The triumph and the tragedy of D-Day

ON June 6, 1944, thousands of brave men travelled overseas for a mission which would help to bring years of brutal international hostilities to an end.

Day by day, young men barely out of their teens drifted across the English Channel on an audacious quest to invade Nazi-occupied Europe using a cluster of beaches on the northern French coast as their launchpad.

The assault was instrumental in ushering the end of the Second World War, but the price paid was high, with hundreds of thousands of young men losing their life during the Normandy campaign.

As the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings approaches, Chronicle reporter Jennifer Hollamby spoke to two veterans about a battle that changed the war.


ON a sleepy beach in northern France, the peaceful shoreline and pretty boarding houses and nonchalant sea air were about to experience the rumblings of a seismic military invasion.

John Cleverley was not completely consumed with fear as the bright strip of sand bobbed up in the distance, but remembers the men being given whiskey and gin on the journey over, which didn’t mix well with the choppy seas and Army-issue self boiling cans of cocoa.

“I think I had a bit of a devil-may-care attitude, but we weren’t exactly singing and whistling either,” said the 85-year-old, from Greenfield.

“When you are all going for the attack, there’s a sense of everybody surging forward together which sustains you in some way. There was a real sense of moving forward.

“We also had so many different types of tanks and weapons. We had tanks which had bridges attached to them and tanks which had a giant lifejacket wrapped around them. There was a lot of high-tech equipment which I thought might help to carry us through.”

Then aged only 20, John was one of the first to set foot on those dull grey sands.

“I remember there were no footprints at all in the sand,” he said.

As John rumbled through the landmine-pitted beach in his flail tank, a series of images darted across his mind.

Reaching a road so dust-coated it looked like it had been frozen in time, a mass of khaki-coloured bikes provided for, and then abandoned by, the infantry who thought the better of it, and green fields.

Of course not everybody made it to those rolling hills. Thousands of Americans were slaughtered on Omaha beach when they landed in the heart of what John described as a hornet’s nest.

Fallen

The Normandy landings are a story of triumph cut through with tragedy and the memorials which bear the names of the fallen speak of sacrifice on a huge scale.

But for those who made it past the first bloody minutes, the rewards were great.

“As we went into French villages, the locals would come and greet us with flowers and asked us if we wanted a glass of calvados,” he said.

“You had a sense that you had freed them from the daily brutalities that come with living in an occupied country and that gives you great happiness.

“I think the Germans had already invaded Russia in 1941 and they were also fighting the Allies in Italy, so they couldn’t battle on a third front and that’s why the D-Day landings finally broke them down.

“Some of the beaches were covered in dragons’ teeth, which were big angular structures built to thwart an invasion, and they also had landmines, but there must have been weaknesses because we got through.

“I remember when we were moving towards Caen, a strategic French town, and I looked down to a river and saw crumpled gliders where they had crashed and also red parachutes which were dropping supplies. All these different sights gave me the sense of being involved in something which was on a grand scale.

“Once it was all over, you worked out who hadn’t come back and you remembered that was the man who was on a team or the person you had spoken to a few times. There’s a sense of loss that they didn’t make it home.”

Another Oldhamer with vivid memories of the battle is Harry Butterworth, of Grasscroft, who took his place on a boat aged 18.

“When the destroyers and crafts were massed at Southampton and ready to sail over, you had never seen anything like it in your life,” he said.

“From the moment we landed we were under artillery fire. The Germans had guns which could fire at you from about five miles away.

“I was so young, I don’t remember feeling really scared. All I could think about was King and country.

“You were aware of casualties, as we were followed by medical regiments who would gather the bodies up and bury them as respectfully as they could when they had the opportunity to do so.

“I was confident we could win the war; you don’t go into these things thinking you you will lose, but of course we had our losses and retreats.

“The Germans knew we were coming, but I don’t think they knew the main places we were going to land.

“The battle was the beginning of the end and it gave freedom to the occupants of Europe. Everywhere we went, be it France, Belgium or Holland, locals treated us really well and did everything they could for us, and we are still treated well when we go to these places now.

l The Veterans will be holding a memorial service at Oldham Parish Church on Sunday at 12.30pm to mark 65 years since the D-Day landings.