70 years on, D-Day heroes from Yorkshire are awarded the highest honour in France
MORE than 70 years ago these five men played their own vital role in the Normandy campaign that began with the D-Day landings.
Two were teenagers, another was a young sapper, one a rookie tank driver and the last was a veteran of jungle warfare. All ordinary young men doing their bit to liberate France.
Their exploits may have escaped the attention of historians, but yesterday the Second World War veterans stood proudly side by side after being awarded France’s highest decoration, the Legion d’Honneur.
Conducting the ceremony at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, near York, French Ambassador Sylvie Bermann told them: ‘I am here in recognition of your heroic accomplishments in the liberation of France and to honour your bravery and dedication.’
They are among the first of 2,800 veterans who will receive the Legion of Honour in the months to come. The decision was announced by President Francois Hollande following last summer’s 70th anniversary celebrations of D-Day and the ambassador said yesterday: ‘France will keep its promise.’
GORDON COLLINSON
should have been driving a tank on to Gold Beach at D-Day but it broke down on the landing craft and the 20-year-old was forced to wade ashore as bullets flew all around him.
A man of small stature, the water was up to his nose at one point, but he was grabbed by his comrades in the Royal Tank Regiment and pulled through. Mr Collinson was designated another tank and ended up battling his way across France and all the way to Berlin. After the war he married, had three children and spent his working life as a civil servant. He is now aged 91 and lives in York.
GERRY BRISCOE
was a butcher when he joined the Royal Engineers at 18 – a year later he was a sapper storming a Normandy beach. It was his first ever action and he only survived due to luck. ‘On D-Day I should have been the last one in the boat to be the first one out because I was carrying a charge to blow up a pill box,’ he recalled. ‘I miscounted so I finished up the first one in and so the last one out. The lad that got out the boat first drowned because the boat went over him. There for the grace of God, I was saved.’
When Mr Briscoe hit the shore he discovered the pill box had already been blown up by a shell. ‘The Germans were firing at us and there were shells firing all over the place,’ he said: ‘You are frightened to death really. I remember it well.’
After the war Mr Briscoe, 90, from Bradford, returned to work- ing as a butcher. He married wife Jean, now 86, and the couple had two children.
BILL WRIGHT
was a fresh-faced radio operator in a tank of the Staffordshire Yeomanry and D-Day was his first experience of warfare. ‘People don’t realise that for about half the forces on D-Day it was their first action,’ he said. The 19year- old was seasick on the way over but was full of praise for ‘the chap in charge’ of the US landing craft. ‘He was brilliant and not much older than me,’ he said. ‘He put us ashore almost dry. As a young lad out of school it was a most terrific adventure.’
Commenting on his award, the 90-year- old widower from York said: ‘It’s a great honour, but there are far more deserving souls who didn’t get it.’
ERIC GILL
was a veteran of the Burma campaign when he landed in Normandy. A private with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, he arrived four days after DDay. But he was soon into the action and in Holland had an astonishing escape when shrapnel pierced his helmet and ‘scalped’ him.
He suffered a six-inch wound and couldn’t see for the blood streaming down his face, but survived to tell the tale. Born in Doncaster and one of nine children, he left school at 14 to work in the mines before joining the Army at 19. Mr Gill, 99, and wife Doris had two children and among his post-war jobs he worked as a plasterer.
JAMES DENWOOD
was a survivor of the sinking of the troopship Lancastria in June 1940 in which nearly 5,000 died. He was a sapper in the Royal Engineers at D-Day and was designated to work on a fuel pipeline – ensuring the Allied forces could maintain their air supremacy. He married wife Edith during the war and is now aged 97 and living in Mexborough, South Yorkshire.
BERNARD RUSH
was a chief petty officer in the Navy and turned 21 five days before D-Day. He was an engineer whose job was to repair damaged vehicles.
He died last September aged 91 but France took the ‘exceptional’ decision to give the award posthumously.
His widow Catherine, 83, collected it for him and said: ‘He would have been so proud.’