Jack Mortimer D Day vet recalls his experience on Normandy Beach

Yorkshire Post

D Day landing veteran, Jack Mortimer, recalls his experience at the Normandy beach landings as we approach the D Day 80th anniversary

Transcript

00:00 I drove a jeep with a, what do they call it, on the back really.

00:08 And we just landed in kind of two or three feet of water.

00:15 Very easy, very easy landing.

00:18 The beachmaster was there shouting, trying to clear the beach.

00:26 Don't forget that I'm only one boat really, one thing there.

00:31 Don't forget that all along the 50 mile stretch of D-Day,

00:35 all these things were happening to thousands of other soldiers.

00:40 I remember seeing a military policeman on the little road as we came off the beach.

00:49 And first he said, "Where is 12th Warden's beach detachment?"

00:56 And he told us where to go.

00:58 And then I met up with my comrades there, because they landed from an LCT infantry, I didn't.

01:07 We knew that it was an invasion, we knew it was a battle that had to be won to win the war.

01:15 And we all did our little, as I said before, we all did our little 130,000th bit.

01:22 And all those bits together made a gigantic effort.

01:27 The sorry part about it was, as I said before to many people,

01:36 I'm grateful to be alive.

01:42 I'm grateful to have survived.

01:45 I'm so sorry so many had to die.

01:49 And there they lie in Normandy.

01:53 Those are the heroes.

01:56 I don't like the word hero at all, because I'm not a hero.

02:02 All the heroes are behind the gravestones in Bayeux and Rathkill.

02:11 You can't describe the feelings that you think when you're walking there with so many other veterans.

02:19 And they're all saying to you, "We're not heroes, we're simply here to pay tribute to and remembrance of."

02:29 That's the main thought.

02:31 All that every time I've been there, and I've been back, I think I've been back six times, I'm not sure now.

02:40 The thing is, we came into the beach, there were other ships landing.

02:46 And we just came to the beach there.

02:49 And being the first on, I was the first off the boat, really.

02:53 And I had to reverse and go off it.

02:56 And I landed this jeep with the trailer, just on the beach there.

03:01 It was noisy, it was smelly, you'd think it was chaos, really.

03:08 And there were hundreds and hundreds of soldiers landing, vehicles landing.

03:14 And everybody seemed to know what they had to do.

03:20 And I simply made my way off the beach.

03:25 I followed some tank traps, had to tank off the beach, making sure there were no mines there.

03:31 I followed those tracks off the beach.

03:33 Until I got to the little, it's a main road now, but then it was a little country road.

03:40 You could hardly pass two vehicles on it, really.

03:46 But as I say, everybody knew what they had to do.

03:50 And of course, even down to the humble pioneers who were looking after the bodies and so forth that were there.

04:00 And making, and I can remember them building a beach hospital that was used there.

04:18 And also a prisoner of war camp.

04:21 You know, because there were prisoners of war there.

04:25 You can't describe it really, there were people going everywhere just to renew a bit.

04:30 And all along, you can imagine, both sides of you, there were hundreds of soldiers all getting off ships, all getting off ships and moving away.

04:40 And no time to be really frightened, there was apprehensive.

04:44 No time to be frightened, there was apprehensive, really.

04:49 And of course, the noise was, big battleships out in the channel were firing over our heads, shells streaming over.

05:02 But when you're doing it wrong, you've got to do what you're told to do, and that was it.

05:09 The thing that failed on D-Day was that we didn't get, they didn't get as far to take Caen.

05:20 They were supposed to really get to as far as Caen on D-Day, but they didn't.

05:26 And it was 1st July before Caen fell.

05:30 The last things I remember, I think it was a night where, how did you sleep? Where did you sleep?

05:40 How did you sleep? How did you eat? You know.

05:45 And all these things come on, and somebody shouts, "Aircraft action" and you dive into your slit trench.

05:55 It was a funny life really. Work, work, work, work, work.

06:02 As I said before, those drivers of those amphibious vehicles, they did a marvellous job.

06:11 Ships all over the place, there was aircraft flying over, there was guns going off.

06:16 And all the time you were looking at thousands of cans of petrol, thousands of cans of petrol.

06:27 And of course we were in charge of all the ammunition as well.

06:31 And ammunition, you have to be very careful with ammunition.

06:35 We had two main departments of the B-Troop.

06:44 Some were trained with ammunition, others were trained with stores.

06:47 I was both.

06:50 And it isn't nice to do, you know, when you see a playing field there and you've got to pack all your stores there,

06:58 you don't know whether it's a minefield or not.

07:02 So we were thankful then that we had the RA's to help us.

07:08 The thing that really that I have to do is to go to Rushville, which is the war cemetery for the 6th Paratroop Brigade.

07:22 I must visit that.

07:25 I sat there on that bench a few times and I had a weep now and again.

07:33 Bayer is a nice, nice, such a nice place Bayer.

07:38 And Arromanches, I'm looking forward to going to Arromanches because they have a very good museum there.

07:47 Really good.

07:48 I want to look back there and see what I wrote about 10 years ago.

07:54 Trust me, I'm not an Elf today, I hope I make it anyway.

07:57 But as I say, I'm 100 years old and I could just go like that.

08:02 But those thoughts never enter my mind.

08:07 It's important that we remember because the soldiers gave up their life, they gave their all.

08:17 Those are the people that we should not forget.

08:21 Can I tell you the words, they shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.

08:28 Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

08:33 At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

08:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended