[ 11 ]
Roll Me Over, Lay Me Down

BERTHED AS THEY had been aboard the seafaring passenger liners converted into Landing Ship, Infantry rather than the smaller LCTs and LCIs, the infantry of the leading assault wave had enjoyed a more comfortable night than most other soldiers in the Canadian invasion force during the storm-tossed channel passage. Still, the troops had been so keyed up that few slept and the poker games in the smoke-filled holds played on. Men smoked cigarettes, cursed their luck when the cards failed them, or roared in triumph when the dice rolled right. Those who declined gambling concentrated on cleaning weapons and gear, writing final letters, or chatting quietly with friends about what the coming day might bring. Reveille came between 0300 and 0400 hours, with breakfast soon served. Food quality varied in accordance to each ship’s mess facility. For the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, it meant nothing but tea and a cold snack.1The Queen’s Own Rifles fared well as the cooks heaped the plates with eggs cooked sunny side up, fried bacon, and thick slices of white toast.² Any man desiring a tot was allowed “a… shot of good old navy rum.”³

Similar fare without the rum ration was offered the Canadian Scottish Regiment, but Captain H.L. Alexander of ‘C’ Company noted that “breakfast was a meager affair for most.”⁴ Having observed the churning seas, most of the men ate sparingly because they knew the LCAs would be hard tossed in the rough seas despite also knowing “it would be the last proper meal for a couple days.”5 The Canadian Scottish aboard the Royal Canadian Navy’s Prince Henry were each given “two hard-boiled eggs and cheese sandwich as extra ration” courtesy of the ship’s crew, who had saved the food from their own previous day’s lunch and this morning’s breakfast. The battalion’s second-in-command, Major Cyril Wightman, thought it a gesture typical of the crew and skipper Captain Val Godfrey, who he considered “a grand man.”⁶

No sooner had the Canadian Scots of ‘B’ Company and the Headquarters Company on Prince Henry finished stuffing the lunch ration into their already overloaded packs than the ship ceased steaming towards the Normandy coast. It was 0605 hours. Godfrey ordered three short blasts on the ship’s whistle to signal the other LSIs that they were at the assigned disembarkation point and dropped anchor. The LSIs stood in an almost perfect line twelve thousand yards off Juno Beach, with each ship spaced one thousand feet apart.⁷ The thirty-nine-year-old Wightman, who had initially joined the Victoria-based regiment in 1924 to fill a spot on its rugby team and then taken an officer’s commission four years later, “was tense, overly tense, almost to the point of speechlessness.”⁸ But like everyone else, he filed to his assigned LCA. Each LCA complement numbered between thirty and forty, most comprised of a single platoon. Reverend Robert Seaborn moved along the boat deck and said “a little prayer to each little group before they went over the side” into their assault craft.⁹ Then he walked over to where Wightman stood to take his place among the men assigned to that LCA. At 0645 hours, with the battalion’s pipers playing “cheerfully in the bright morning,” 146 Canadian Scots embarked in seven LCAs. “As the troops left,” noted a naval report, “they gave three rousing cheers for the Prince Henry, which her ship’s company heartily reciprocated.”¹⁰

Only one company of the Canadian Scottish Regiment was part of the first assault wave—Major Desmond Crofton’s ‘C’ Company. This company would land on the extreme western flank in Mike Sector Green to protect the right flank of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles by taking out a fortification dug in on the beach in front of the Château Vaux and then securing the estate itself. Immediately to ‘C’ Company’s left in Mike Red, the Winnipeg’s ‘D’ Company under Major Lochie Fulton would land, while Captain Philip Edwin Gower’s ‘B’ Company secured the left bank of the River Seulles. On ‘B’ Company’s right flank in Nan Green, ‘A’ Company of the Regina Rifles would set down in front of Courseulles-sur-Mer, with ‘B’ Company coming ashore to the immediate left. Major Duncan Grosch commanded ‘A’ Company and Major F.L. Peters ‘B’ Company. Supporting the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade regiments were the Duplex-Drive Shermans of the 1st Hussars, with ‘A’ Squadron backing up the Winnipegs and ‘B’ Squadron the Reginas.

