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Ed's Sk8toronto Website The following account was written by my Dad in 2003, not long before he died at the age of 82. He was 22 years old on D-Day. D-Day Remembered - Corporal Kenneth J. Duncan, Canadian Third DivisionI intend to write my recollections of the days and weeks leading to D-Day as I experienced them, the day itself and up to the breakout of the allied armies which destroyed the German Seventh Army. Much of what I write will no doubt be coloured by time and a faulty memory. However, much is still as clear in my mind as if it all took place a few days ago, not surprising when it was one of the signal periods of my life. I was a corporal in the Third Canadian Division Postal Unit. It was our job to handle all the mail incoming and outgoing for the division. Since morale rose and fell with the arrival or nonarrival of letters and parcels from home, this was a very important service. The unit was made up of a commanding officer, a lieutenant, two sergeants, three corporals and eighteen private soldiers some of whom were drivers. The unit was so structured that one corporal, two privates and a driver could be detached for duty with one of the brigades. I was the corporal of the section which served the 9 th ( I regret to say that I no longer remember the names of many of the men in the unit. I have been in contact with the Military Records Section of Canadian Archives and learned that the War Diary of the unit is available for study although not on videotape. I hope to go to I spent the autumn and early winter of 1943-4 on detachment with a section of the 8 th RCASC (Royal Canadian Army Service Corps) in Poole in Sometime early in the new year we were recalled to I enjoyed the six weeks we spent at the Div HQ, which was near Brockenhurst in the New Forest not far from Once again we learned how to "high port" and "on guard" with our bayonet–tipped Lee Enfields. The bayonet was already an obsolete weapon of course, I never heard of anyone actually using one in combat. But we also got some useful instruction in field tactics and learned once again how to strip a bren gun, use a sten gun and use and care for our rifles. I have since thought that the frequent and strenuous bayonet drills were really meant to try to make us bloodthirsty and to get us in to hard physical condition, rather than ready us for any such thing as a bayonet charge. We also did a lot of route marching, and five-mile runs were popular too. I got pretty cocky about running since I very easily kept up with the instructor and, on the last run, I implicitly challenged him. I caught up with him; he sped up a little. I challenged again. By the time we were into the last fifty or so yards we were going full out. He beat me in by about ten feet and we were both wiped out. We were barely back in Southampton, if memory serves, before we were moved some twenty miles or so north of the city to the very large grounds of a country estate called Our situation was quite idyllic. We were housed in bell tents scattered among the huge oaks and beeches with four or five of us to a tent. In the traditional pattern, we slept head to the wall and feet to the centre, and since the tents were supposed to be adequate for twelve men, we had lots of room. Nearby in the woods were the ruins of what I learned was a small priory, and just at the edge of the wood a quite large pond. It had been the carp pond where the monks raised their fish dinners and there were still carp in it, as I learned when I watched a local man catch one that must have weighed five pounds. He was delighted with it since food was strictly rationed. We all knew in a general way that an invasion of the continent was just a matter of time. However we didn’t truly know that we were being concentrated in the southeast of We did know that the infantry had had extensive training in assault landings and that the 2nd Armoured Brigade had tanks that were equipped to float and had some means of propulsion in the water when launched from vessels designed for the purpose. The weather was superb through April and May, the sun shone every day, the woods were full of flowers and the birds were nesting. Every day the Ordnance Corps band played a noonhour concert that sometimes lasted for two hours. We sat on the grass and listened to marches, light classics, musical comedy, waltzes and the popular songs of the day. The work was quite light, it seemed and we spent a little time kicking a football around for there was little else to do. It soon became evident that the invasion was imminent. We were issued brand new vehicles, and as quartermaster of the unit, I was given some instruction on how to stow and waterproof our military stores in the bodies of the trucks, such things as spare ammunition for Lee-Enfields and Sten guns, anti-gas clothing, two bicycles and our anti-tank rifle. It looked to me like pictures I had seen of elephant guns and it would have been of no use whatever against anything we were likely to encounter. Shortly after we landed, I discarded most of this stuff as useless and gave the bicycles to two French farmers in exchange for butter, eggs, bottles of wine and Calvados as well as hard cider. I reported the losses as due to enemy action with the CO’s (Commanding Officer`s) approval and never indented for replacements. I kept what was useful of course, the ammunition, the anti-gas capes which made good raincoats, spare blankets etc. So much for the losses of war. While I was packing our supplies in the new vehicles, the drivers were shown how to prepare them for partial submersion. This consisted mainly of installing carburetor breathing tubes, which ran up to the tops of the cabs, and exhaust extensions to the same height. There were likely other things done to the engines and gas tank caps but I am not sure what. The new trucks were of the standard pattern the Canadian Army used, which