D-Day special - 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings (From Western Telegraph)

D-Day special - 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings

No celebration - just vivid and searing memories of Normandy 60 years ago.

Thousands of Welsh soldiers, sailors and airmen played their part in the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy 60 years ago.

It was the greatest invasion the world has ever known. Fighting forces from the United States, Britain and the Commonwealth, plus soldiers from the occupied countries, stepped back on to the continent of Europe on June 6th, 1944. Then began the courageous and costly advance that led to the end of World War Two in May, 1945.

It took months of ferocious and bloody fighting to overcome Hitler's highly professional and, in many cases, fanatical troops. The continuous battle for ground cost the lives of many fine young British soldiers.

The last official parade of the Pembrokeshire Normandy Veterans will consist of a small wreath-laying ceremony at The Rath war memorial at Milford Haven, on June 6th, at 2pm. Bishop Ivor Rees will take the service and the ceremony will be followed by a service at St Katharine's Church, at 3.30pm, when Canon John Davies will officiate.

Three local veterans, Gordon Prime, Eric Robinson and Cliff Bevan are travelling to Normandy to join with other veterans from throughout the country in memorial parades over there.

The Milford Haven Founders' Day organisers have arranged that the annual Flower Festival in St Katharine's, on June 3rd, 4th and 5th, will include an arrangement in memory of the Normandy campaign.

There are only 20 active members left in the local organisation, most of whom will be attending the last parade, and other associations have been invited to join them on the day. Milford Haven Sea Cadets are also invited, and their spokesman, Richard Davies, said they have agreed to take over maintenance of the war memorial on The Rath.

Next Wednesday evening many of the Veterans will be entertained by the Mayor of Pembroke, Cllr Dilwyn Davies, in the Mayor's Parlour.

The traumas of wartime action live on in the minds of those surviving veterans who for years now have lived quiet, normal lives far removed from the heroic deeds of their youth.

A quiet-spoken, reserved man Dennis James, of Dreenhill, Haverfordwest, still has vivid memories of his wartime experiences as a bren gun carrier driver with the 1st Battalion of the 5th Welch Regiment, which, as part of the 53rd Division, played a major role in the Normandy landings.

He clearly remembers the rough seas which hampered the tricky transfer of the carriers from a ship to a smaller landing craft, and the horrors which included the carnage of an advance cycle-mounted platoon mown down by the enemy.

The bren gun carriers had to drive over the cycles as they lay where they had been cut down by mortar fire in the roadway. He vividly remembers French people hacking at dead horses for food, the grotesque and gruesome sight of flamethrower victims in the wake of the advance, the bitter street fighting and the all-pervading stench of war.

Still in his memory is the frightening and bizarre experience of having to take refuge in a Dutch church cellar after being cut off from their unit when bridges were demolished and the shock of seeing his Sergeant killed as he returned with a mug of tea from a neighbouring house.

Dennis, who was 18 when he volunteered for military service and 19 when he faced the hell of the Normandy Landings, said: "You never forget experiences like that.

On reconnaissance I was always up at the sharp end. Horrific though it was, at least when we were fighting our enemy was in front of us. Now in places like Iraq, they don't know where the enemy is coming from. I wouldn't like that."

Pembrokeshire's GIs prepare for D-DAY - part one

'Hup, hup, hup', - the unfamiliar sound of a US Army First Sergeant and the steady thump of 250 boots on gravel on a cool October '43 evening heralded the arrival of the first of America's Citizen Soldiers in Pembrokeshire.

Companies I and K, 110th Infantry Regiment, Pennsylvania National Guard, 28th US Infantry Division, were taking station at the former RAF camp behind Lamphey Palace, to prepare for taking the fight for freedom into Europe.

The 'Keystone' Division, with HQ at the Imperial Hotel, Tenby, was quartered throughout south Wales, key elements being the 109th Regiment at Margam Castle, 110th at Llanion Barracks, and 112th at Highmead House, near Lampeter. The three battalions, numbered some 14,000 men, including attached units.

And each man was earmarked, prior to extensive land-based and amphibious training, for the highly secret D-Day Landings sometime the following summer.

The 110th Regiment HQ, plus the First and Second Battalions south of the Haven at Pembroke Dock, with the Third Battalion at Dale Road Camp, Haverfordwest, spent some six months in and around the county - training on the Preselies, or at rifle practice down at Stackpole or Penally, occasionally travelling to the Gower for battalion exercises, or as the full regiment just before Christmas '43 to the US Army assault training centre at Woolacombe/Braunton in north Devon.

Unknown to the men of the 'Bloody Bucket' Division, much of the amphibious training was to be in vain, although the importance of it all became very evident around D-Day.

By the end of that year, with Operation Bolero - the build-up of US Forces in the UK - well under way, other units of both the US Army and Navy arrived in Pembrokeshire. The 462nd AAA (AW) Battalion (anti-aircraft artillery automatic weapons) disembarked at Gourock, Scotland, unlike their comrades of the 28th Div, who sailed into Swansea, Cardiff and Bristol, taking 24 hours by troop train before finally arriving at East Blockhouse, Angle.