Left of the Reginas in Nan White, the Queen’s Own Rifles would assault Bernières-sur-Mer, with ‘A’ Company on the right and ‘B’ Company left. Major Hume Elliott Dalton commanded ‘A’ Company, while his brother Major Charles Dalton, six years older than Elliott, led ‘B’. The thirty-three-year-old Charles had joined the Queen’s Own Rifles Cadet Company in 1925, followed by his brother a few years later. The two siblings were extremely close and were also popular with their men. Both were handsome, looked perfectly cast in the dashing young officer role, and played the part as if born to it. But they were also competent leaders who led from the front.

That two brothers would lead both Queen’s Own Rifles assault companies had been determined purely by chance when the battalion’s four company commanders established the order of landings with a coin toss. Aboard SSMonowai, a New Zealand liner, the two brothers had stood together as they waited for the order to board the LCAs. Realizing that he might never see his brother again, Charles tried to think of some meaningful parting words. Elliott, too, wondered what to say. Finally, when the order to embark came, Charles simply said, “I’ll see you tonight.” The two men shook hands and walked briskly to their boats.11

Also taking to LCAs were the men of ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment that were to attack Nan Red. Major John Archibald “Archie” McNaughton commanded ‘A’ Company. At forty-seven, he was older than most company commanders. Leading ‘B’ Company was Major Bob Forbes. ‘A’ Company was to set down immediately west of St. Aubin-sur-Mer and pass through an open gap between this town and Bernières-sur-Mer on the right while ‘B’ Company pushed directly into St. Aubin.

Supporting the Queen’s Own Rifles and the North Shore Regiment were respectively ‘B’ Squadron and ‘C’ Squadron of the Fort Garry Horse. Major Jack Meindl commanded ‘B’ Squadron and Major William Roy Bray ‘C’ Squadron.

SOME LSIS HAD THEIR assault craft slung in a single rank of davits. This enabled all the troops to simply climb aboard their respective LCAs and be lowered on cables to just a few feet from the water and then released. Major Lochie Fulton’s ‘D’ Company of the Winnipeg Rifles departed the liner Canterbury in this manner. On other LSIs, such as Llandovery Castle, the LCAs hung in tiers so that it was possible only for the lower rank to be boarded directly from the boat deck. Once these craft were dropped, the upper tier was lowered with only its boat crew aboard. The soldiers then climbed down scramble nets cast over the ship’s side and jumped into the LCA—no easy task for men burdened with heavy packs and weapons even in calm water. On June 6, the LCAs were pitching up and down violently in five- to six-foot swells and bouncing hard off the sides of the LSIs.12

One of the first infantry casualties was probably Winnipeg Rifleman Andrew G. Mutch. He was on board a ‘D’ Company LCA that had been damaged by a large wave just as it cast free of its LSI. With one engine knocked out, it was struggling to make way forward as wave after wave broached its side, threatening to swamp the little craft. Drenched and scared, the soldiers aboard were all desperately seasick. About two miles out, Rifleman J.H. Hamilton noticed that Mutch had crawled up on the gunwale in order to be sick. Seeing a large wave bearing down on them, he lunged for the man but was too late to prevent him being washed overboard. The rifleman went under the surface and did not reappear.¹³

Aboard Monowai, ‘B’ Company of the Queen’s Own was lowered to the water in ten LCAs and then ‘A’ Company scrambled down the nets to jump into their craft. Charlie Martin, ‘A’ Company’s Company Sergeant Major, watched anxiously as the men boarding the LCA he commanded made the slow and awkward descent. Each man had to pause, clinging to the net, to measure the moment he should jump into the LCA. This was just as it yawed against the LSI’s side. A mis-timed leap could easily drop a man between the two craft so that he would either be drowned or crushed between the two hulls. The loading was taking longer than scheduled and the naval officers in the LCA and on the boat deck shouted at the soldiers to pick up the pace. Finally, everyone but Martin was aboard. After one final look around the boat deck to ensure no equipment had been forgotten, Martin turned to see the LCA crew already casting off. Clambering down the net, the CSM jumped towards the departing boat but landed on the gunwale and would have fallen back into the sea had not two of his men pulled him inside.

Martin took up his assigned position directly behind the drop ramp. On his right was No. 9 Platoon’s sergeant, Jack Simpson. Before being promoted to CSM, No. 9 had been Martin’s platoon. Almost every man on the LCA had enlisted in 1940 at about the same time as Martin had. They had trained together for almost four years for this moment. Simpson was a good friend of Martin’s and a competent sergeant, who also had a brother over in another LCA carrying No. 7 Platoon ashore.

