior Square. No hot water was available, our palliases were laid out on the bare boards, and our kit anywhere alongside us. This was an arrangement which I found helpful a couple of weeks or so after I was married and Pat came to stay in the town, and for that period I was sleeping out without a permit, although my platoon Sgt turned a kindly eye on it. I simply rolled up my bed and stuffed it with all my kit into one of the many empty cupboards, on the presumption that the orderly officer was more likely to be alerted by an empty bed than by an empty few square feet of floor, because at least as far as NCOs were concerned no room had more than two or three occupants. This worked out well for me, except on one occasion when I forgot to read Company Orders, to learn next morning that I had been scheduled for duty as Orderly Corporal. This could have been very serious had the Sergeant Major not decided to cover the whole thing up.

Some of the NCOs there had also served with me at Clitheroe, and I began to make a few new friends. But in the town centre was a shop turned into a rest room and café, run by an Army Scripture Reader and his wife, and regularly supported by the Baptist minister, Norman Day. I spent many evenings there, writing my letters and making friends with some of the infantry lads mainly Dorsets, and one or two ATS girls.   Pat’s brief stay there, shortly after we were married was possible through the kindness of an elderly couple from the very small Brethren chapel, who lived in a large house in a prominent position at the top of West Hill, overlooking the Old Town. Each morning at the end of first parade, the Platoon Sgt would allocate various duties to small groups mainly to keep them occupied. As he came towards my end of the line he would invariably say ‘Hang on, Cpl Marfleet, I’ve got something for you.’ Then when all the others had gone he would say, ‘Is your wife still here?’ ‘Yes, Sarge’ I would reply. ‘Then b***** off, but make sure you are here in the morning. After breakfast Pat would be making her way down into the town to meet me, but in doing so she had to run the daily gauntlet of small groups of Royal Marine Commandos, billeted in that part of West Hill.

One day shortly before the end of May I was unable to go to meet her. We had just received a delivery of a consignment of White Scout cars, one per platoon. These were American partially armoured half-track vehicles and needed urgent modifications to be carried out on them for our purposes. Not many days after that, without warning the whole company was loaded up into our respective three tonners and driven a few miles out of the town and assembled in the middle of a large field, out of earshot of all except the rabbits. There we were addressed by the O.C. who said that he was aware that a number of us had brought our wives to the town, but instructed us that all wives must leave within 48 hrs. So it was that I had once again had to say goodbye to Pat at the station, expecting that it would be a very long time before we met again.

Shortly after that, ‘D day’ came, and immediately we were shown maps of the area in Normandy to which we were going. There were three series of maps, one like a normal tourist map, another, called a going map showing the features affecting visibility in this ‘bocage’ region where the hedges grown on high banks presented real problems. The other map gave remarkable detail of the enemy defences, based on information provided by the French Resistance, even showing small strong points and their armaments

A couple of days later we departed from Hastings at 5am, each section loaded into our respective three-ton trucks, together with all our kit, seated along each side on storage compartments containing a very considerable amount of ammunition and an even greater amount of explosives. The number of vehicles for our company comprised a very long queue, but very soon we joined other units all travelling north up the A21 forming a continuous line of vehicles for miles. It must have been the whole Brigade on the move, if not the entire 43rd Division. Our own motor-cycle outriders shepherded us slowly until we reached the London boundary, where the Metropolitan Police took over. No doubt we passed through Tonbridge, but I have no recollection of doing so. The town was probably all fast asleep anyway.

By the time we reached the Old Kent Road the population was very wide awake and lining the streets about four deep on each side of the road, and cheering us on our way. We were travelling so slowly that they were able to ply us with tea and stay alongside until we had drunk it and returned the containers. All this tea presented us with a problem, so we asked them to provide it in non-returnable jam jars, which we discretely made use of and disposed of them later.

After crossing Tower Bridge we continued northwards for about three miles before passing through Dalston and picking up the Clapton end of Lea Bridge Road. I was back on home ground. By coincidence the convoy made one of its many halts with my truck right opposite the Gas Works. I looked across the road and saw there a man who I knew from the Home Guard platoon up a ladder painting the side of a gas-holder which was adjacent to the road. I shouted ‘Tom’ in my best parade-ground voice and he recognised me at once, came down the ladder and dashed off into the office. A few seconds later out came my former boss, Percy Bushell with the Industrial Sales Manager, Jock Stokes. They came across to the back of the truck and I disembarked and was able to chat with them for several minutes. Before we had to move on they wished me luck, and Percy pushed into my hand a ten-shilling note.

There was yet a further coincidence. We passed through Woodford, and I realised we were going to join the A127 Southend Road, which before it became part of the M11 years later, crossed Maybank Road within 150 yards of my home. I hastily scribbled a note and put my mother’s name and address on it in the hope of getting it to her. Fortunately my truck slowed right down at that junction, and I happened to see a man that I knew slightly, having at times as a child patronised his little sweet shop along the road. I called to him by name and he was only too happy to take my message to my mother, so thereby she and the family knew that I was on my way.

We continued eastwards, picking up the A13 and eventually reaching a large transit camp at Orsett, just north of Grays. We stayed there I think for 24hrs under rather spartan conditions. The next day we each received a printed letter from King George V1, likewise one from Winston Churchill and from General Eisenhower and General Montgomery. We also received an army issue of condoms, one per man which in very many cases were put to good use within a week or so as water-proof containers for our watches when wading ashore in four feet of water! We were also given some pay in newly printed French francs. While we were there we saw one of the first of the V1 flying bombs. We didn’t know what to make of it, as it sounded unusual and looked like a small aeroplane flying at low level with its backside on fire. Then suddenly the engine cut out and it hit the ground with a very large explosion.

It was assumed by many of us that from that location we were likely to be embarked at Tilbury, but it was not to be. They drove us back into London and embarked us at London docks.

There we had to stand around and watch as our vehicles were loaded. This was done by placing a wire-mesh hammock sling under each wheel and hoisting it up by crane. Inevitably they managed to drop one of the three-tonners several feet, but within a few minutes produced an identical replacement vehicle. When we embarked we were directed to our accommodation, which was in the cargo holds, and issued with a hammock each, and realised we were to be more or less shoulder to shoulder in a space like the Black Hole of Calcutta. I rejected this idea and decided to sleep in the open on the deck. So, as we set off around dusk down the Thames I laid down and went to sleep. I awoke about dawn feeling as if we had just crossed the Arctic Circle. In fact we had just cast anchor a mile or so off Southend.

The rest of that day was spent off Southend, as the number of ships joining the convoy was built up to about forty, and each ship was provided with a barrage balloon, as a precaution against possible dive-bombers. In the early evening we set off down the Channel, and as we passed through the Straits of Dover we came under shell-fire from the enemy coast. One of the ships was hit, causing some casualties and a fire, but it was able to continue with the convoy. We continued through the Channel and round to the Isle of Wight, where we joined up with about fifty more ships, and this united convoy then headed south towards Normandy, escorted by a single corvette. About ten miles from the French coast we were met by a line of British destoyers flashing signals to direct our ships into the lanes which had been cleared of mines, and to put our ships into the direction of Gold Beach, while about half of the ships were headed eastwards, probably carrying the 15th Scottish Division and the 3rd Canadian Division to their landing beaches at Juno and Sword. We dropped anchor half a mile or more from the shore, there to await the landing craft which were to put us ashore. We had spent about six days aboard the ship.

More to follow tomorrow.