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"This story was submitted to the site by the ��ѿ��ý's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Ron Hacketts permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

Former miner Ron Hackett had followed earlier events in North Africa on the radio and in the newspapers in between shifts at Mansfields Crown Farm pit. He never realised he would fighting in something far bigger several hundred miles closer to home.

Mr Hackett left Tilbury docks in Kent as a member of the Royal Armoured Corps tank regiment. They arrived off the coast of France as the battle for Normandy was in full swing.

“There were battleships firing rockets and guns and shells going off. It looked like El-Alamein and I though ‘My God I wish I was back on the night shift and Crown Farm’”. Mr Hackett drove off the landing crafts in a tank and into the thick of the action. They bedded down in a field for the night and before joining the battle for Caen.

“The thing that hit you when you landed on the beach was the smell” he continued “There were dead men and dead cattle all over the place. Quite often we came across burnt out tanks with the bodies of dead enemy soldiers in them — it was very unpleasant”.

Mr Hackett was wounded by shrapnel about two months later. He was treated in a field hospital in Bayeux before being flown out of the war and back to Britain. He eventually returned to his job as a miner.

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