We thought we were the cat’s whiskers .. we’d beaten Afrika Korps
D-DAY 75: As the anniversary nears, we’re telling the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary sacrifices...
Today Jeff Hayward, now 100, a machine gunner in 51st Highland Division, remembers landing on Sword Beach on the afternoon of D-Day.
So we went in the afternoon of D-Day, landing on Sword Beach and took any hot strong points that had been left behind by the assaulting troops, as they had to get as far inland as possible. We ended up attacking this German radar station and we were told none of our troops were there.
When we got there we saw soldiers in camouflage smocks and what we thought were German helmets – our Paras were similar from a distance. We started skirmishing with each other. I had a brand new officer and this was his first time in action.
When we got close I said to the officer, ‘I know these Germans can speak English but they can’t bloody well swear like that’ – they were Canadian paratroopers who had been dropped in the wrong place and were trying to make their way back. We
then went on attack with the 5th Black Watch and were to capture a town called Breville, which was on the high ground overlooking the landing area.
We thought we were the cat’s whiskers, we had just beaten the Afrika Korps and we thought we knew everything but we were in for a terrible surprise.
When we were just about to attack, a parachute officer said to the Black Watch officer in charge, ‘I wouldn’t go up there because all the Germans are in a ditch waiting for you’. I remember the Black Watch officer replying, ‘Don’t tell us, laddie, we’ve just beaten the Afrika Korps’. That afternoon the Black Watch lost 110 men and over 200 were injured, so we learnt a terrible lesson. We were not quite so clever as we thought we were.
■ Extract from A Time to Fight: Living and Remembering WWII by Robert Anderson published by Unicorn, £15
© Robert D. Anderson, 2019