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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Swindon College on behalf of William Padget and has been added to the site with her permission. Bill fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was D+1 when I arrived at “Gold Beach” opposite Arromanches as a member of a gun crew with a 37” Heavy Anti-aircraft/Field gun. As the advance party we were to be the first ashore, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

For some reason (perhaps because of an air raid in progress) the operator of our landing craft misjudged the distance to the beach, and our truck towing the heavy gun rolled down the ramp into more than 3 feet of water. The gun was immediately bogged down and everything came to a halt. We all piled out of the truck and did our best to manhandle the gun ashore, but it wouldn’t budge. In the end, with waves often coming up to our necks, we just had to leave it where it was, and then watched from the beach as it was slowly submerged by the incoming tide.

We spent a very wet night on the beach where everyone was moving forward except us. When the tide went out the next morning there was our gun firmly embedded in the mud, and we had to commandeer a bulldozer to pull it out. It was quite unusable of course and had to be taken to a filed workshop to be made serviceable again.

The “advance party” eventually caught up with the main unit three days late! Our gun was none the worse for its ordeal and eventually gave good service over the ensuing weeks and months. We were also very grateful that those responsible for planning the Normandy landings provided for this kind of eventuality by ensuring that such things as bulldozers and mobile workshops were put ashore as early as D+1.

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