Douglas Denwette
Soldier who survived heavy combat in Normandy and narrowly missed being hit by a sniper’s bullet
DOUGLAS DENWETTE, who has died aged 99, had several narrow escapes in the Second World War in which his regiment, The Black Watch, sustained heavy casualties.
On June 5 1944, Denwette sailed from Tilbury with 5th Bn The Black Watch, as part of 3rd Canadian Division. Shortly after 07.00 hours the next morning, D-day, the ramps of his landing craft were lowered. He stepped down on to a sandbank – and off it into deep water, losing his helmet. No sooner had he resurfaced than he was grabbed by someone panicking and was pushed under again. He shook himself free and swam to Juno Beach.
In fierce fighting during the next five days, the Bn had some 300 casualties – 100 killed and 200 wounded. Denwette said afterwards that the German mortar and small-arms fire were devastating. When his company was in danger of being overrun, he was ordered to signal for help on a radio link to Arethusa, which was anchored offshore. Two salvos from the light cruiser landed in the middle of the German concentration of tanks and troops and they pulled back.
Telephone lines were constantly broken by mortar and artillery fire and tank tracks, and he had to go out in all hours to repair them or lay replacements. Signallers were sitting targets for enemy snipers.
In a night attack on a factory near Caen, his company was supported by a squadron of Sherman tanks. Having captured the approach roads by 02.00 hours, he and his comrades stopped in a field and tried to dig in, but the ground was hard and they only had a few inches of cover.
At dawn they came under withering fire from the factory – small arms, mortars and artillery. Five Tiger tanks appeared and “brewed up” the 11 Shermans. Denwette’s company was close to being surrounded and a sniper’s bullet passed through the collar of his battledress and knocked out his wireless set. In this one battle alone his company had 128 casualties, killed or injured.
By the end of August the tremendous strain of continuous battle was beginning to show. Few of the men who had landed on D-day were still there. Several soldiers became “bomb happy” and had to be evacuated. He took part in the forced crossings of the River Maas and the Rhine and finished the campaign at Bremerhaven.
Douglas Blair Denwette was born at Kirkcaldy, Fife, on August 2 1919. His grandfather, Joseph Denoutte, was French but settled in Scotland, and his son changed the name to Denwette.
Young Douglas was educated at Viewforth High School. He was 12 when his father became unemployed and he got a job working part-time in a bakery, starting at six in the morning, delivering milk and rolls in a barrow then going off to school at eight. In the winter, when the snow was thick on the ground, his father used to help him push the barrow through the drifts. His pay was six shillings a week.
Aged 14, he joined John Menzies, the newspaper wholesalers, as a messenger boy. He soon joined their dispatch team, starting at 6am, collecting newspapers off the train and delivering them on his bicycle.
In December 1939 he was called up and the following month reported to the Queen’s Barracks in Perth, home of The Black Watch. He was issued with his kit, a rifle, ammunition and an empty palliasse, which he filled with straw. At night he slept on a low bed consisting of three planks of wood supported by two trestles. There was frost on the blankets in the morning and many recruits suffered from hypothermia.
He passed his driving test and for the next two and a half years he was a dispatch rider with a BSA motorbike. He was at Montrose when the town was bombed and strafed by enemy aircraft that were trying to destroy the commando training unit.
After a spell at Thurso, in January 1943 he embarked for Port Tewfik in Egypt and spent several months guarding German and Italian POW camps. In September he joined the 5th Bn in Sicily as a company signaller. The Bn returned to England in November to prepare for the invasion of France.
Denwette was demobilised in July 1946 and returned to his job with John Menzies. He was appointed branch manager in his home town of Kirkcaldy, and held management posts in Newcastleupon-tyne, Inverness and Ayr.
After retiring to Kirkcaldy in 1982 he became a foundermember of the Normandy Veterans’ Association and for many years was the secretary of the Fife branch. He visited local schools and youth organisations to tell his story of the Normandy landings. In December 2016 he was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.
In 1942 Douglas Denwette married Elizabeth (Betty) Thomson, who was also from Kirkcaldy. She predeceased him and he is survived by their two sons and a daughter.