Milling around in the rough seas, the LCAs circled the LSIs as they waited for the order to head for the beach. Martin wondered what caused the holdup.14 Every extra minute spent aboard the LCAs added to the numbers of men becoming violently seasick. Aboard the LSIs, most of the soldiers had been okay, but being pounded about in the smaller craft was making dozens of men ill.

Rifleman Bill Bettridge started throwing up the steak and eggs he had eaten for breakfast just minutes after he jumped into Martin’s LCA. One of ‘A’ Company’s two snipers, the twenty-three-year-old from Brampton was tough as nails on land but now he was so sick he worried about being useless when they finally reached the beach. Bettridge filled his brown plastic vomit bag and those of several of the unaffected men around him. Bettridge looked up from his hunkered position of misery at the sound of a rocket ship loosing off hundreds of charges just as an Allied P-51 Mustang fighter flew directly into the salvo’s path. The plane disintegrated. Bettridge realized with a kind of grim awe that he had just witnessed a man die.15

In another LCA, Lance Corporal Gerry Cleveland of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was in the middle row just behind the door, with his platoon section of the North Shore’s ‘A’ Company in a line behind him. They were supposed to sit like kids on a toboggan on the bench that ran down the centre, but everyone was standing and craning to see the beach as well as to help their queasy stomachs. The men on the benches running along the sides were also standing rather than sitting, with their backs against the armoured hull. “We’d be on top of a wave and could look down and see an LCA in a trough. The next thing you’d be down in the trough looking up and there was water on either side of you way up there high above,” Cleveland later recalled. Although raised in a town where fishing was the economic mainstay, Cleveland’s family had been dairy farmers. He knew nothing of the sea. To his untrained eye, the waves seemed thirty to forty feet high and terrifying.¹⁶

WITH THE INFANTRY heading shoreward, the moment of decision arrived for the flotilla officers commanding the launching of the Duplex-Drive squadrons of the Fort Garry Horse and 1st Hussars. Deciding that the sea was too rough, the officer controlling the Fort Garry Horse tankers ordered the LCTs to take these Shermans to within a few hundred feet of shore and let them swim from there.¹⁷ When the LCTs carrying the 1st Hussars were about three thousand yards from the beach, however, their flotilla commander told ‘A’ and ‘B’ squadrons to launch.

Aboard the four LCTs bearing ‘A’ Squadron’s nineteen tanks, the Down Ramp Order bells rang and Major Dudley Brooks radioed for the crew commanders to launch their Shermans. German artillery and mortar rounds were splashing into the water all around the closing LCTs as the Hussars’ tankers fired up their engines and deployed the canvas screens. In the LCT farthest to port, Lieutenant H.K. “Kit” Pattison rolled off the ramp and bobbed down into the water—the Sherman settling nicely so that it looked like nothing more than a large rectangular canvas dinghy with three-foot-high sides making its way shoreward. Just as his tank took to the sea, however, the chains holding the door level to the waterline were shot away, preventing the other tanks from launching safely in deep-water conditions. The LCT on the starboard flank was also unable to disembark its tanks due to a mechanical failure with the ramp. Both of these LCTs made for the beach in order to disembark their tank complements onto dry land.18

Meanwhile, Lieutenant William Little, commander of ‘A’ Squadron’s No. 5 Troop, launched off another LCT. Waves immediately broached the canvas screen and two of the Sherman’s five engines sputtered and died. Corporal Jim Paisley, the driver, assumed water had shorted out some electronics. Bursts of machine-gun fire tore through the screen just above the water line, but the tank remained buoyant.¹⁹

Back on the LCT from which Little’s tank had just launched, the remaining two tanks in his troop were still waddling towards the ramp when a nearby rocket ship fired a salvo. Trooper Stan “Fish” Seneco, the driver of Corporal Harv Stanfield’s tank, watched with growing horror as the salvo pushed the rocket ship back with such force that a small tidal wave was created. Seconds later, that wave smashed into Little’s tank and demolished the canvas screen, causing it to immediately sink. To Seneco’s relief, all five tankers soon bobbed to the surface, but then a spray of blood spurted out of Trooper G.H.S. Hawken’s body and the man, who had only recently joined No. 5 Troop as a reinforcement, sank below the surface and did not reappear.²⁰

