Blitz Kids (51 page)

In the final weeks of training before D-Day, an accident befell Bill Edwardes. Whilst crossing a ploughed field, he fell and gashed his knee. Needing stitches, he was sent to hospital where he remained for two days. Returning to the camp he discovered the entire battalion had left. Sent to a holding camp, he was desperate to get back to his regiment, knowing that if they were going overseas he wanted to be alongside the men he had trained with:

For the next few weeks he learned the basics of first aid. The training was based on the principle of the ‘Three Bs’:

With just a few weeks training, and little practical experience, he prepared for war. He knew that it would be his role to decide who could be saved and prioritize their evacuation, effectively carrying out battlefield triage. It was a heavy responsibility for a seventeen year old.

In the final days before going overseas, sixteen-year-old Ken Durston – serving in the Devonshire Regiment – was given
embarkation
leave. He had joined the Army because he was unhappy at home, having constant arguments with the father of the evacuees who had lived with the family since 1939. At first he had accepted the boys, but when their mother had been killed in an air raid, the father had also moved in with them. Deciding to join the Army, he had gone to a recruitment office but admitted he was underage. The sergeant simply told him the date of birth to put on the papers and his problem had been solved.

At home on leave Ken told his mother that he would soon be going into action. She was unhappy that such a young boy would be putting his life on the line when he was two years away from being called up. Her doubts had an immediate effect:

He realized his mother must have written to the regiment but knew he could do nothing about it.

In the final days before D-Day, a few young boys joined the invasion fleet. Among them was Thomas Osborne, a fifteen-year-old pupil from the London Nautical School. At school, he had been asked if he would like to volunteer to go to sea as a member of the crew on a rescue tug. No one told him he would be taking part in the biggest amphibious operation in history, yet he could not believe his luck to have been asked. Normally he would have needed to study for a further two years and then obtain a cadet apprenticeship before going to sea. When he arrived at HM Rescue Tug
Assiduous
, he was approached by the chief officer who told him he was going to have to sign papers stating he was a volunteer.

On 1 June, the tug fuelled at Southampton and the crew had their last night ashore, where they went to a pub: ‘And I was served with my first full glass of beer. The proprietor did not want to serve me as I was underage, but a Canadian noted my silver Merchant Navy badge and argued with him that service on a ship in wartime rules over drinking regulations.’ Thomas felt the landlord only agreed to quieten the other soldiers who joined in the argument. He was then hoisted on to the shoulders of an American soldier and the whole room cheered as he drank the beer. ‘I think I must have been the happiest and proudest boy in the whole of England that night.’
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Still just seventeen, Roy Finch was part of the infantry element of the 8th Armoured Brigade that assembled for D-Day. As his unit prepared to board the ship that would take them across the Channel, he was confronted by a senior officer who called a group of a dozen youngsters together and said: ‘The thing is I know you are all under eighteen and you are not allowed to go overseas.’ Roy was unsure of what would happen next: ‘I suppose we all looked a bit miserable. We were with all the blokes we had joined up with and trained with, we wanted to
go.’ He was then shocked to hear his officer say: ‘But if you actually get on to one of the landing ships and we leave, we won’t be able do anything about it!’ As the officer turned away, Roy and his young comrades fell in with the rest of their unit and boarded the ship: ‘I should have stayed back in the UK. Everyone knew we were underage, but apart from that officer, no one said anything. It was so exciting – but our parents would have killed us!’

Among the first ‘men’ to land in France on D-Day was Eric ‘Bill’ Sykes. As a paratrooper in the 7th Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, Bill and his comrades were to be dropped east of the Orne River, on the far left flank of the invasion area. Their job was to reinforce glider-borne units that would seize the road and canal bridges. Taking these bridges would allow seaborne forces to move through the next morning, holding the high ground above the river and preventing German reinforcements reaching the invasion bridgehead. The plan was simple but relied on the paratroopers being dropped in the correct location.

Having been in the Army since the age of sixteen, it was easy to forget that, had he waited for his call-up papers, by June 1944 he would still have been undergoing basic training rather than parachuting into France. He recalled his emotions:

In reality, his chances of survival were slim. As he waited to board his plane ready for take-off, Bill Sykes talked to the crew: ‘When I questioned them about the drop zone, they assured me that they had flown over the area in Normandy several times in the preceding weeks and “knew the exact field” on which we were to be dropped.’ The journey was calm, until they reached the Normandy coast:

Soon the order came to jump, and Eric ‘Bill’ Sykes found himself floating down into an apple orchard. He landed alone, with no sign of other members of his unit: ‘Remember the crew of the plane who “knew the exact field”? Well, they may have known the exact field but they sure as hell didn’t know the right river.’ He heard firing going on in the distance and realized he had landed far from his drop zone, although at the time he didn’t realize just how far away. He later discovered he had been dropped near the mouth of the River Dives, rather than the Orne, and was nearly twenty miles off target. After some searching, Bill joined up with eight others from his plane. For nearly two weeks they attempted to reach the Allied lines. They engaged in ‘hit and run’ encounters with the enemy, dodged the unwanted attentions of Allied fighter planes, and took shelter with French civilians. Two of the group were killed in action, but it seemed they were getting no closer to their objective of rejoining their unit.

