MENACING MINEFIELDS
Able Seaman Frank Turnbull enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve in 1942 and was assigned to work with landing craft. He participated in the invasions of Sicily, southern France, and Greece. On June 6, 1944, he was aboard Landing Craft Assault (LCA) 1151, the Daisy Mae, part of the 529 LCA Flotilla attached to HMCS Prince
David. His craft was the only one in his flotilla that made the twelve-kilometre voyage to the shore unscathed. At last the town of Bernières-sur-Mer, our objective, loomed on the horizon, and all that was to be seen were fires, and out of the fires the odd church steeple. About one mile from the beach, the signal was given for a deploy, and the flotillas moved in abreast. We had been told of the minefields guarding the beaches, and as we moved in at half speed ahead the mines could be seen spread out for a distance of about five hundred yards, all very close, making it seemingly impossible for an LCA to get through.
As I looked over the bow and saw the dead bodies of marine commandos floating in the water, I realized what we were facing. The marines were supposed to have cleared the way for us, and their being dead meant that we had to make our own way through these perilous stakes in the water. I was ready at any minute to be blown sky-high.
To make matters worse, mortars were screaming over the craft, and the odd Nazi sniper onshore was trying to find a good target. As we managed to skim through three rows of mines and were ready to sneak through the fourth, the craft on our starboard side broke literally in two as she hit a mine. Then, as I glanced around, I could see the craft in our flotilla, only a matter of feet away, being blown in two, holes in their bows, holes in their sterns, and sinking rapidly, but not before the soldiers were on their way ashore in waist-deep water. With all the craft in Turnbull’s flotilla damaged, the men were to be taken off the beach in the Daisy Mae. But by then the LCA was sunk. Turnbull and his men transferred to a nearby Landing Craft Tank (LCT), which hit a mine, so another LCT took them to safety. “Never before had I seen so much strain in men’s faces…. However, after a cigarette and a shot of rum, our nerves were calmed one hundred percent and we were once more civilized.”