Deciding to delay launching the tanks still aboard the LCT until it was closer to shore, the naval commander ordered the craft to steam past the survivors of Little’s tank. Although there were numerous small rescue power launches nearby, none attempted to pick up the four men because priority was given to saving fully intact tank crews for delivery ashore. Finally, when one launch passed close by at about 1000 hours, Little threatened its crew with his pistol, with the result that the men were picked up.²¹

While ‘A’ Squadron managed to launch only ten of its nineteen DD tanks, all of ‘B’ Squadron got away. Lieutenant Bruce Deans immediately reported complete engine failure and ordered his tank abandoned as it foundered. Major J.S. Duncan tried to form the remaining tanks in a line for a kind of six-knot cavalry charge to shore, but the heaving seas left each tank crew fending just to keep afloat and heading roughly towards assigned touchdown points. Sergeant Léo Gariépy was about thirty yards off Duncan’s port side when the strut holding up one of his rear sections of canvas broke. Gariépy’s crew prevented the screen’s total collapse by hastily wedging a fire extinguisher between it and the tank hull. Small-arms fire from the beach showered the tank. Then two great pillars of water shot up around Duncan’s tank and it just disappeared. Gariépy noted that “there were only four heads in the water.” Duncan and his crew, save Trooper R.E. Tofflemire, who drowned, were later rescued by an LCT and returned to England. Looking over his shoulder and seeing the other tanks still churning towards the beach, Gariépy led the way in.22

MIXED IN AMONG THE DD tanks were the LCAs bearing the Royal Winnipegs and Regina Rifles. Standing in the front of his assault craft, Major Fulton thought, “there was all the noise in the world” around him. Fulton was watching the beach, trying to pick out through the smoke and dust cloaking it where his landing point was situated. The major wanted ‘D’ Company’s headquarters section to set down precisely in order to ensure that he could effectively gain immediate control over his platoons. Suddenly something started whacking against the steel hull of the LCA and with a start Fulton realized it was German small-arms fire. “Then you’d see a big spout of water come up and it dawned on me it was artillery fire and this wasn’t going to be a surprise. The Germans were awake and waiting for us.”²³

Off to the east, the Queen’s Own Rifles and North Shore regiments were well ahead of the Fort Garry Horse squadrons that were to have preceded them to the beach because of the time lost when it was decided not to launch the tanks until they were almost ashore. CSM Charlie Martin was shocked to discover, as the LCAs carrying the two assault companies drew closer to the beach, that the great armada standing off Normandy was no longer visible nor were there any aircraft overhead. All he could see were the regiment’s ten little boats formed in a line across a 1,500-yard front. Ahead, the houses and buildings of Bernières-sur-Mer were visible. No fire was coming from the German fortifications. In fact, for a few minutes a deathly quiet prevailed that added an eerie sense of unreality. As the LCAs closed on the beach, they started moving farther apart, each making for an assigned landfall point. To Martin’s right, he could see a concrete breakwater and line of rocks jutting out into the water. Suddenly, a single machine gun opened up from shore and a piece of metal chipped off the LCA by a bullet slashed Rifleman Cy Harden’s cheek open. A sailor quickly slapped a bandage on the wound and shouted, “If that’s the worst you get, you’ll be lucky.”24

While the Germans defending Bernières-sur-Mer held fire until the Queen’s Own had practically touched down in order to avoid betraying their positions, those at St. Aubin-sur-Mer opened up with everything they had while the North Shore Regiment was still well out. In Lance Corporal Gerry Cleveland’s LCA, the men were still gawking at the beach, trying to make out their objective among the row of shell-battered houses that were visible through the drifting smoke, when machine-gun rounds started hammering the ramp in the front. Everyone sat down quick to get below the protection offered by the armoured gunwales.²⁵

Lieutenant Charles Richardson’s platoon of ‘B’ Company had treated the initial run in as nothing more serious than another training scheme. His men were in high spirits, nobody suffering sickness despite the rough seas, and loudly singing bawdy popular songs. “Now, this is number one, and the fun has just begun. Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again,” they belted out lustily.²⁶ Before they could break into the chorus of “Roll Me Over,” an armour-piercing round sliced through the front of the LCA and a chunk of shrapnel struck Private P. White in the chest, knocking him sideways but only winding the man. There was a deathly silence. Richardson looked at the thirty-nine men under his command and the expressions on their faces told him that they now understood this was serious business.²⁷

