Battle-worn, the flag held high by D-Day hero in the face of bullets and shells
A UNION JACK carried ashore on D-Day by a commando who then battled through two Normandy beaches under heavy fire has emerged for sale for £50,000.
Royal Marine Sub Lt Alan Dalton mistakenly landed on Sword Beach after his tank landing craft was caught in strong currents.
He and his commando team faced a seven-mile hike back to Juno Beach where their orders were to clear mines and guide 14,000 Canadian troops across the sand.
Carrying the tattered flag through two combat zones for several hours, they were shot at and shelled by German troops the whole way.
Against the odds, they reached their destination and the flag was flown at the “P” Commando beachhead headquarters which was established there later in the day.
The following month, Sub Lt Dalton returned to Britain with the 68in by 36in flag, keeping hold of it for five decades. He later recounted: “We were going to have quite a troublesome time getting to where we were supposed to be, through mortar and machine gun fire, crossing through streams of troops and tanks (which were) storming over the beach and up to the enemy’s first line of defence.”
In the 1990s he gave the flag to a restaurateur friend in his home village of Mylor, near Falmouth, Cornwall.
His pal proudly displayed it on the wall of the eatery until he sold the business eight years ago.
He then stored the flag in his attic, where it remained until he sold it to a private collector in 2017.
It is now going under the hammer with German auctioneers Hermann Historica of Munich. Sub Lt Dalton joined the Royal Navy in April 1943 and volunteered in September for the Royal Naval Commandos.
He was posted to P Commando, training with Force J – for Juno – and the 3rd Canadian Division on the south coast of England in the lead up to the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.
Sub Lt Dalton and the party of men under his command were transported ashore in a tank landing craft, which was caught in the strong west to east current.
Shortly after 8am, they landed among British forces at Sword Beach, instead of the “Mike” sector in the middle of Juno.
Their hike took them through the Sword and Juno combat zones.
The German defenders adjusted their machine guns to fire along the beach, so they received enemy fire both to their front and rear in the course of their journey.
The journey to the P Commando beachhead headquarters west of Courseulles took several hours.
After the war Sub Lt Dalton became the chairman of English China Clay in St Austell, Cornwall, and was knighted in 1977.
He died aged 81 in 2004. A Hermann Historica spokesman said: “This is a very rare historic British Union Jack carried by Sub Lieutenant Alan Dalton.”
The sale takes place next Thursday.