Tall waterspouts shot towards the sky and then drifted down again very slowly.
The Germans were awake now all right. But the fall of shells seemed ineffectual and without menace. That would not last long. The cruisers opened fire, the salvoes tearing toward the shore. It was then that I saw it for the first time. The coast of France. It stretched away on either bow, an unbroken purple shadow. There were flashes along it now, and soon the shells came down amongst and between the slow-moving columns thick and fast. Two MLs rocked about in the middle of the bursting waterspouts, as they signalled each column to its proper line of approach.
God, it was close, I thought. The land looked less than a mile or so away. And even though I knew this was a natural illusion after hours of station-keeping in complete darkness, I was surprised that we were so near.
The bombardment mounted by the second so that even the explosions ashore were lost in the crash and thunder of heavy naval gunfire. There were even battleships joining in with their 16- and 15-inch guns. Some were near the American sector, firing far inland beyond the advancing ships; others lay out of sight below the horizon far astern of us, hurling their salvoes right over us with savage intensity.
You could see the ripple of flashes along the grey horizon, and had to force yourself not to duck as the great shells tore overhead with the sound of tearing canvas. The shells were dropping on the enemy emplacements and supporting roads from each battleship at the rate of about ten tons a minute.
It made thought impossible, and when we shouted to each other our voices sounded strange, like divers talking underwater. And all the while the lines of landing-ships sailed on, some breaking away in smaller formations to head for their allotted beaches. Shell bursts hurled towering columns of water all around them. It was heart-stopping to see them moving steadily through the smoke and falling spray. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them.
Lines of red and green tracer ripped across the water, and were answered immediately by the destroyers and gunboats.
It was a sight nobody could ever forget. The landing-vessels, the following flotillas of barges and towed pontoons with grotesque bridges aboard like giant Meccano sets. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers and corvettes, tugs and trawlers.
There was a sigh as one of the smaller landing-craft came to a dead stop with smoke pouring from her box-like hull as she began to heel over. The soldiers were swarming up and away from the sea, and I saw a motor launch speeding towards her to take them off before they were flung into the water. Weighted down with their weapons and ammunition, steel helmets and heavy boots, they would not stand much of a chance. Another, and then another of them was hit, vivid blobs of tracer licking out from shore, the shells shrieking low over the surface in straight, lethal lines. Flat trajectory cannon-fire, probably from some anti-tank guns close to the shore.
There was a single explosion on the far side of the nearest column and tongues of flame made the grey steel glow like burnished copper. Another big shell had found its mark.
But the bombardment grew heavier, if that were possible, and faintly above it we heard a new sound, a staccato roar as the tanks aboard the nearest landing-craft came to lie. God help the leaders if they failed to start. Those behind them would push them into the sea when the ramps were lowered.
Our hull gave a lurch and when I clambered from the bridge and peered over the side I saw a great tear along the planking, the mahogany splinters sticking out like dark red quills.
Nothing too dangerous. She could take that and a lot more.
The Skipper had located a German pillbox, a low hump beyond some jagged anti-tank defences.
'Open fire!'
The two-pounder and the one Religion which would bear threw their weight into the fight, their harsher rattle puny against the might of our heavy consorts.
Other ships had turned their attention to the enemy's tracer and the shoreline became lost or hazy in the smoke.
The leading craft were almost up to the beach. But there were several drifting aimlessly to mark
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Somewhere off the Nazi-held French coastline, the British battleship HMS Rodney pounds Hitler's defences with volley after volley of 16-inch shells.
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their wounds, some ablaze, others on their beam-ends with no sign of life aboard.
And yet in the midst of all that some madman was playing his bagpipes and I saw one of the tank commanders give a thumbs-up to the infantry who were crouching invisibly beside the armoured vehicles.
The first landing-craft hit the beach. I found I could barely breathe as the ramp crashed down and after the merest hesitation the leading tank rambled on to the land.
Then there were others, huddled together, or so it seemed as enemy fire raked the beach and some of the running, khaki figures fell and stayed down. One landing-craft swerved and bounced against its consort as the skipper attempted to avoid the wireless aerial of a tank which had plunged into deep water. The craft must have got caught on an underwater obstruction or had been too eager to lower the ramp and get out of the way so that others could follow.
But all along the beach the vehicles were rolling ashore. Some were hit, or crawled like blinded beasts with a track shot away. And with them the infantry, the PBI without whom no weapons on earth could manage.
Like many of the little warships we held station on the army's flank. Firing at anything which moved, until our minds were blank to everything else, and our guns jammed from overheating.
It was like a great tidal wave. Nothing could stop it as the army with infantry and sappers, stretcher-bearers and mine-detector charged after the tanks. There was no recognition of time. It just went on and on, as if the vast panorama of battle was too great to ignore.
We went alongside a landing-craft which was backing away from the beach. She needed all the help we could offer as she zig-zagged amongst the wrecked vessels and sunken vehicles. I peered into her hull and realized that the first of the wounded were being taken off to a hospital ship somewhere back there in the drifting smoke.
How young they looked. Without their helmets, and their faces pinched with pain and shock, they were just boys again.
I never thought, at that moment, that I would be like one of them in another six days, and on my way home.
The beach itself which we had sighted at first light that morning was a scene of utter chaos and devastation. A few figures picked their way down towards the sea, first-aid parties, walking wounded, like remnants from the advancing tanks and infantry which had already vanished inland, their progress marked by more explosions and a drifting pall of smoke.
Wrecked tanks and broken steel girders which had been meant to stop their movement from the beach, shell-cases and discarded weapons. It was an aftermath of courage itself. I was reminded of the pictures I had seen of that other war thirty years earlier.
And there lay the dead where they had fallen, some by the water's edge, others higher up in attitudes of abandonment.
Maybe elsewhere along that bleak Normandy coast there was a shambles or a stalemate. But we had come through that terrible day. We were the victors.
In war you take each day and every hours as a bonus. D-Day was over and we had survived.
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