That war was no laughing matter had been rammed home to Richardson by the drowning death of his older brother, James Stanley Richardson, in a tragically ill-conceived demonstration exercise on July 2, 1942, when twenty officer cadets attempted to swim Ottawa’s Rideau Canal. Intended to promote the newly declared Army Week, the swim was attended by National Defence Minister J.L. Ralston and attracted hundreds of onlookers. The young men had dropped into the canal burdened by full battle gear, including forty-pound packs and rifles. No safety precautions were in place to rescue any of the cadets who should falter during the twenty-yard swim. Many ran into difficulty and five were fished unconscious from the water. Two of these, James Richardson and Raymond Lawton Roberts, died. Richardson had been just shy of his twenty-second birthday.28

The younger Charlie had been a lance corporal at the time with no ambition to enter officer training. Following his brother’s death, however, he was encouraged by senior North Shore officers to take the admission tests and become what Jim no longer could. Deeply affected by his brother’s death and by that of a close cousin, Marvin Black, who had fallen during the Commonwealth defeat at Hong Kong in December 1941, Richardson agreed. He rejoined the North Shores as a lieutenant just a few months after Doug Black, Marvin’s brother and a tail gunner in an RCAF bomber, was shot down and killed over Belgium. Doug had been his age, Marvin the same age as Jim, and the two Blacks as close as his own brother. Richardson grimly decided in the aftermath of these tragedies that, as the war had taken the other three, it surely wasn’t “going to take the whole four of us… I had the feeling I was going to come through.” But it was hard to be confident of personal survival when suddenly there were German shells whistling right over his head as he hunkered down in the LCA and anxiously waited to hit the beach.²⁹

On the North Shores’ right flank, Lance Corporal Gerry Cleveland had a Bren gunner, Private Gilbert Duke, stick the muzzle of his weapon through an open slot next to the front ramp so he could fire back at a German MG that was raking the craft with bullets. They were about two hundred yards from touchdown and the little LCA’s engine strained forward under full power. Tracers from the German gunner flicked overhead in clusters. “Fire! Fire!” Cleveland yelled at Duke, but the man just stood there with the butt of the Bren in his shoulder as if paralyzed.30

Down the entire length of Juno Beach, German fire was thickening, making it abundantly clear that the massive naval, artillery, and aerial bombardment had failed to even dent the beach defences. Queen’s Own Rifleman Doug Hester turned to his comrade Doug Reed as their LCA approached the shore and said, “There’s the church. I thought it wasn’t supposed to be there.” The steeple, which dominated the shoreline, was to have been blown off to prevent its use as an observation and machine-gun position. It stood defiant, showing nothing more than a couple of superficial shell scars on its exterior. Then the two riflemen saw the five pillboxes positioned on the seawall, each spitting tracer fire their way, and knew a tough job lay ahead.³¹

An after-action analysis of the bombardment by the Royal Navy gloomily concluded that only 14 per cent of 106 German positions targeted by naval guns were put out of action and most of these fell prey to the close-range fire from the destroyers. The Combined Operations Headquarters Special Observer Party concurred. “All evidence shows that the defences were NOT [emphasis theirs] destroyed.” Most of the fire had been widely scattered and the bombs dropped during the aerial bombardment were found to have largely landed well inland. However, a great deal of explosives had struck the towns indiscriminately. St. Aubin-sur-Mer’s foreshore buildings were determined to have been 90 per cent destroyed, most totally collapsed by shell strikes. The remainder of the town had suffered damage ranging between 30 and 40 per cent. Bernières-sur-Mer and Courseulles-sur-Mer were more fortunate, but those buildings still standing were capable of being used as defensive positions. As for the rocket fire, it was found to have been more noise and bluster than useful. It was hoped rather forlornly that the entire massive bombardment might at least have served to dampen German morale and in that way made the going easier for the assault forces, but there was no hard evidence to support this.³²

Also unscathed were the obstacles barring access to the beach. Royal Canadian Navy Lieutenant Russell Choat had cast off from the Llandovery Castle with a platoon of Regina Rifles aboard his LCA, which was part of the 557th Landing Craft Flotilla, Royal Marines. The eighteen LCAs were arrayed in three rows of six craft each, with Choat as the navigation officer in the centre of the second row, from which position he could control the move to shore. When they had started the run in, the beach had been so wreathed in smoke it had been hard for Choat to detect the beachfront hotel in the centre of Courseulles that was his aiming point. But as they drew closer he had no problem matching it to the recognition photos memorized during ceaseless hours of training. His goal was to hit the beach right in front of it.

There was a surprising amount of fire coming his way and the Reginas were crouched right down for cover. Choat and his coxswain didn’t have that luxury. They hunched behind the thin armoured screen and struggled to keep the LCA on track in the rough seas. The lieutenant thought the man in the most dangerous position was actually his engineer, who had to sit right between the two Ford V-8 engines that powered the craft and monitor their operation. If the LCA hit a mine, the explosion was predicted to tear the bottom out of it and rip the two engines free of their moorings so that the man would likely end up with a massive engine crushing his lap. Choat was actually surplus to the craft’s operation, there only to control the flotilla’s navigation. On most of the other LCAs there was just the coxswain and engineer.

The LCA was only one hundred yards from touchdown when a 40-millimetre shell “knocked a small hole in the bow just where the ramp hinged with the main hull,” Choat later recounted. “This effectively forced water through the hole at greater volumes than would be normal and the boat started to sink.” The LCA pressed on, settling as it did, to within twenty yards of the beach when it lost way. Choat ordered the Reginas off. The soldiers piled down the ramp into waist-deep water and started sluggishly wading towards shore under the weight of their gear. Choat and the marines shut down the engines, then jumped into the water and sloshed towards the dubious safety of land.33

NOT ONLY THE INFANTRY LCAS were struggling to get ashore, the DD tanks of the 1st Hussars were still battering their way in against the might of the unrelentingly rough seas. The winds continued to howl and the waves battered the canvas screens with punishing blows. Nineteen-year-old Trooper Bill Bury was the co-driver in Sergeant James Malcolm “Ace” Bailey’s tank, which had launched from the same LCT that had carried Major Duncan and the rest of ‘B’ Squadron. The Hamilton-born Bury was seasick, as were the rest of the crew. Fearing the waves were going to break the struts holding up the screens, Bailey ordered Bury, gunner Al Williams, and loader/operator Larry Allen to come out of the tank and support them. But when they were a few hundred yards out, machine-gun rounds started ricocheting off the water around them and the three men jumped back inside. Bailey dropped down into the turret and used a periscope to look over the top of the screen so that he could continue steering the tank in the right direction. Suddenly, the tank’s treads were churning on sand and the crew knew they were ashore. Almost immediately, Bailey ordered the tank halted and the screens dropped to enable the main gun to be used against enemy targets.34

Fortuitously, the tank had grounded right between two concrete pillbox positions that had been constructed so their firing ports looked down the length of the beach rather than out to sea. This enabled them to fire on anything trying to cross the beach to reach Courseulles-sur-Mer and also rendered the positions virtually impervious to any seaward shellfire. Each pillbox was armed with a small artillery piece and a machine gun, so they could smother the beach with withering fire. The Germans inside either pillbox, however, were unable to bring these guns to bear on Bailey’s tank.

Trooper Williams started blasting away at any German targets Bailey identified. Every time Trooper Allen fed another 75-millimetre round into the breech, the stench of cordite and smoke filling the turret caused him to throw up because of the lingering effect of his sea-sickness. Everyone in the tank was so focussed on bringing effective fire down on the Germans, they failed to notice that the tide was rising around them until water gushed into the engine compartment and drowned several of the motors. Then Bury reported that water was rising in the driver and co-driver compartments. When Bailey ordered the tank moved further up the beach, the still functioning motors proved too gutless to power the thirty-five-ton Sherman out of the mushy sand. They were stranded, but decided to stay inside the tank and keep firing the gun until the seawater threatened to drown them all.35

Bearing down on the beach nearby was the LCT with the ramp that had earlier lost its lift chains. Suddenly, this boat struck a mine that ripped a hole in its bottom and set it listing hard to port. Sergeant F.B. “Sailor” Kenyon managed to launch his tank off the damaged ramp, but shrapnel shredded parts of Corporal Harv Stanfield’s screen and the moment his tank hit the water it began sinking. His driver, Stan Seneco, frantically tried to get out of his compartment’s hatch but the Davis Escape Apparatus made him too bulky to get through it. He dropped back into the compartment, ripped the escape vest off, and then floated to the surface. A non-swimmer, Seneco clung grimly to the top of the tank turret, which for the moment was still above the surface and seemed to be kept buoyant by some of the screen’s inflated tubes.

