James Delingpole
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Yet at last — thanks in great part to a near-suicidal charge led by Captain T.F. Cousins (posthumously but unsuccessfully nominated for a VC) — the town was taken. General Sir Miles Dempsey, commander of the British land forces on D-Day, rated it an exploit every bit the equal of the (much better known) capture of Pegasus bridge, while Major General Julian Thompson has described it as one of the greatest feats of arms by any unit in history.
So these are the people I found myself with in Normandy for four days, and you can imagine what a humbling experience it was.
The thing you don’t realise until you’ve been on these reunions is just how gruelling they are. If you’re not listening to endless civic speeches, sitting through celebratory feasts or attending a wreath-laying ceremony, memorial service or commemorative plaque dedication, you’re probably stuck on a coach on the Bayeux ring-road trying to negotiate a security system apparently designed to resemble as closely as possible the one provided by the Germans 60 years before. I found it tough enough. For these increasingly frail men in their eighties, standing to attention in the searing heat, it must have been very testing indeed.
Yet they bore it all in good part. First because they are commandos, second because they belong to a generation taught to endure, but third because — as during the war — it’s amazing what you can achieve when borne along by a tide of camaraderie and goodwill. If France, America and Great Britain have had the odd difference of late, you would certainly never have guessed it from the joyous, welcoming and almost euphoric atmosphere in Normandy.
You get an inkling how it must have felt during the Liberation — especially since every other car is a wartime military vehicle driven by re-enactment junkies in period uniform. Time and again I overheard veterans telling their friends and family that this really had been the best day of their life. George Amos said as much to me after he’d walked down the gangplank to the strains of the Royal Marine band. His wife, Eileen, elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Apart from one day, obviously, my dear,’ he corrected himself. And even as an outsider you knew what they meant. I lost count of the number of times I found myself choked with emotion: croaking through ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’ in the memorial service led by the Queen at Bayeux cemetery; the ranks of veterans shuffling forward with their regimental standards; the waving crowds lining Portsmouth harbour.
But what I came for mainly — these occasions do turn you into a bit of a vulture, I’m afraid — was to rub shoulders with these men and hear their stories and try to answer those two questions that men who have never been through such experiences almost always want to know: ‘So what’s it really like?’ and ‘How would I have fared myself?’
On the ferry a chap named Jim, who’d gone in on the first wave with the Dorsets, showed me the scar from the bullet wound he’d got in the arm the second his landing-craft door opened. He didn’t know he’d been shot until two hours later, because he felt almost no pain. ‘What did you go and punch me for?’ he’d said to the man next to him.
For the real stories, though — the ones veterans never used to talk about and are only now beginning to open up about — it’s best to wait until everybody has had a few beers. One Marine told me he had never been afraid of being killed, just ‘apprehensive’ about losing a limb or, worse, suffering the fate of a poor chap called De’Ath, who’d been emasculated by shrapnel at the age of 19. Another told me about the strange nocturnal clicking noises he’d heard near the burnt-out wreckage on the beaches. It was the sound of French women breaking the fingers or teeth of dead Germans to remove their gold fillings and rings. Then there was the group of SS corpses all found with their trousers round their ankles: they had all simultaneously been caught short after eating frozen apples and then taken out with a tank round.
As for the second question, you’re never going to know unless you’re put to the test. But when I asked my Marine friends whether the younger generation was up to it, I was surprised by their response. Their beloved medical officer, Captain (later Professor) John Forfar, MC — better known as Doc — described how impressed he had been by the determination and quality of the volunteers who had taken part in a recent D-Day-recreation TV programme on which he’d acted as adviser. ‘Five dropped out, but the 19 who remained were put through hardships every bit as great as men on the original commando training course. I’ve no doubt they were of just as high calibre.’ The former Company Quartermaster Sergeant Chuck Harris was equally sure. ‘Course you’d have done as well as we did,’ he barked in his still sonorous parade-ground voice. ‘You just weren’t around at the time, that’s all.’
From Omaha to the Scheldt by John Forfar is published by Tuckwell Press.
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