Cheall Bill - Fighting Through: From Dunkirk to Hamburg: A Green Howards Wartime Memoir

IT CAME as an extremely pleasant surprise when, one day as my wife Anne and I were working at my daughter Paulines house, together with her husband, David, we were having a break and chatting over a cup of coffee and Pauline asked us how we would like a trip to Normandy to join in the 40th D-Day celebrations, and we were to share all expenses.

The visit was constantly in my thoughts until, on 1 June we were off. We had decided to go a week before the celebrations in order to avoid the massive crowds which would be there, and furthermore we wanted to be at home to have a better overall picture of what was taking place by sitting watching television. So 1 June found me once again on a ship going to France across the Channel, but under vastly different conditions to those of forty years ago. I was going to enjoy myself.

Back in 1944, a great multitude of thoughts was going through my mind, so very different. This first day, the beginning of a very sentimental journey, particularly for me, was to be a very special time. It was 1 June 1984, and it was forty long years since the same date in 1944 when I stepped across the threshold of our invasion ship, Otranto .

We travelled by hovercraft from Dover to Calais. The last time I had been to Calais was early 1940 when my battalion was part of the British Expeditionary Force.

Our first stop was at Gravelines, a little further up the coast and the scene of our early clashes with the enemy in 1940. Nothing appeared to have changed. The row of small cottages at the roadside was still there. I found the spot where Lieutenant Hewson had been killed and then visited Fort-Mardyck where he is buried. I passed a little time just walking around the place just thinking.

My next stop was at Bray-Dunes and not a thing had changed here, either. I got out of the car three hundred yards from the edge of the village and walked exactly the same road as I had done all those years ago in 1940 during the retreat. I walked down to the end of the road overlooking the beach, turned left along the road for a hundred yards, then onto the sand dunes and sat down in the same spot where we had dug into the sand into which I ran to escape the Stukas dive-bombing; my thoughts ran riot.

I walked down to the sea and stood looking across the water towards England, visualising everything as it was last time I was there; the ships and the columns of tired and hungry soldiers forming the long queues down to and into the sea, trying to get aboard the small boats which had come fairly close inshore and some of which capsized. All trying to get back to England, only to be killed later in North Africa. All went through my thoughts as I stood there, dreaming of the past. I walked along the beach five miles to the East Mole at Dunkirk, picking up seashells on the way to keep as souvenirs of my visit. I imagined the huge columns of black smoke billowing from the blazing oil tanks.

Retracing my steps, I thought of all the pals I had known at the time, and how many had been killed in various actions after they had got safely back to England, sent to the Middle East and killed.

There was one change to what I remembered, and that was the large gun emplacement which had been erected as part of the Atlantic Wall.

I went in a half-circle from Bray-Dunes by road, covering the same ground over which I had seen the poor refugees being machine gunned by the planes. Then as I headed towards the coast and Bayeux, I could imagine all those thousands of our army vehicles, burnt out or immobilised. I had booked in at the Hotel Lyon Dor at Bayeux where many German officers of senior rank had been in residence during the occupation. Bayeux was decorated, ready for the visits of many dignitaries. British, American and French flags hung from every building and across the streets.

I come upon a plaque on a wall, which declared to all that on 7 June our 50th Division had liberated that city, the first town to be freed. I was so proud that I had been part of it. There was a welcoming sense of friendship and gratitude amongst the French locals.

During my stay, I wandered down to Gold Beach, walked to the sea, turned and walked back up the beach, carried away by the emotion of my racing thoughts about what happened on that very beach, that day, so long ago, when we waded ashore at 0725 hrs.

It was so peaceful, and the amazing thing was that the weather was almost the same drizzling but that did not deter me. I was determined not to waste a minute of my time in Normandy. Walking up the beach, there were no mines or booby traps, no shells, machine-gun fire or dead British soldiers. It was tranquil.

We visited the Bayeux war museum and I was enthralled to see such prominent recognition of the fact that our 50th Division had made such an important contribution to the D-Day landings, in liberating the city.

Going across the road to the cemetery which, like all military burial grounds, was magnificently maintained, I wandered along the rows of graves looking for the Green Howard emblem on the headstones. I had brought with me a list of names whose graves I was looking for and one by one I crossed them off the list. I found the last resting-place of our young company commander, Captain Linn, who was killed on the beach within minutes of setting foot on the shore. I found Rufty Hills grave. You will recall he was killed when the assault craft went over him. He had been such a big strong young man, full of the joy of life. Then I found the grave of our Captain Chambers, who was killed in the cornfield. I found many graves of Green Howards. They had all been good young soldiers and I remembered them as such. I saluted each grave then went and signed the visitors book, Remembered always, a Green Howard.

All those splendid lives gone. What a great tragedy and waste of human life war is. I know it is said that one cannot live in the past but nor should one forget those young men who paid the supreme sacrifice and it would be hypocritical to forget them. I shall never do that, or how they died. I am not ashamed to look back with sentiment and pride that I served alongside them.

Next stop, Arromanches, also liberated by 50th Division. The museum there, too, had a large display of the Green Howards and 50th Division.

I then stood on the rocks and looked out to sea. Standing like sentinels were the huge blocks of concrete which had once been the Mulberry Harbour, pounded by the sea. When I had last seen the harbour in its entirety, I was on a stretcher being put aboard a hospital ship.

About three-quarters of a mile from there was a spot where our B Company had waded ashore through the surf onto the beach at 0725 hrs on 6 June 1944, and it all came back to me so vividly. D Company on our right, and the spot where Hollis won the only Victoria Cross to be won on D-Day. I saw that knocked-out tank on the beach and all the dead and wounded lads lying around, and the shelling and mortaring. I turned around and could see all those ships at sea. Yes, it was indeed a very traumatic experience to return to France.

Although they do not enter into my story, I also visited all the American beaches and inland, where they had fought notably, St Mare Eglise and Omaha, which of course was the beach to the right of Gold and where so many brave young Americans met an untimely end. I went to Pont du Hoc and saw the German gun emplacement. Each of the shell holes had been left as they were at the end of D-Day.

While I stood on a rock, looking out to sea, a huge black American came up to me, eyeing me suspiciously. He turned out to be a Secret Service agent and, together with others of his profession, he had been covering the area looking for any characters intent on doing harm to President Reagan who was due for the celebrations. Anyway, after telling him of my visit, he took my hand in a vice-like grip and said he felt privileged to meet an ex-soldier who had taken part in the initial assault on D-Day.