War! Bloody War!
It stinks!
One of my abiding memories, is that of incredible noise, heavy battleships were firing over our heads into the Enemy areas, the noise, as the shells screamed overhead plus the noise of our artillery and mortars gave me a headache so bad that I was glad to move forward.
As we moved inland and captured enemy gun positions, we were surprised to find just how efficient the Germans were, they had oil paintings near their guns with a panoramic picture of the country side and with all the ranges laid out in detail

This part of Normandy is a mixture of corn fields and the "Bocage" little fields with sunken lanes and high dense hedges, undulating and twisting dusty roads, with trees and lots of cover, for the infantry, a nightmare, and for the Enemy, a fortress easy to defend. At times the fire was intense, without our "Foxholes" we would not have lasted, and a terrible price was paid for each move forward. Every yard had to be fought for. It was now, that we quickly learned to be Veterans! There is nothing like the threat of death to instruct one in what is necessary to survive.

The country North of Caen, between Caen and the sea, was nothing more than a “Killing Ground” for always and everywhere, there hung the smell of death, it was with you continually, the sweet sickly smell of death, Humans, and animals, bloated, with their legs stuck stiffly in the air, our soldiers did not always get buried, dead cattle were a continuing problem, the stench was overpowering and the sound of wounded cattle in pain was pitiful.

I still have a picture in my memory of the pale orange coloured faces of those recently killed, they quickly bloated and then turned black as corruption overtook them. I hated the sound of Spandau fire, it always reminded me of someone tearing a dry bit of canvas. The sound of the moaning minnies, or multiple mortars was something else that I have not forgotten, it started off like the moaning of a banshee in the distance and then the sound grew as the missiles approached.

Oh yes, I remember! Oh Yes. Yes! I remember…The concrete gun emplacements, the barbed wire, the expert use of Enemy mortars, they always knew where we were. The savage, and senseless, killing of young men on both sides. The terrible mutilations, for shell and bullet do not pick a convenient place to wound. Death comes often unsuspected, one moment a fine young man, the next a bundle of khaki uniform and a unrecognizable jumble of flesh in a grotesque position. Having to live and sleep with the dead all around you, my most abiding memory is that of exhaustion. Sleep was at a premium.

It takes very little time to make a Veteran, I remember an event that was typical of Normandy, one night I arrived back to our area after being in contact with the Enemy all day, so tired that I did not dig a hole, I just lay down and fell asleep, when I awoke in the morning I found that I had slept with Germans buried all around me, so shallow that their boots stuck out of the ground, the telling thing about this, is that I thought nothing of it at the time. No sooner had we dug our hole to get some rest, than we were dragged out again to go somewhere else. Normandy was a murderous place, a murderous place! One other memory I recall was the superiority of the German weapons, while we were armed with the "Sten" a gun that fired when you did not want it to, and would not, when you did! My Sten fired on its own when I put it on the ground and nearly shot my best pal Harry Grey. We learned not to keep it loaded for fear of killing your own, something that nearly had a tragic outcome later. I remember the “Sten” cost about 7/6p to make, cheap and nasty, and very unreliable.
Sapper.