I clung to wreckage for 9 hours ...veteran, 98, breaks his silence
CLINGING to a piece of flotsam off the Normandy coast 75 years ago, Bob Elder cursed his luck – it was the second time he had been on a ship that went down.
He was a 23-year-old leading seaman on the frigate HMS Lawford when it sank with the loss of 37 lives on June 8, 1944, after three days of bombardment at the start of the Normandy landings.
He spent nine hours in the water, coming under heavy fire, with one of the ship’s officers, who died beside him. He was eventually rescued by another ship as his strength began to fade, thinking: ‘This is it, I’m going to drown.’
Four years earlier, Mr Elder escaped in a lifeboat from the HMS Curlew as it went down after running out of ammunition while trying to defend itself from heavy air attack from the Germans off the coast of Norway.
In his first ever interview, Mr Elder, 98, said: ‘I knew both times that it wasn’t my time because a gypsy told my mother I would live to 100. I held on to that, as well as thoughts of my family, when I was adrift, awaiting rescue. It gave me the courage to hold on.’
He has decided to tell his story for the first time as the 75th anniversary of DDay approaches, saying: ‘I don’t know how long I have left to share my memories.’ While official events attended by state leaders and other veterans take place on Thursday, frail Mr Elder will be taken by his son and daughter to Plymouth Hoe from his home in the port city for a personal act of remembrance.
The great-great-grandfather, whose wife Emily died 34 years ago, said: ‘I will look out over Plymouth Sound and the English Channel and remember and pay my respects.
‘I have never thought of myself as a hero. The heroes are the ones who didn’t come back. I’ll be thinking of the officer who died alongside me, along with all the others who fell.’
He also welcomed the Normandy Memorial Trust’s monument, backed by the Daily Mail, at Ver-sur-Mer.