June
2004
"I was too young to have a rifle.
I had a brush stick instead..!" |
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| Peter
Strachan and Gerry Briscoe in 2004...Sixty years after they
landed on the D-Day beaches |
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Sixty years ago Bradford's Gerry Briscoe and Peter Strachan (left)
were young, fresh-faced...and about to go to war in the biggest
land battle ever seen in the history of the world. Sixty years on,
they tell us what it was like to be a teenager going into war.
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"THAT'S
MY LOT. I'VE HAD IT!"
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| One
of the landing beaches at Arromanches in Normandy as it is today |
GERRY:
"I was in the 205 Field Company Royal Engineers and I landed on D-Day
on Gold Beach. We'd been in a camp in the forest in Hampshire, fastened
up with barbed wire all the way round, and when we were on our way
to Normandy we put all the sheeting down on lorries so we couldn't
see out and nobody could see in.
We got on the boat on the 29th May and we went down towards the Bay
of Biscay and back up again and we went out two or three times in
the LCAs [landing craft]. Then D-Day came, it should have been two
days before but the weather was so bad and so rough. We got into the
boats and came down the rigging and I had a 25 pound charge on my
front to blow a pill box up and a big yoke on my back with all the
kit. One minute the boat's up and the next minute it's down and you
had to make sure you got in the boat before you let go of the rigging
and I found myself the first one in the boat.
Normally when the Royal Marines take you in, they drop the boat in
shallow water then come back and me, with all this weight on, I thought:
"That's my lot I've had it!" And unfortunately when the
Marines went in, negotiating his way through, he dropped the ramp
and the first lad went out and dropped off in 20 foot of water. I
I was very, very lucky that it wasn't me. Anyway he went further in
- I was only 5 foot 7, either short or tall you might say - and the
water's over my head and I'm scrambling to try and get to the beach
and there are people floating around you and boats coming in.
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| BBC
reporter Howard Marshall: "He was going to do a running
commentary as we went on the beach but unfortunately his boat
got blown up...He survived." |
In one
of the boats that came alongside us was a man called Howard Marshall
(right) and he was a BBC commentator and he was going to do a running
commentary as we went on the beach. Unfortunately his boat got blown
up. He survived, he got out, but when you're wading through water
four or five feet deep with waves coming over your head and people
firing at you, all hell's let loose.
Once we got onto the beach I found the pill box [Gerry's target] had
been blown so I unearthed my 25 pound charge and got rid of that right
quick. Then we're down on the floor and then we're under instruction
to start plotting for mines to let the other tanks come though.
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What's
on across West Yorkshire? From gigs to the top ten films, from clubbing
to the theatre - it's all here!
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