Their training under Lieutenant Colonel Norman R. Stultz also involved long road treks via Gloucester to Woolacombe and also up to the anti-aircraft training range at Aberaeron, on Cardigan Bay. Many gunners were to have a key role on D- Day in the hell that became known as Omaha beach.

Destined to land on Utah beach were the Seabees of the 81st Construction Battalion. In December '43 they were busy building the new naval hospital at Milford Haven. Quonset and Nissen huts were springing up in the field to the north-west of the town, with additional facilities under construction at the advanced amphibious naval base at Hakin.

Receiving shipments from the US, including what the British would call commissariat duties - paying ships crews, victualling, ammunition loading - as well as landing craft repairs, overhauls and alterations, were all carried out on Hakin Wharf and at the neighbouring dry dock.

Emergency work to trim the bottom edges of US Navy LSTs (landing-ship tank) to enable them to berth on to the newly created, and highly secretive, Mulberry Harbour slips took place during early '44. By April, the base was already beginning to wind down with the 81st Seabees down at Netley, Southampton, building a new 3,000 bed hospital.

The 28th Division was keyed up by a visit and inspection from their boss Eisenhower, certain in the knowledge that they were to be among the first to assault France.

The entire division 'upped sticks' at the beginning of April, and with virtually no notice, using their own divisional transport of 'jeeps' and 'deuce-and-a-half' trucks towing trailers and 105mm howitzers, rolled out of Wales heading east. Lieutenant Colonel Cummings, C/O 3 Battalion 110th Regiment took the trouble of writing to the Mayor of Haverfordwest, Cllr John White, to apologise for the 'unceremonious departure' and to thank the 'fine people of Haverfordwest' for their friendship and hospitality. (West Wales Guardian, April 12th, 1944.)

Part two - Pembrokoshire's GIs - D-Day

In place of the 'citizen soldiers' or territorials of the 28th US Infantry Division, voyaging in the same ships from their bases in Northern Ireland that would convey them to Normandy, came the 'regulars' of the 2nd (Indianhead) US Infantry Division.

Marshalling the Bristol Channel preloaded build-up force for the D-Day invasion throughout south Wales began in earnest, Majot General Robertson setting up his divisional HQ at the Belgrave Hotel overlooking Tenby's south beach.

The 'Indianheads' were to immediately follow the assault troops of the 1st (Big Red 1) and 29th (Blue and Gray) US Infantry Divisions onto Omah Beach. Loading at Swansea and Barry, they sailed in company with the Cardiff and Newport loaded 90th (Texas-Oklahoma) division set for Utah Beach, in several convoys totalling 168 ships, mostly escorted by Milford-based RN warships including the Hunt Class destroyers HMS Blencathra and Mendip, plus Walker, Wanderer, Watchman and Whitehall. The fleet minelayer HMS Apollo leaving Milford, on June 3rd; before embarking, at Portsmouth, General Eisenhower and Naval Commander Admiral Ramsey to convey them to the beachhead on D + 1.

By the time the first of the 2nd Div troops - men from the 23rd Infantry Regt - landed on the evening of June 6th, many of the 462nd Gunners from Angle were casualties.

Although the battalion as a whole was not to land until June 10th, attached to the 2nd Div, a large cadre had been taken with other anti-aircraft unit detachments for the special 397th Provisional Machine-gun Battalion.

This unit, based at Llanmartin Camp near Newport, Gwent, was organised in 11 men 'light assault' crews and was to provide 40-mm and .50-calibre machine-gun fire in the early Omaha attack. Few survived, although Lt Sheeham and two sergeants were decorated for bravery.

Even fewer of the 741st Tank Battalion crews managed to make the beach. Twenty-nine out of 35 Duplex Drive 'swimming' tanks sank, vainly striving to support the 1st Division - even their brief familiarity with the rough waters of Freshwater West wasn't enough to save them drowning out and finishing up down on the bottom of the bay of the Seine.

And what of the 110th Regiment? Their movement in April took them to Chisledon Camp near Swindon, where on the evening of June 5th, they witnessed the air armada of the 82nd 'AII American' Airborne Division flying overhead from their Lincolnshire airfields, bound for the darkness and waters of the River Merderet behind Utah Beach.

Unwittingly the 28th had become part of Operatian Fortitude, the massive deception plan designed to confuse the Germans of the actual assault beaches location.

The division movement and special radio traffic made it appear that they were aiming for Kent, to be the only real amphibious-trained assault infantry division in General George Patton's 'First United States Army Group' which was ostensibly marshalling opposite the Pas De Calais.

The deception worked and numerous Wermacht and SS Divisions remained too far east to help their comrades fight off the Allied Invasion of Normandy.

The 28th Division landed in Normandy, in July, as indeed part of Patton's command, but were decimated in another hell called the Hurtegen Forest during the Ardennes Offensive - but that, as the old soldiers will tell you - is another story.