is to say left-hand drive. This had always created some difficulty when in One day without any prior notice I received a shipment of new uniforms, enough for all the men in the unit. They must have been made in I rounded up a couple of men and we carried all the uniforms down to the pond, sank them in the water and weighted them down with stones. After a few sousings and a couple of days of waiting, we got them out and rinsed and dried them in the shade. The chloride of lime or whatever was all leached out and the uniforms were quite wearable although somewhat in need of pressing. I first realised we were under pretty close confinement at It must have been late March when we went under canvas at Sometime in very late May, the order to move came to the eight of us who were to go in the unit vanguard. Here memory fails me. There was Lt. Walter Jackson, the CO Sgt Lloyd Michener, myself, Carl Bryant a driver and three others I remember only as Smitty, Ernie and Jimmy. (I hope to get those names from the War Diary). [Editors Note: Below is a picture of Lloyd Michener sent to me by his son who found this account in November 2008. Lloyd Michener died in 1969] 
On the appointed day, we mounted the prepared vehicles early in the morning and joined the convoy that moved off southward. It must have been made up of the advance detachments of the various specialised small units such as ourselves, the Intelligence Section, the Dental Corps etc. I remember thinking as we pulled out, waving goodby to the men who would follow us in the second flight that I might never see any of them again. However, since I had just turned down the opportunity to go to OCTU (Officer Candidate Training Unit) because I wanted to be in on the invasion and had volunteered for the advance group, I must not have been too worried about my chances of survival. The young think they are immortal. We were not too long on the road before we pulled into our first staging camp with a mix of other Canadian trooops, where we stayed under canvas in big marquees for I think two nights. From there we were moved into a camp with a British infantry regiment, this time in a barracks. The men of the regiment were all, it seemed, Londoners. They were small men, all I would guess, from the At this camp, we were on British rations and the British messing pattern which consisted of breakfast, a big lunch, tea around five o'clock and another small feeding around 9:00 at night. They were big on a type of cold sausage, about two inches in diameter and in coils about eighteen inches long. It had a very tough skin, an ugly red colour and an unpleasing taste. It was not unknown in Canadian mess halls since we were rationed by the Brits. When it appeared it was always greeted with the cry "horsecock again!". I have no idea who gave it that name, but it was brilliant for that is exactly what it looked like. One had to be really hungry to eat it. We spent about three days with that unit and were not sad to see the last of it, for those men were not much given to bathing—at least that is what our noses told us. Our next, and as it turned, out our last stop in England was in a meadow surrounded by a high barbed wire fence just on the outskirts of a village called Itchenor, which lay on a tidal creek that fed into the great Portsmouth Harbour. We were once again in marquees that were remarkably devoid of any kind of furniture. We slept on paillasses stuffed with straw. I have no recollection of where or what we ate but clearly we got fed. Horsecock, I suppose. There was nothing to do and nothing to read except the skimpy Here behind the barbed wire, we were at last told formally what we all knew: that we were part of a force of Canadian, American and British armies that was about to invade After the map session we were each handed a packet of francs the Allies had printed. They would be the new French currency we were told. They were printed in red and green in small denominations and, to my eye at least, rather ugly. I wish now that I had kept one. We had of course brought our weapons with us; mine was a Lee Enfield mark 4 with a small spike bayonet. At this point it was taken from me and I was given a Sten gun in its place. The Sten was a submachine gun with a magazine that held about twenty rounds of 9mm ammunition. It was a cheap, inaccurate and dangerous weapon, hastily developed by the Brits after the collapse of the British Army at The Sten, which looked like a couple of pieces of gas pipe welded together, was very simple and easy to produce. It had a very heavy bolt that worked on a recoil principle. Sometimes when the trigger was pulled with the intention of firing a burst of two or three shots, it would not stop firing until the magazine was empty. Some men found that if you jumped over an obstacle, holding the weapon pointed upward, the jar of landing would depress the bolt far enough to compress the spring, and the recoil would start the weapon firing by itself. I saw this demonstrated and we didn’t need to be shown twice. We were now issued ammunition, .303 cal for the Lee Enfields and 9mm for the Stens as well as extra magazines and a combat knife, which was to be sewn to our trousers convenient to hand. The knife had a very heavy metal handle and a double-edged blade about eight inches long. In the end it proved to be a nuisance, slapping against the leg, of no use for anything other than killing. Most of us abandoned them soon after landing. The spike bayonet issued with the rifle was also useless for anything. However, the issue pocket knife was very handy for all sorts of little chores. On the evening of June 5 th, having been alerted earlier in the day, all of us were formed up in our own sections and marched the few hundred yards to the little village which we had not known existed until then. A number of landing craft were hove to in the tidal creek. One by one they nosed into the hard as the graveled landing strips were called, the ramp let down and the vehicles backed on, followed by the troops. Then the ramp was raised and the craft moved out into the stream to await the conclusion of the loading operation. A landing craft of the sort we were put into was about sixty feet long, fourteen feet wide and perhaps eight feet deep, drawing perhaps two feet of water when loaded. At the bow was a drop-down ramp, and at the stern an engine room inhabited by a crew of two British marines whom we rarely saw, who tended the engine. The villagers had quickly assembled, old men, some in Home Guard uniform, women of all ages and of course the children. They watched everything quietly and must have known what was afoot. The sun was quite low in the sky and the clouds were turning pink so it must have been late afternoon perhaps 7:00 o’clock Double British Summer Time. Finally all the craft were loaded, and by this time there was a brilliant red sunset that appeared to cover the whole sky. I can still see that incredible sunset in my mind’s eye. Only once since have I seen another to compare with it. Without any ceremony, the little flotilla formed up and we moved slowly down stream on what must have been an ebb tide. As we pulled away from the landing, all the villagers began to clap their hands in farewell, yet I don’t remember any shouts of goodbye or good luck. It was curiously quiet except for the applause. We soon got in to the wider water of the We were moving again long before sunrise. Soon we could feel the heave of the sea as we pulled out from behind what I later realized was the It was hard to believe the sight that greeted us as the sun rose. As far as I could see, ahead, behind, on either side, the water was covered with vessels of every description, all headed for the coast of Carl Bryant and I sat on top of the cab of the 15cwt [15cwt is a ¾ ton truck] staring in amazement at everything around us and eating the rations we had been provided with. Oddly enough, I can’t remember what they were except for the soup. It came in cans about the same size as the ones we are all familiar with, but down the centre of each can ran an enclosed fuse which, when lit, heated the soup that surrounded it. The soup itself was thick and rich and reminded me of the ox-tail soup my mother used to make. We drank a lot of it before we made our landfall. The sun was bright and the sky nearly cloudless. Slowly the wind began to rise, and within a couple of hours it was quite strong. The sea, which had been fairly calm, began to toss and we had waves of up to six feet running. The craft began to roll and heave noticeably. Soon most of the men were hanging over the bulwarks and heaving too. A marine popped up through the hatch at the rear, like a groundhog out of its hole and vomited over the stern. In the end Carl and I, sitting on the roof of the truck, appeared to be the only ones not seasick of all those aboard. We learned later that seasickness plagued most of the thousands who assaulted the beaches. Perhaps it encouraged the infantrymen who might have been reluctant to charge into the storm of fire that greeted them, happy with the thought of firm ground under their feet as they hit the beaches. There were no toilet facilities aboard so far as we knew. It was easy enough to hoist oneself up and piss over the side, but it would have been difficult to hang one’s posterior over, for there was little to hang on to. The splash of the waves, some of it now breaking inboard, would have been drenching. I didn’t suffer any discomfort from a full bowel but I suppose some did. I would think, about noon we could see the coast ahead and the smoke of battle hanging over it. By now we could hear the crump of the big naval guns as they fired their huge shells inland. We were scheduled to land at 3:00 pm., according to Lt Jackson, and we moved steadily ahead through a line of warships that were firing inland. By this time we could see the beaches which were jammed with men, disabled tanks, armoured bulldozers, trucks, what looked like groups of prisoners, and in the shallows, damaged and grounded landing craft, some of them impaled on the obstacles that Rommel had caused to be installed below the high water mark. I don’t know how the message came to us, but somehow it did and Lt Jackson informed us that our landing was postponed because the beach was so crowded there was simply no room for more people to disembark. With that, our squadron, if I can call it that, backed off some distance from the beach so that we were under the guns of the warships. Somehow we maintained that position although at no time were anchors dropped. The noise of the guns was terrific for we were quite close and the sound of the shells hurtling overhead reminded us of rumbling freight trains. We had no idea of course how long our landing would be delayed. Hours went by and we had little to do but watch the beach as best we could and the comings and goings of fighter aircraft which quite clearly dominated the skies. Through it all the seemingly incessant fire of the warships, the sound of the guns on shore, the pall of smoke and dust that hung inland and a total lack of information about what was happening ashore gave us plenty to think about. Slowly the sun sank, and about 10:00 p.m.it fell below the horizon. The sky was lit with gun flashes and tracer and if there were moon and stars, I didn’t see them. It seemed evident we were not going to land that night so we crawled into the vehicles and slept as best we could. We were on the move just at sunrise. In perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes the various craft began to ground and the vehicles, all of which had their engines running, awaited the dropping of the ramps. The Intelligence section craft grounded just beside us, the ramp dropped and their troop carrier roared down into about three feet of water. It went about forty feet and almost disappeared. Only about six inches of the vehicle showed above water. The hatch in the roof was flung open and four or five men scrambled out. By this time our ramp was down and the jeep took off. I crawled into the back of the 15cwt and away we went. The water ahead of us was only about two feet deep but as we raced for the beach I could see out the back of the truck a wave abut four feet high that was moving faster than we were. It washed right into the truck and up over me, so like many others, I arrived in There was immense activity on the beach, wrecked tanks and guns, recovery teams, streams of vehicles from other landing craft, men marching, groups of disconsolate- looking prisoners, under guard of course, heaps of stores etc. I noticed two prisoners standing together, one a tall white-haired man who must have been at least fifty and a boy about five feet tall who might have been fifteen. I’ve wondered since if they could have been father and son. There were still buildings just behind the beach although the Germans had cleared away most of them to get clear fields of fire for the machine guns in the bunkers. Everything had of course been sighted in, and I have always thought it a miracle that anyone got through, since the preliminary bombardment turned out not to have been all that effective. I remember noticing the ruin of that house on the beach, which always appears in the photographs of Courseulles. There were other buildings too, pretty well all demolished by bombs and shellfire. The bunkers too were in ruins for the most part, the result of the work of the teams that had been specially trained for that hazardous role. There was something of a bank behind the beach that trucks could not surmount and it had been necessary to cut through at various places with bulldozers to provide exits to supplement the few that had existed. All the vehicles were herded along the beach to one of these, and since there had been no forming up by units, our driver had already lost sight of our other vehicles. However Sgt Mitchener in the cab had a map and a rendezvous point in Bernières-sur-Mer. We were soon off the beach and driving south down what seemed to be the main street of Courseulles. There was damage everywhere of course, but far less than we had seen right at the beach. I was seeing all this from the back of the truck and I had only the view to the rear. We quickly left the built-up area and were bowling along a quite good road through the typical bocage country - small fields surrounded by dense hedges. I could see no sign of life as I peered out, for the hedges along the road, often eight to ten feet high, hid whatever was in the fields. Suddenly the truck braked wildly and came to a halt. Smitty and I jumped out and Mitch and Carl leaped out of the cab. We had been halted by a wrecked tank slewed across the road. The commander, dead, was hanging half out of the turret. Behind the hedge that hid the truck were three or four men in British uniform, lying on their bellies and peering into the field beyond. We ducked down and ran over to them. I never knew their unit but I think they might have been the A corporal told us the tank had come up the road behind them and had just been hit a few minutes before. It was likely an armour-piercing round from a German 88mm that did it. Not far away we could hear the occasional burst of machine gun fire, and farther off the whine and bang of shellfire. Somehow, we had taken the wrong road and wandered into the We were soon back in Courselles and Mitch stopped the truck at a convenient place for a conference. For some reason he decided that he and Carl would go off in the truck and leave Smitty and me in the village while he made some inquiries, and then come back for us. So there were Smitty and I with nothing to do and nowhere in particular to go. I had noticed that some of the shops seemed to be open and that civilians were going in and out. I found this quite astonishing, considering they were in a war zone that was still being intermittently shelled, but I saw the same thing quite often again. It dawned on me then that I was very hungry, so I decided to see if Smitty and I could get something to eat in one of the shops. I saw one with something that indicated it was a café so in we went. In my high school French, I asked for food and drink and we were quickly presented with a loaf of bread, a big chunk of cheese, butter and a bottle of hard cider. There was no wine to be had in Time went by and after some considerable waiting, perhaps an hour and a half, I decided we had better find our way to the rendezvous at Bernières since by now it was mid-afternoon. We walked the short distance down to the beach exit and decided to hitch a ride with one of the trucks heading east in the direction of Bernières. One of the first vehicles to to come off the beach was a DUKW which was a very large amphibious, open cargo carrier that could swim out to a ship, be loaded, get to shore and drive away. These odd-looking vehicles proved doubly useful when one of the artificial harbours was destroyed in the great storm of June13th, since they could work directly from the beach to cargo ships lying off shore. The driver stopped for us and we climbed up into the cargo space and sat on top of the load. It was not far to Bernières and as we neared the centre of the village, I spotted our other vehicles in the front yard of a quite large and badly damaged house right across from a large stone church with a very high spire. I yelled at the driver to stop, and we jumped down. We had found the unit at last. Thinking about it now, I believe that the house was the manse or rectory, or whatever one calls the house of the parish priest, that belonged with the church across the road. Its windows were all smashed and much of the gray stucco that had covered it now strewed the ground. The front yard had several large trees and a quite ornate gate set in the front hedge, with a driveway leading up to the front door. The 15cwt was parked on the driveway. It turned out that Mitch and Carl could not find their way back to our meeting place and decided we would likely find our own way to Bernières anyway. I reported to the CO and learned that we were to stay there. The others had already dug slit trenches in the orchard behind the house. I got my equipment out of the truck and carried it back there where I intended to dig myself a slit trench for the night. At that point I heard a hubbub out front, so I moved around to see what was going on. Someone had heard what sounded like sub-machinegun bursts from the spire of the church and then we heard a shout that there was a sniper up there firing indiscriminately at whatever targets presented themselves. The eight of us gathered behind the hedge which was both high and thick and so close across the narrow road from the church that we were out of any line of fire. We all had our weapons with us of course ready for action and the man beside me, whose name I now remember was The message about the sniper was relayed to the higher command somewhere and we were told to get back behind the house because some action was imminent. Within a few minutes, the church tower was hit by three or four high explosive shells from one of the Petard tanks, and the whole upper part of it came crashing down on to the church roof and the road. The road was now blocked with the rubble and an immediate traffic tie-up was under way. Someone must have realized this would happen though, or perhaps saw it happen from the beach, because a couple of armoured bulldozers appeared and soon had that very important transit link open again. To this day I have been skeptical about the sniper since no body was found in the rubble, but I suppose it was better to take no chances. And there were certainly instances of sniper action as well as booby trapping. By this time we were all hungry again and so we got some compo packs out. The compo pack was a container that held rations sufficient to feed one meal to, I believe, six men but I am by no means sure of that number. Some of the packs had food that required cooking, but some had cans of bully beef and biscuit along with candy, some sort of dessert, cigarettes and a packet combining tea, sugar and powdered milk. We chose the bully beef and made a little fire to boil water for the tea. We lived out of compo packs for quite a few days and in consequence we were always hungry, until the supply company began to deliver fresh rations. Bully and biscuits taste good when one is hungry enough, and some of the other packs, there were about six different ones, had fairly tasty contents. There was one with a canned steak and kidney pudding and a canned marmalade duff that was a general favourite. The one with the bully beef was the one we usually traded to the farmers for eggs, butter, cheese and milk. Both sides were very happy with the swap. It was now late afternoon and I still had no slit trench, so I went back to the orchard behind the house, taking a shovel with me and began to dig in the sandy soil. I got down about three feet I would say, taking care to keep the trench narrow. Most of my stuff I had left in the truck, but I had my small pack, Sten, blanket, tin hat, ammunition clips etc with me, which I had piled under a nearby apple tree while I worked. At about this point, close to sunset, Wally Jackson came back and asked me to join him where he was planning to bed down. This was at the front of the house beside a very solid stone wall on one side and an enormous beech tree on the other, with a space of about ten feet between the two. I agreed of course, picked up my blanket and to my shame, left everything else under the apple tree except my tin hat. Fortunately the ground was dry and flat there and was grassy, so it could have been much worse. I rolled up in my blanket and Wally, being an officer and so privileged, crawled into his sleepingbag. We chatted briefly then settled down to sleep if we could. We had hardly done so when there came the roar of low-flying aircraft and the thud and flash of bombs hitting all around us. In a moment it was all over. We leaped up of course to see what might have happened. The 15cwt had been damaged by a bomb that burst beside it, but it still seemed useable. Carl, who had crawled under it to sleep, was unhurt but shaken. The men who had dug in behind the house were unhurt we quickly discovered, and in the end, since it was now after sunset, we all just went back to where we had bedded down and tried once again to sleep. Years later when reading Chester Wilmot’s excellent account of the invasion, I came across these few lines: " Throughout the day there was no sign of the Luftwaffe over the beaches and it was almost dark before British troops saw their first hostile aircraft. Then four Heinkels sneaked in and managed to scatter their bomb-loads near the Canadian beaches before a squadron of Spitfires pounced upon them. None got away." The Heinkels were medium bombers and the bombs they dropped that evening were anti-personnel, small bombs designed to explode at the moment they touched ground and spray a cloud of jagged steel fragments. One plane could carry a large number. In the early morning, I went to the back of the house to recover my kit, and found that a bomb had hit about three feet from the end of the trench I had dug and half filled it with loosened earth. It perforated my small pack and ruined the packet of iron rations while sparing my mess tins, and blew the short barrel off my Sten. I was glad to see the Sten go because I hated it. I indented for replacements of course, but in the meanwhile I picked up a Lee-Enfield, there were lots of them around, and left the Sten in stores when it arrived. The iron ration was a nourishing compound that was supposed to be kept for emergencies only, but we discovered that it tasted good and most