On the morning of D-Day, whilst Bill was desperately searching for his comrades, the invasion went ahead according to schedule. Among those in the invasion force were a number of underage volunteers. Onboard a Royal Navy rescue tug, fifteen-year-old Thomas Osborne had his first taste of the war at sea. He could see and hear the warships firing, and heard the same shells exploding inland. He watched as a landing craft blew up. Exhausted, he went below decks to his hammock, but was soon awoken by a slap and told they were under attack:

From the deck he could see tracer bullets from the anti-aircraft guns arcing across the sky as they engaged swiftly moving targets.
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Thomas Osborne was not the only schoolboy with the invasion fleet. Just prior to D-Day, the Royal Observer Corps was asked to provide volunteers to join ships to act as lookouts against attacks by enemy aircraft. Those volunteering had to undergo a cursory medical examination, then a rigorous test on aircraft recognition, to select those suitable. Three seventeen-year-old boys were chosen. Ian Ramsbotham, Wally Shonfield and Jack Thompson were then given the temporary rank of petty officer in the Royal Navy, and sent to ships in the invasion fleet. Once their invasion duties were complete, they returned to England and immediately returned to civilian life. For Ian that meant returning to school.

Also heading towards the French coast was seventeen-year-old Stan Whitehouse, a private in the 1st Buckinghamshire Battalion, part of No. 6 Beach Group. Their role was to land on Sword Beach and secure the beachhead, preparing predesignated areas as fuel and ammunition dumps. When he had joined the Army he had promised his parents he had joined a boys’ battalion, and would not be sent overseas until after his eighteenth birthday. The reward for his deception was to be among the first to land in France.

As Stan approached the beach, he noticed his unit was landing alongside the commandos. If they – the elite fighting-force of the British Army – had yet to hit the beach, it was a sign he was about to be thrust into the heart of the action. The run in to the beach provided a vivid introduction to war as the seventeen year old watched the invasion unfold before him: planes fell from the sky; boats sank; battleships fired broadsides; and corpses floated in the water. Ahead on the beach, he could see soldiers advancing, crouching as they came under fire. He watched as some were hit and fell to the sand. When he
had changed his date of birth to join his father’s old regiment and escape the monotony of life in a factory, this was not what he had imagined; his perceived adventure was something very different. This was real: this was war.

Among the commandos landing on Sword Beach was Fred Walker. No longer a green sixteen-year-old volunteer, he was a veteran of Dieppe, Sicily and Italy, who could say, with the certainty of a veteran: ‘What’s the colour of blood? If it’s brown, you’re bleeding to death.’ He had come a long way since the days of the Blitz, when, as a civilian in a bombing raid, you had no control over your destiny. It made him think of his mother in the Blitz of 1940 who had refused his pleas to take cover, telling him, ‘If we get hit, we get hit.’ She may have accepted that her destiny was out of her hands, but he realized that, as a soldier, there was always something he could do to try to stay alive.

For Fred controlling his destiny was simple: get off the beach, reach the objective, win. And keep doing it – for as long as it takes:

Although incoming mortar bombs frightened him, Fred was just glad he had a definite objective: ‘There was nothing worse than mortar fire. I would always rather be walking forward than sitting in a slit trench under mortar fire. You were just waiting to be hit.’

Also with No. 3 Commando was Stan Scott, finally getting an opportunity to do what he had always dreamed of when he had volunteered for the Army as a fifteen year old. Approaching the beach, all he could think of was reaching the unit’s objective, the bridges over the Orne canal and river where they were to reinforce airborne units: ‘I felt nothing. We’d done it so many times in training, so many
different ways, that I felt OK. One thing was in our heads: 3 Troop, 3 Commando, you will get to the bridges. You will not stop for anything. No fighting, just go round trouble.’ To achieve the necessary speed to reach the bridges, Stan was carrying a bicycle, to which was strapped a case containing mortar rounds. As they approached the beach, Stan felt the landing craft was a death-trap. It was confirmed when he saw a nearby craft take a direct hit, then slide beneath the waves.

His mind returned to the task ahead when he heard the order to load weapons. Then, suddenly, it was the moment for which he had been waiting for so long:

Struggling out of the swamp, Stan and his mates stopped to clean their bicycles before heading off to their target. The journey was uneventful, the roads seemed to be empty and they reached the village without incident. Still on their bikes, they raced down to the bridge and crossed it, quickly receiving orders to move through to the village of Amfreville. The rest of the day passed in a blur of activity:

Buoyed by the sight of his comrades’ resilience, Stan moved forward, with bayonet fixed and ‘one up the spout’.

The commandos took Amfreville, but only after coming under
machine-gun fire that inflicted significant casualties. It was the first time Stan Scott had encountered death and wounding:

It was a story that was repeated in each unit that landed that day.

In the later waves came seventeen-year-old Roy Finch. He found the approach to the French coast strangely exciting:

As they got closer to the beach the excitement increased:

He marvelled at the sight of officers from the Royal Navy directing troops and vehicles. He looked at dead bodies but tried to ignore them: ‘I didn’t think it could be me. I thought I’d survive.’

As the commandos fought their way in land, seventeen-year-old Stan Whitehouse was hard at work consolidating the bridgehead. He soon had his first introduction to seeing shell-shocked soldiers who had
suffered a psychological breakdown within minutes of landing in France. Worst was to come. He helped stretcher-bearers as they assisted horribly wounded men, including some of Stan’s comrades. He watched as one mate went pale and bled to death, killed by a tiny shrapnel wound that had punctured his vital organs. But, most importantly, he was learning the lessons that would keep him alive: when to duck; when to take cover; when to run.

Within days of landing in France, Fred Walker came under heavy mortar fire. His unit had been constantly in action since landing, but this was some of the most intense and accurate fire he had experienced:

Arriving in France on D-Day Plus Two, Ted Roberts was one of that lucky breed of soldiers able to accept that death was a likelihood: