Landings

Many people have connections with D Day, some were lucky as family members returned but some did not as was the fate of J's father. As a Royal Marine he was killed instantly on landing on the beaches and J never met him and grew up without a father and a mother who would never talk about him, even to his own daughter.

N's father also landed on the Normandy beaches having signed up for the army and from his letters he writes in pencil:  

".... At long last we are on our way, after having been on the ship for 48 hours and only moved a matter of a few miles, it is about time.  Somebody has just shouted out that he could see the coast of France, I have been out to have a look-see and sure enough there it is in the distance, quite a thrill; we have up to writing this letter been on board 3 days and nights.  I had rather a peculiar and depressed feeling when we left and saw the shore of England gradually disappearing, I've no doubt everyone of us had that feeling, but still I'm comforting myself with the knowledge that when I come back again it will be for good, and the war will be over and then we can live as human-beings should live..."

He was one of the fortunate ones and returned much later. Two years after the war he became a farmer.

My father's older brother joined the Navy in 1925 when he was about 14 years old. He writes:

"The passage across the Channel was fairly uneventful.  I was on the bridge all night, but little occurred out of the ordinary except the awe-inspiring sight of about six hundred bombers flying over us at dawn. Then we arrived at the scene of the assault.  It all looked familiar, as we had studied it so carefully in the maps..... Reports were coming in fast from the beaches and we plotted furiously in order to give the soldiers the right appreciation to land with...... We waded ashore about 14oo carrying all our wordly goods for the next week above our heads. The scene of wreckage and desolation was, of  course, great - somehow order and organization had to be produced, and was, in time..... That afternoon everyone did the job nearest at hand - and well do I remember the scenes that night as the Captain and I trudged up and down the beach trying to cope with impossible situations - craft broaching-to in the surf, men and vehicles landing over wreckage, bombs falling, tracer bullets screaming into the sky.  Then finally sleep in the bottom of a slit trench with stones and sand pouring down every time anyone passed..."

When he retired two years after the war he also became a farmer.