The accidental hero
D-Day commando won medals for bravery … after landing on the wrong beach and shooting at a reflection of himself
HE knew it would be one of the most crucial days of the war. But for Petty Officer Ron McKinlay, June 6, 1944 had started badly.
As the Allied D-Day invasion fleet reached the Normandy beaches, his landing craft was blown up.
He got ashore, only to find he was now on the wrong beach.
But that merely stirred the 20-year-old Royal Navy Commando to follow the great British fighting tradition of turning adversity into triumph.
His acts of outstanding heroism that day would see him single-handedly take out two German anti-tank guns and brave heavy enemy fire to drag a wounded comrade to safety. As a result, PO McKinlay became one of only two men awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for their courage that day.
Now that medal, and seven others he was awarded during his distinguished Navy career, are to be auctioned. They are expected to fetch around £40,000 when they go under the hammer at military specialists Dix Noonan Webb next month.
Included in the sale is a tape recording of Mr McKinlay discussing his D-Day heroics. He says of the troubled start to the operation: ‘I was bloody mad to think that after all my training … I was going to be denied my finest hour.’
Mr McKinlay, son of a Portsmouth publican, was a 17-year-old Post Office messenger when he volunteered for the Navy in 1941. Two years later, he began commando training.
His mission on D-Day was to fight his way up Juno beach and put up signs marking beach exits for tanks rolling off the landing craft. But his landing craft was left drifting after it was hit by an 88mm shell. He made it ashore, but to Sword beach. Avoiding bullets and mortar fire, passing the bodies of fallen comrades, he teamed up with other servicemen who were detached from their regiments and set out for Juno beach two and a half miles away, only to find the route blocked by enemy gun emplacements.
As the only commando in the group, PO McKinlay was nominated to destroy them.
Weaving between sand dunes, he took out one of the 88mm guns using three hand grenades.
He took the sole German survivor prisoner – only to see him shot by one of his group who misread the situation. He said in the recording: ‘Blood was coming through his fingers. He looked up at me and I will never forget that look. I found myself saying, “Sorry, it wasn’t me”.’
Later that day, PO McKinlay risked sniper fire to help a wounded colleague.
Amid the chaos and confusion of the day, there was a lighter moment when PO McKinlay shot at what he believed was an enemy soldier wielding a pistol – only to realise he had fired at a reflection of himself in a mirror.
From 1952-53 his Navy career saw him serve as a frogman under Commander Lionel ‘ Buster’ Crabb, who subsequently in 1956 would vanish during a reconnaissance mission on a Soviet ship in Portsmouth harbour.
Mr McKinlay also worked on the 1955 war film Above Us The Waves, which starred John Mills. In 1960 he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct for his role in salvaging a De Havilland Venom jet fighter-bomber in Hong Kong the previous year.
The father of two died in 2000 aged 76 – ten years after he sold his medals to a private collector.
As well as the medals, items being auctioned on September 26 include his service record, signed
‘A story straight out of the movies’