I dodged the bullets faster than Usain Bolt – many of my mates weren’t so lucky
PROUDLY wearing his green beret, D-Day veteran Trevor Stacey met his modern Royal Marine counterparts yesterday – and had them spellbound with his reminiscences.
The 98-year-old spoke movingly about the friends he lost 75 years ago amid the chaos of the Normandy landings.
But he also sparked laughter by describing how, when his landing craft’s door opened, he had sprinted up the beach ‘faster than Usain Bolt’ through a hail of bullets.
‘I’d never seen so many ships in my life,’ he said. ‘Then you could hear the guns, and maybe a thousand planes over the top of you. There were big bombs firing over you, and the machine guns and the bullets hitting the water.
‘When I hit the beach with the lads... well, you know that bloke, Bolt, who can run 100m in under ten seconds? I passed him on the way up.
‘Welcome to Hell. It was a 5050 chance. You could go that way where my mates are, in their graves. It breaks my heart, because they were all my mates.’
Welshman Mr Stacey, who now lives in Southend-on-Sea, was a signalman and his job during involved sending messages in Morse code. ‘We are proud in the Marines,’ he said. ‘People say, “You must be tough as well”. No, not tough – it’s what you are yourself.
‘We had six weeks of training for that one day.
‘We knew there was something going on but what we never got told what. Then all of a sudden we got, “We’re going”. We all marched to the landing craft in the pitch black. Someone said, “You won’t need to take all your gear – you might not be coming back.” He was right. All my mates were lost. I was lucky.’ Mr Stacey met the Marines at Poole harbour, where he was one of 255 veterans on board the cruise ship Boudicca, chartered by the Royal British Legion to take them to events marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day on a one-week Voyage of Remembrance.
They were treated to a display by the Marines and some were taken on a trip on modern offshore raiding craft.
Len Perry, 95, a stoker in the Navy on the destroyer Beagle on D-Day as it escorted Canadian troops to the landings, got to get behind the wheel of one of the assault craft.
Afterwards he said: ‘I thought I’d be a bit timid about it but the thrill was great. One of them said to me, “Go on – get behind the wheel”. I went over my own wash and we bounced some 4ft out of the water. It was absolutely magic.’
The veterans will attend the national commemorative event in Portsmouth today before travelling to Normandy for events in Bayeux and Arromanches tomorrow.