people decided that the best place to store it was in your belly. Another bomb had hit close to the big beech tree, between it and the 15cwt, and mangled the tree. But it had clearly saved Jackson and me from the spray of splinters, for which we were grateful. That day we were moved to a small building not far away, and if I remember correctly, we got our first few bags of letter-mail. I don’t think any mail orderlies turned up from the units until the next day. About noon a few of us were out in the courtyard and suddenly the Bofors guns of the Ack-Ack regiment opened up. We looked up of course, searching the sky for the target and could see a low-flying fighter coming from inland very fast. In no time it was hit and burst into flames. The pilot ejected as the plane spiraled down, his parachute opened and he landed not far from us. He was picked up by the Provost Corps (the military police) from whom we learned later that the gunners had shot down a Spitfire. The pilot was very unhappy indeed. From this time the unit moved with the Service Corps, since we used their transport to augment our own when there was a heavy volume of mail. We also used their field kitchen since we had no cooking facilities ourselves. This was no hardship, since the 8 th C.I.B. Co. handled all the rations and when fresh food appeared as it did quite soon, we naturally had the best of all that was going. We always had coffee for example, when the standard issue drink was tea. However since we were rationed by the British Army, we didn’t eat all that well even so. It seemed fresh vegetables and fruit were almost never available until we began trading with the local peasantry. Someone quickly discovered that every Norman farmstead was likely to have two or three huge barrels of hard cider somewhere about the place. Where the farms were abandoned or badly damaged as many were, the troops emptied a lot of their water containers and their water-bottles and filled them from the barrels. The apple brandy distilled locally and called Calvados was hugely potent. The mail orderly from the 12 th Field Regt claimed he filled the empty tank of his motorcycle with it and had no trouble. We moved a couple of days later toward They had hardly climbed into the back of a truck along with some of the Service Corps men and started down the road, when we heard the roar of aircraft and firing. A flight of German fighters swept over the hedge about thirty feet off the ground with cannon and machine-guns blazing and were gone before we hit the ground behind it. The men in the little convoy were not so fortunate. The planes caught the trucks on the open road and "brewed them up" as the expression went. It was a shambles. Several were killed and a number of men wounded. One of our men, named South (not Jimmy South) had his right arm nearly severed. He was taken to the Casualty Clearing Station along with others and later invalided to It soon became evident that the Luftwaffe had been swept from the skies except for the odd nuisance hit and run raid. The "B" Echelon troops at least, became careless of camouflage and would set up out in the open. We paid a price for it until we learned better, for if the German air force could not get at us, the artillery certainly could. I have puzzled ever since as to why our senior officers allowed such slipshod practice. On the following day we were directed once again to a large, wide open area and had hardly set up our marquee and tents than we were heavily shelled by 88’s. Several of the Service Corps trucks were hit and one of our tents got a direct hit, but we were safe in our slit trenches. The unit was moved out very quickly as the enemy was silenced either by counter-battery fire or by air assault. We heard later that the commanding officer of 8 th Co was killed by a shell that hit directly into his slit trench and that several other troops were killed or wounded. We were moved back to a shallow valley, and this time my small unit dug in on the reverse slope and tight up against the thick hedge, with our vehicles tight to the hedge too, where their camouflage made them blend in. The Service Corps set up on the other slope with their vehicles all neatly lined up, and as it proved, within observation and range of the German artillery. The night went by without local incident, but in the early morning, just as we were thinking of trying to get some breakfast, we heard the scream of shells and saw them bursting among the trucks on the far side of the valley. The explosions were heavy and the shell holes were large. Several of the trucks were hit and burning and many of the men were running around in panic, apparently not having dug trenches. We of course were under the arc of the shellfire and could watch all this in comparative safety. A Jeep came racing up and began driving back and forth like a dog herding sheep, driving the men back to the trucks they were abandoning. Somehow order and discipline were restored. The drivers leaped into the trucks and they tore off up the hill and down the far side to safety, but not before a few more trucks were hit. We heard later that the man in the Jeep was the Company Sergeant Major. In my opinion, he deserved the Military Cross, but I doubt if the incident was ever reported the way I saw it happen. Judging from the weight of the shelling, the noise of the explosions and the depth of the shell-holes, I am convinced the barrage was laid down by medium artillery, firing from a dominating ridge some miles to the southeast. By this time, although the bridgehead had been expanded very considerably, so many men and so much equipment had been landed that there seemed hardly room for more. Units were mixed up in the sense that formations which would ordinarily not be in the same locales were cheek by jowl. On our next move we were right beside a battery of our own mediums which were 155 mm if I recall correctly and were referred to as "long