Beside him, loader/radio operator Trooper Nicholls suddenly cried out, “I forgot to turn the radio off.” The man dove headfirst through the turret hatch into the completely flooded tank interior and returned a moment later to report that he had been successful in his mission. Nobody had the heart to tell him it had been a pointless thing to do, for it was part of their training to never leave the tank unmanned with the radio on, running down the batteries.

Looking to shore, Seneco saw Corporal J.M. Kay’s Sherman still in the water and almost on the beach when its DD screen started deflating.³⁶ Shot in the stomach on the run in, Kay had initiated the deflating process prematurely. Within seconds, the tank was swamped and the rising tide forced the crew to bail out.³⁷ As the men climbed out of the turret, German machine guns opened up from three sides. Seneco watched helplessly as bullets cut Kay, Trooper E.S. Sinclair, and Trooper J.L. Jackson “to ribbons.”³⁸ Trying to avoid the bullets, Trooper J.W. Forbes was smashed into an obstacle post by waves and suffered back injuries that paralyzed him. The driver, Corporal Stephen Runolfson, managed to help Forbes ashore and then went back into the sea repeatedly to rescue other wounded men in danger of being drowned. He was awarded the Military Medal.39

Despite the heavy gunfire striking the water around Stanfield’s half-sunken tank, Trooper Oscar E. Smith and Seneco decided to risk inflating the dinghy strapped on the Sherman’s hull for fear they would otherwise drown. As Smith climbed aboard the bright orange dinghy, a wave suddenly swept it away. Seneco was dragged along clinging to its side for a bit but then lost his grip. He was left struggling to keep afloat, waving his arms and legs ineffectually in the rough seas. For some reason Seneco could never later explain, he paused in his struggles to carefully remove his pistol from its holster and stow it inside his jacket next to a thick wad of cash he had won off the other men in poker games during the crossing to Normandy.

Stanfield obviously remembered the cash, too. He started yelling to Seneco, “Throw your money back. Fish, throw your money back.” Seneco knew that Stanfield thought he was going to drown any moment and, being a poor swimmer, was unable to do anything to rescue him, so he didn’t even think the corporal callous. Just as he was on the verge of sinking forever under the surface, a Davis Escape vest with “Fishey” written on it floated up and, hardly believing his good fortune, the trooper wrapped his arms around it. Floating on the current, Seneco drifted in front of the beaches until finally another tanker on one of the LCTs standing offshore was able to come over and rescue him in a dinghy. The rest of the crew managed to get safely ashore.⁴⁰

Following close on the heels of the 1st Hussars DD tanks was the LCT carrying Lieutenant Irving and Sergeant Lamb’s 17-pounder Sherman Fireflies that had been tasked with knocking out a fortification in Mike Sector. Although the other LCTs carrying ‘C’ Squadron tanks were not scheduled to land until forty-five minutes after the first assault wave, this one was to go in early to get the two heavy guns into action. Trooper Ralph Burley and the rest of the ammo passing party were huddled down behind the protective cover of the tanks and LCT’s armoured hull because of the heavy small-arms fire striking the craft. On the bridge, one of the Royal Navy sailors was returning fire with a pintle-mounted 20-millimetre machine gun. When Burley looked up to see how the man was doing, he was no longer visible and the weapon was burning. He thought German bullets must have hit it.

The front ramp dropped and Burley could see the shore coming up fast. “What’s that sticking out of the water near shore?” Burley shouted to one of the sailors. “Looks like bulrushes to me.”

“Bulrushes be damned,” the man bellowed. “They’re mines on cedar posts.”

That should make it pretty exciting, Burley thought, as the LCT started weaving through the obstacles. He could hear posts scraping against the sides of the craft, but no mines exploded. Then the LCT bottomed out and the signal was given for Irving and Lamb to disem-bark. The tanks rolled out into water only three feet deep and Irving yelled over his shoulder how happy he was with the nearly dry landing as the two Shermans barrelled onto dry ground and headed up the beach.

As the LCT started backing out to sea from the beach, Burley caught sight of scattered infantry running across the sand but he could no longer make out the two Fireflies and the only DD tanks visible were a couple in the surf that appeared to have been swamped. When the ramp was back up, Burley glanced over the side of the LCT and saw some bodies wearing tanker overalls floating in the water nearby. He recognized one that was face up as a friend. Although Burley was aware he would soon be reassigned to another tank and rejoin the regiment in the battle lines, he was not sorry to be granted a short reprieve from the beaches of Normandy.41