Now that it is over it seems to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all.” That plus an intense, grim determination of work-weary men to get this chaotic beach organised and get all the vital supplies and the reinforcements moving more rapidly over it from the stacked-up ships standing in droves out to sea. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach. “All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air … That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. I approached him, ‘Sir, off this beach, now!’ ‘And who are you?’ he asked. If not I am not staying.’ And we heard, ‘My mother told me not to travel by air, she thought it was much safer by sea.’ An army officer came ashore and instead of getting his men off the beach quickly, he stopped to consult his map. A soldier coming ashore asked, ‘Is this a private beach? I was promised a private beach. Slowly, slowly we overcame all the nightmares. The sea was covered in blood and vomit and flies began to arrive by the thousands, which created another nightmare … We continued all night and the following day without a break. The beach was under fire from shells, mortars and machine guns, we dived for cover. “Jerry started to shell the beach at about 9am. They had come to win.’”ĭavid Teacher, No 71 Royal Air Force Beach Unit, on his experience at D-Day: “Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that ‘they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves.
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