toms" because of the great length of the barrels. They made an ear-splitting crack when fired that really hurt and they did a lot of firing. The gunners of course had earplugs. By this time, both parcel and letter mail was arriving in quantity and the unit mail orderlies were coming in to pick it up. They were all eager to talk so we got a good idea of what was going on up front. Casualties were heavy in the various infantry regiments we learned, and this was confirmed by the number of letters and parcels being returned to us because the men they were addressed to were dead, or wounded and evacuated. At first, the food parcels for the dead were returned but sensibly enough the informal practice became to share them out to their pals in their section or platoon. All letter mail we sent back to the Base Post Office, from where it was returned to senders with appropriate coverage. Our next move was to the grounds of a beautiful chateau called "Fontaine Henri" which seemed to have escaped all damage. The count, we learned from his children’s nanny, was away but the family and staff were still in residence. We set up our tents under some massive beech trees close to the chateau and began to deal in earnest with the mountain of mail that now faced us. The incoming mail arrived mostly ready for delivery to the units so that posed no great problem. It was the return mail that began to swamp us, specifically the cartons of cigarettes. From early in the war, it was possible for people at home to order cartons of cigarettes for the troops, directly from the tobacco factories. They wrapped the cartons extremely well in corrugated cardboard, addressed them and added a serial number. At the Base Post Office in This worked well enough in A few months later, the whole business became obsolete. Someone had the bright idea of getting the various Canadian tobacco companies to cooperate to set up what was called the Tobacco Depot in We stayed at Fontaine Henri for at least ten days. I was detailed to pick up the mail, now being shipped in quantity, with a driver and truck via the British Mulberry, a huge floating dock which, unlike the American one, had survived the great storm of June 19 th. I was most interested to see this engineering marvel without which the supply situation, which was tight anyway, would have been critical. We had all dug in of course, and the men of the Supply Company were just across the driveway from us where they had made various dugouts and roofed them over with whatever came to hand as places to sleep. One morning there was a stir across the way, and we quickly learned that two drivers who had not turned out in the morning had been found, one dead and one inert but breathing in the dugout they shared. It appeared that they had stolen a gallon jug of issue rum, which was 200 proof by one standard and always issued cut with two parts water. They had chug-a lugged a lot of it uncut. The inert one was rushed off to the Casualty Clearing Station and did survive. The rum issue was only handed out in the Canadian Army when the troops were in the field and I think this was true for the Brits too. The US Army didn’t get a rum ration at all. The required procedure with us was that the rum was handled by a senior NCO (Non- Commissioned Officer) who mixed the ration. The men lined up and got their tots poured into their cups, which they were required to drink at once. On no account were you allowed to save your tot or give it to a comrade since long experience showed this had always led to fighting among the troops. I rarely ever took my tot but I can attest that, even cut, it was powerful. Although the armies were now well established and there was little doubt that we were going to stay, it was also becoming evident that we had not met all the objectives, and were in something of a stalemate. We heard via the grapevine which often operated with some accuracy, that In any event that evening not long before sunset, we heard the roar of aircraft engines and a straggling flight of Things become a little vague at this point since we moved several times for brief periods. Finally, we were located in an open area from which we could see the high ground to the east, which dominated the area and gave the hard-pressed Germans a commanding view. It was not a safe place to be. The second day we were there, I was sent with a driver to the Div HQ to transact some unit business with the Pay Corps. We had hardly arrived when the German artillery opened up on the area with medium artillery, and shells came crashing down all around us, smashing trucks and kicking up dirt and debris. Bert the driver and I fled to our truck and joined the flight. We heard next day from the HQ mail orderly that there had been a considerable number of killed and wounded as well as damage to transport. The HQ moved to a safer location and began to take camouflage more seriously. We had still to learn our lesson. By this time we were moving routinely with the Supply Company and were established on open ground in what was in effect, a large meadow. The truth is that the Air Forces so completely dominated the skies by now that we only saw the odd German reconnaissance plane flying very high, and we made no attempt at concealment. About two days after the Div HQ was shelled, the German artillery opened up on us. I suspect it was the same medium battery. We all dived into the slit trenches of course, but not before two more of the men were wounded by shell splinters. Neither was in very bad shape so far as we could tell and we bandaged them as well as we could. When counter-battery fire took effect, they were evacuated by men from 4 th Field Ambulance. I heard later both had recovered in hospital in About this time we began to be very much aware of the yellow-jackets, which became in the end a real plague. They looked exactly like the ones we were familiar with at home and were every bit as nasty. They seemed