And more...
Mr R. Haig – Brown, 93rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, crossed the Channel in an LST (Landing Ship, Tank). He describes the crossing on the night of 5-6 June:
“ Much the most memorable impression I had that night was, seasickness apart, the terrific morale of the troops. Such was their training and briefing, and so muddle-free the assembly, that none of us thought it possible that anything could go wrong or that we were on anything but a rather super exercise where live bullets would not actually be aimed at us, but so as to miss, and death never really happened. At 2am on 6th June, I was sent for and given an envelope by the ship’s captain. In it was the key to the code on the maps I had seen at briefing; for the first time did I know that Nan Beach in Juno Sector was at the village of Bernieres-sur-Mer, just west of Ouistreham, and that the river was in fact the Orne. We had already been told we were to land at H-Hour plus a half; now we knew that H-Hour was 7.30am, just a few hours hence. I spent the rest of the night pouring over my maps, translating the codes on them, telling the men all about it and issuing them with a couple of hundred francs each in new notes.”
[Warren Tute Collection, D-Day Museum]
