I bumped into my brother as I went for shower in Normandy
D-DAY 75: As the anniversary nears, we’re telling the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary sacrifices...
William Mintram, from Southampton, was a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Tank Regiment. He died aged 100 in April last year. Here, he recalls being reunited with his brother on D-Day.
I FIRST joined the Territorial Army before the war and moved into the regular army once war with Germany was declared.
We were based in Folkestone, ready for D-Day. I had to wait for an American transporter because my tank was 50 tons, a Churchill Crocodile with a flamethrower. We towed the fuel behind us.
In the late afternoon on D-Day I arrived on Gold Beach, Arromanches. I said to the lads, ‘I’m going to nip up to the farmhouse and get some hot water in this bucket for a shave’.
I went up to the farm and knocked on the door and there was my brother with a towel round his neck – he had already had a shower and everything.
He had been on a vessel earlier that day and had beaten me to it. Throughout the war I bumped into my brother five more times. We were all too busy doing our jobs, there was far too much action to worry about each other – the only time you would think about it was just before you went to sleep.
After the D-Day landings we moved up to the Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany and once completely emptied, we used our Churchill Crocodile tank to burn all the huts to the ground. We did this to stop any disease spreading. I remember being in a square wireless vehicle in a German town and this German lady approached us and asked, ‘Would you and your staff like to have lunch with us?‘.” I replied, ‘Oh, that’s very kind of you’.
We got to the house and one of the family was playing the piano and another was playing the violin, and they sat the three of us down. We had a cup of tea and a piece of cake. They were an ordinary German family. Not all Germans were bad Germans; not all Germans were Nazis.
■ Extract from A Time to Fight: Living and Remembering WWII by Robert Anderson published by Unicorn, £15 © Robert D. Anderson, 2019
To share the experiences of a relative, email features@mirror.co.uk or write to D-Day Memories, Features Dept, Daily Mirror, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E145AP. Please include a phone number.