willing to eat anything and I suppose they were thriving on the dead bodies of men, horses, cows and whatever else lay around. At mess time whenever food was ladled into our mess tins there would be six or eight wasps on it before one could get a spoon into it. A lot of men got stung and more than one was stung on tongue or lips when a wasp landed on a forkfull. There could have been few things more painful. I have since wondered how many men were allergic to wasp stings and died from that unusual hazard of war. Mosquitoes also became a real niusance, at least I called them mosquitoes. The Brits called them gnats. They were particularly active at night and since we were sleeping in the open, there was really no way to avoid them. Our uniforms and boots protected our bodies, but there was no way to protect our faces that seemed to work and we would wake up in the morning with our lips all twisted with bites. I have a vague recollection that we were issued oil of citronella but I don’t think it was much good as a repellant. I don’t remember that the mosquitoes were such a plague once we got into the more open country beyond Another problem that showed up was a quite severe diarrhea that became almost an epidemic and sent men scurrying to the bushes with a shovel and whatever kind of paper was handy. I learned later that operations were somewhat impeded with so many of the troops laid low. The treatment handed out by the medical officers and their helpers was half a small glass of castor oil, and it seemed to work. Apparently there was one mighty bowel movement and after that fairly quick recovery. I think the bacteria were spread in the dishwater that was set out to rinse our mess tins, which rapidly became a greasy, lukewarm sludge. I noted this early on and never washed my mess tins in the communal tub but took them away and cleaned them myself. I was lucky enough to avoid the runs that way. The MO’s (medical officers) apparently gave the cooks in the field kitchens a lesson in hygiene for the wash water’s quality improved markedly and the epidemic subsided. Although there was plenty of action up with the infantry and the artillery, there was not much movement. What might be called the front seemed bogged down and we stayed in one location for for some days. The unit was now somewhat removed from the immediate action, although we could always hear the guns. The Luftwaffe seemed to have been driven from the air and the only sign of enemy air activity was the odd very high-flying reconnaissance plane in the evening. Everybody opened up on it with whatever weapons were at hand, although I am sure only the 4.7 anti-aircraft guns had any hope of reaching them. The tracers made a very pretty sight in the twilight. One day we heard the drone of a big flight of aircraft, which turned out to be a swarm of US medium bombers coming in quite low. They were hardly a mile beyond us when the bomb bays opened up and a rain of bombs began to fall on some target. That target turned out to be 3 rd Div HQ. Somehow it had been mistaken for a German formation. A Lysander spotting plane appeared from somewhere and flew up toward the bombers waggling its wings but I think most of the bomb loads had been dropped by then. When Bert Royle, the mail orderly at HQ turned up, we learned that there had been real carnage. The defense platoon was almost wiped out and General Keller lost a thumb to a bomb splinter. I don’t know where Bert was, but he was unscathed. The whole headquarters must have been badly disorganized by the attack, and the efficiency of the division must have suffered while reorganization took place. We got a new General but I can’t remember his name. This was far from being the only instance of death and destruction by friendly fire. The US Air Force bombed their own infantry on more than one occasion, notably during the first attack on St. Lo where the The wear and tear on uniforms and footgear is severe when one is living in them twenty-four hours a day under field conditions. I was dispatched one day with a driver and a truck to the supply dump to get some new uniforms, socks, boots, underwear, shirts and various other supplies we stood in need of. Off we went with a map reference and our fingers crossed. As we drew near to where I thought the dump would be located, we could hear the sound of bombs bursting or shells exploding a little distance ahead. We moved on slowly and within a couple of minutes a straggle of men, some running, some walking, came down the road toward us. We stopped the truck and I hailed one of the men going past. He came over, asked for a cigarette which I provided, and told us what had happened. He was in one of the 51st Highland Div artillery regiments, which had just been bombed by the RAF (Royal Air Force). Moreover, the field ambulance unit, its trucks clearly marked with red crosses on the roofs had also been badly hit. We turned around and departed, for clearly we were nowhere near the supply dump, which we found later, some five or so miles away. I have never seen any reference to this fiasco in anything I have read about the Highlanders. Casualties by so-called friendly fire are simply facts of life for the front line soldier and we heard of other instances when our infantry was caught in the barrage of our own artillery. Things settled down to a grinding, bloody struggle from hedge row to hedge row, the Germans fighting for every inch under Hitler’s no retreat and no surrender orders. This finally led to the collapse of the Seventh Army, which could have been withdrawn in good order to the The war of attrition ended with the successful attack of the US Army at St. Lo under Bradley and the activation of the 3 rd US Army under Patton, which swept south and east. The British and Canadian Armies finally took This is the place to end this account I think. The pursuit of the beaten enemy to Corporal Kenneth J. Duncan, Canadian Third Division |