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