Memories of Frank Yates Chapter 27

Memories of Frank Yates CHAPTER 27

On the night of June 5th, there was a constant buzz of aircraft, sounding different from the usual drone of the heavy bombers, which we usually heard after dusk and about dawn. It was obvious that something was afoot and at lunchtime the BBC announced that landings had taken place on the French coast. The difference in the aircraft sound was explained by the thousands of American engines in the Dakotas, used for glider towing and parachute assaults. It is a remarkable fact that none of us, even though we were to be involved in the invasion, had any idea of the date.
Apart from all leave being cancelled we were not confined to barracks, being told that we would receive three days notice to proceed to the embarkation point.
On D+6 the mess secretary and I went to Chatham, to tell the music shop to collect the piano, and to pay up the hire charges. We decided to make a last day out of it and we had tea in a café, had a look at the naval dockyard where a lot of activity was going on, visited a hostelry and finished up at the pictures. We had come into town by bus, but when we left the cinema, we decided to walk home, the weather being warm and pleasant. Little did we realize that the walk along the main street was destined never to be forgotten. Out of the black sky came a long, pulsating, flame, travelling towards us down the street, at enormous speed, accompanied by an ear splitting roaring noise. We were scared stiff and sheltered in a shop doorway as the thing roared away in the direction of London. We had no idea what it was, but, while walking up the hill to our estate on the North Downs, we were joined by a night duty policeman who told us that they had been warned to expect an assault by pilotless flying bombs. He thought that they were radio controlled, but they were in fact, magnetically and gyroscopically navigated.
The thing was, of course, the German V1 flying bomb, of which, 5 landed in England on that night of June 12th, to be followed, on June 15th.by 144 of them, 73 V 1s reached Greater London, doing great damage, each with its one ton warhead. The Official History, “The Defence of the United Kingdom” states that, all in all, 8,617 bombs were launched from the sites in France, of which 2340 reached the London Civil Defence Region. These caused casualties of approximately 5,500 killed and 16,000 seriously injured. I give these figures, to give you, dear reader, some insight into the menace of the German V weapons.(The V2 had yet to appear) Had they appeared, even six months earlier, the war might have taken a different course.
I received a bit of a shock when it was decided that I should go to Normandy as advance representative for my battery, and to travel with one of the Bofors batteries.
Our orders to go ahead were cancelled because of stormy weather, which lashed the channel, and when we eventually set off for the embarkation point, the date was June 19th. Farewells were said to my colleagues, not too seriously, after all, they would rejoin me, in a week or so, in Normandy. I never saw any of them again! Although, a year later, I read in a forces newspaper that John Simons was giving piano recitals in Hamburg.
Sitting in the passenger seat of a Bedford 3 tonner, I was part of the long battery convoy that wound its way to the West India docks in London. We did not take the direct route, via the A2, to London, but were directed on a circuitous route, westwards, crossing the Thames near Guildford, and then eastwards, through the west end. Every route was packed, with Military Police directing the traffic, the roads packed with military vehicles made one realise the tremendous scale of the operation. Hundreds of thousands of people on our route were standing at their front gates and waving us on our way. It was all very moving. We eventually arrived at the dock, a vast area of dereliction greeted us the bombed buildings had been removed leaving a huge, clear, dirty, dusty, site. Facing us was our invasion craft. No cockleshell landing craft, no Liberty ship which would have meant dangerous transfer to small craft, but an American LST. This was a very large “Landing Ship Tank”, towering as high as a house, with a displacement of 3000 Tons. The ship had two decks for vehicles, with a lift. A large ramp was already sloping down to the quay side. Our Battery commander, Major Plowright, after conversation with the American captain, arranged all the vehicles in order, the “soft vehicles” such as trucks, jeeps, etc. were to be embarked first and lifted to the upper deck, then the eighteen self propelled Bofors were to be stowed on the bottom deck. The personnel would be divided between the two decks. The major gave jobs, such as the stowage of the vehicles inside the ship, and the supervision of the troops to the other officers and then asked me if I would be good enough to get the battery vehicles loaded up the ramp. This involved telling the driver to turn his vehicle round so that it could be backed onto the landing craft. Obviously, it had to hit the beach pointing the right way!
This sounds easier than it actually was. The drill is that you stand in front of the vehicle, the driver looking forwards, at you. By using the appropriate hand signals and without any spoken word, the truck could be accurately and safely backed up the ramp, to be taken over by the stowing party on board. The guns had to be carefully loaded, because the levelling jacks would suffer if they came into contact with a bit of ship!
