A week after my wedding night I was dodging bullets in chaos of Gold Beach ...I thought I’d never see my wife again
EXHAUSTED, drenched and shaking with cold, George Skipper slumped on to the sand, finally finding shelter from the relentless enemy fire.
It was early on Tuesday, June 6, 1944 and the young Tommy had just battled his way up a Normandy beach, dodging bullets, landmines and the mutilated bodies of his brothers in arms.
As all hell broke loose that D-Day morning George had saved two pals from drowning, pulling the non-swimmers out of the waves at Gold Beach as German gunners strafed the shore.
An officer had called out for his name and number promising: “You’ll get a medal for this, son.”
But George, 20, did not think he would survive long enough to get a gong pinned on his chest. He did not even fancy his chances of getting through the next few hours. Staring into the distance he says: “It was too much... all too much. Total bloody chaos.
“I’d just kept pushing forward, towards a pillbox in the corner of the beach. But the lads in front of me were going down, one by one.
“It wasn’t until the airforce came over, pushing the Germans back, that we managed to make some progress. I kept thinking about June, my new wife.
“Because the previous Tuesday was our wedding night. It was only a week since we were cuddled up together on a tiny, shilling-a-night bed.
“I wondered if I’d ever see, or speak to June again.”
George did make it through and over the next weeks and months made huge advances helping to liberate Western
Europe from Nazi occupation. And he made it back to his bride in Blighty and a happy marriage lasting 53 years.
He got that bravery medal too – but not until 2015 when the French awarded him the Legion d’Honneur.
And this week, 75 years on, he will be back on Gold Beach remembering the 4,400 Allied comrades who never made it. The Chelsea Pensioner, now 95, is one of 255 veterans sailing to Normandy on
a Royal British Legion cruise. George, who boarded the MV Boudicca at Dover with the other veterans yesterday, said: “We’re all getting on now. I’ve been back to Normandy seven times over the years and I even met the Queen when I was there for the 70th anniversary. But every time I go I think, ‘Where’s Tommy?’.
“They’re all passing away so this really feels like our last chance to thank the ones who didn’t make it back. This anni
versary will also remind all the youngsters what we achieved – what we fought for.”
George grew up in the tough East End of London in the 1920s and was a keen and amateur boxer.
Called up for Army service in 1941, he was a highly skilled gunner and deployed to the Middle East with the Desert Rats.
He returned to England as a driver for a Brigadier preparing for Operation Overload, codename for the Battle of Normandy. George was dating June, a WAAF working with barrage balloons. One day he introduced her to his boss,
“Afterwards the Brigadier said, ‘Your fiancee is very attractive Skipper’, and out of the blue I said, ‘Yes sir, we’re getting married soon’. I don’t know why. I had no intention and we had no bloody money.
But I decided to propose that night. I borrowed £2 for a ring from a pawn broker and we arranged to marry on Tuesday, May 30. We had four plates of lettuce sandwiches and four quarts of brown ale and I got flowers from a bloke’s allotment.
“We went to Suffolk for the honeymoon night but I was back at base by Wednesday night. And a few days later we were shipped off to join the fleet for Normandy.” George went on: “We pulled out just after midnight and a mile from shore the landing craft came alongside.
“I got in and they let the tailboard down saying, ‘Jump in, the water’s only knee height’. But there was a bomb crater and it was up to my neck. I was lucky. I could swim but two others next to me were almost drowning.
“I got out, took my pack off and jumped in again to pull the other two out. Then I picked my gun up and went forward. I never saw the two again. It was hell. I was only 20. There was the naval bombardment, the infantry, Germans with guns firing. Chaos. I still wonder how I made it.”
The campaign took George into Belgium then Holland and finally into Hamburg before he was transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps.
George shakes his head. “I still don’t know how I made it. I got to come back to my wife but a lot of my mates never did. It was just chance.
“Now I’ve the chance to go back and thank them... for the last time.”