D-Day by Bryan Perrett

Author:Bryan Perrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2016-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

7 June – 16 August 1944

I cannot remember the details of everything that happened in the weeks after D-Day, for the simple reason that they are all jumbled together in my memory and, for most of the time, I was too exhausted to absorb the sequence in which events took place. I remember hearing that the Americans had sustained heavy casualties getting ashore on one of their landing beaches, and that all our beachheads were now linked together so that we had a continuous front facing the enemy.

I learned, too, yet more secrets about D-Day. After the Dieppe raid, the planners had recognized that we would not be able to capture a French port in working order when we invaded, so under the codename Mulberry we had brought two prefabricated harbours with us. These consisted of large, hollow iron and concrete structures together with lines of old ships that were towed into position and sunk to form breakwaters and protect the harbours from gales. Each harbour contained three floating piers, connected to the shore by floating roadways. Every tug in the country, and more from the United States, had been required to tow these across the Channel. Then there was PLUTO, standing for Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was an undersea pipeline laid from England to Normandy, that kept us supplied with fuel.

By landing in Normandy, we had certainly taken the Germans by surprise, but there was a price to pay. To the south-west of Caen was a large area of countryside that the French call bocage. It consisted of small fields, narrow lanes and high hedgerows growing from earth banks. It was ideal defensive country that enabled the enemy to conceal himself until the last possible moment before opening fire. It also stopped our tanks from giving us their full support, for as soon as they attempted to climb a bank an anti-tank gun would put a round through its exposed belly plates. It therefore became an infantryman’s war in which we fought from hedgerow to hedgerow, just as my father’s generation had fought from trench to trench in the Great War. We suffered serious casualties, but the enemy, lacking air power and exposed to our terrible naval gunfire and artillery, suffered far more. We now know that Hitler had insanely forbidden them to yield a single yard of ground and we grew to respect their discipline and fortitude. For our part, deadly tiredness was our constant companion. There was little sleep to be had in the short summer nights, for we stood to for an hour after dusk and again for an hour before dawn, and in between we would take our turn on guard.

Even when we were resting out of the line we were still within range of the enemy’s heavy guns, which would sometimes send over a shell or two to remind us that they were still there. Much of my time was spent writing letters to my parents or to the next of kin of men who had been killed.

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