This long and fairly arduous afternoon was enlivened by a V1 “Buzz Bomb” coming over about every ten minutes. If it was not coming directly at us, it was safe to ignore it, but if it looked to be passing overhead, it was a case of crossing your fingers and hoping that the engine didn’t stop! We saw several of the evil things “stop”, as the slipstream driven propeller had done its preset number of revolutions and cut off the fuel supply. I had imagined that the thing would glide down at an angle, not so. When the engine stopped it dropped like a brick. We saw and heard the ton of explosive causing havoc within a couple of miles or so.
One of the early V1s was chased by a Typhoon fighter (most fighter planes were not fast enough) and, by putting its wing tip under the wing of the bomb, tipped it over, so that it lost stability and hit the ground at full power. This was clearly a stupid thing to do over London. A belt of almost all the AA Command guns had been moved to the Kent coastal strip and a proximity fuse had been developed for the heavy guns. The bombs that were not hit by the guns, and evaded the barrage balloons, were attacked, or “tipped” by Typhoons, but before the end of June, once they had reached the greater London area, they were allowed to fly on. According to the official statistics, about one quarter of them that crossed the coast, reached a target.
When the last gun had been safely put away, the major thanked me and took me to my accommodation, on the top deck. I had a cabin to myself, with a single bunk, a washbasin and even a bookshelf, with a small selection of novels. I was to invade France in the greatest comfort!
The ramp was lifted, the bow doors closed and we pulled out, through the lock gates, in company with all the other ships that had loaded that afternoon. As we went down the river, there was a procession of craft passing upstream to reload. I thought that they would be in more danger from buzz bombs, than they had been in Normandy!
We arrived and anchored off the end of Southend Pier, the mile long pier, with its electric railway, was the World’s longest. The Skipper said that a large convoy would assemble at Southend and that we would sail, escorted by the Navy, at 07.30 hrs. Then he, and most of the ship’s officers, were taken to the pier end by the ship’s launch from where they went off for a night out in London.
Next morning, during breakfast, we heard the rumble of the diesels and looking out we saw that we were part of a large convoy, escorted by a destroyer and a minesweeper. As we sailed down the N. Kent coast, in glorious weather, a black steward brought me a glass of pineapple juice as I sunbathed, outside my cabin! There must have been more arduous ways to invade the Continent! The steward stayed for a chat and told me that he came from St. Louis. He leaned on the rail as we passed along the green Kentish coast and said “Say, is that Scotland?”
We realised that somebody was missing and asked the American No.1 if the Skipper was ill. He told us that he was still in London and had missed the boat! It appeared that the Captain had last been seen, accompanied by a blonde, walking down Regent Street, at one o’clock in the morning. When we politely enquired what would happen, the new Skipper said that if he reported to the Navy, he would be in serious trouble, but, if he was to lay low for a week and the ship got back safely, he could rejoin without anyone the wiser. I have often wondered what he did.
Somewhere in mid channel, our convoy was joined by hundreds more ships and landing craft, from every port on the South coast and we now made a splendid sight, with a forest of balloon barrage cables, as a precaution against dive bombers.
American Navy ships are strictly “dry”. Before leaving Chatham, all our officers had been issued with a bottle of scotch, at a duty free price of 3/6. Somehow, these two unrelated facts attracted each other by some magic process and none of us left the ship with our bottle of whisky! I was lying on my bunk, reading, when a knock came on my door. It was the senior NCO, called the Bos’n. I suppose. He produced a parka waterproof tunic and trousers. “Will you trade your scotch for this” As he was my size and the suit was of best U.S. navy quality, I “traded”.
Next morning we awoke to find ourselves anchored off the beaches. We stood and gazed at the fantastic sight. Thousands of ships and the great big Mulberry Harbour, dozens of sunken blockships and concrete caissons, sunk in rows to provide breakwaters. Some of the huge caissons were looking a bit drunken, after the latest storm. Ships were unloading lorry loads of stores onto the Mulberry and the floating quays. Some way to the south, battleships were lobbing 15in shells far into the interior of Normandy and fighter planes were keeping a vigil. I must confess, that at the time, I didn’t think much about it. It was only afterwards that I realised that I had taken part in the greatest military operation in history, and had seen the biggest armada the world had ever seen and which would never be seen again.
I looked across the half a mile to the sandy beaches, glowing in the June sunshine, and wondered what the future held.

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