It was important to stick within the confines of that white tape. One guy went over the line and bang!, he went over a shell.For want of a better word, it was exciting It wasn’t depressing, put it that way. I was the beach-master’s bodyguard, and the two of us ran forwards up to the beach. We were targeted by multiple mortars and the fire from them was very, very heavy. All around us were landing craft coming in – bang, crash, wallop and out you get.
Everything was absolute chaos.A bit later the commander came up to me and said that Sid had been severely wounded, and could I help him. I went along the beach and Sid was lying in the sand, very badly wounded. I pushed his kidney back into his body and told him to be careful, I didn’t want him to spill that out again. I managed to get him along to the first-aid post and they looked after him.
Sid made a good recovery, and was eventually the best man at my wedding.Tom Dwyer, then a 23-year-old army gunner, landed on Sword BeachWe were told that we had a 50-50 chance of survival. I wasn’t worried, because our army was at the peak of its development, we were all fit and we had great equipment. We had been preparing for the invasion for over a year up in the Cheviot Hills, training with live ammunition.On the morning of D-Day, we had our breakfast and then boarded the mothership. We were so na? that we didn’t know where we were going that day until we were each given 200 Francs Then, even the dimmest of us knew our destination. We were playing cards and had all the French money in a big bucket.When we landed, I was in the advance party of our battery, driving a three-ton truck loaded with 60 shells.