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the way over and one of them was about the meeting between Churchill
and De Valera, and after a fine dinner De Valera said to Churchill,
"I can offer you anything Mr. Churchill except a little port". The
point of the story being that at that time England was trying to get new
ports in Ireland and, of course, De Valera was refusing.

Delacy had been 21 years in the army at the time of D-Day. He
had been at Dunkirk and had been evacuated from there. He told his
troops as they went over, "You're going to hear a lot of noise, but the
sounds will be worse than the actual thing. Don't be timid, if your
name is on one you'll get it, and that's that." McQuave in talking to
Delacy several times said to him on the way over "You know Paddy, some
of these young fellows are just a little timid." They went in on the
second wave in their assault craft, with McQuave yelling "Come out,
you bastards and fight us now." With that he stepped off the ramp
and disappeared under water, he came up spluttering, yelling, "Oh, you
bastards, trying to drown me before I even get up on the beach."

The perimeter in which they worked was only about 600 yards from
the beach. His job and that of his ten men was to work with the
beach control group, checking in troops and supplies. About 9 o'clock
as he moved around his area he saw a rustling in the hedgerow, he
immediately fired his sten gun into the hedgerow and about a dozen
Germans came out. Delacy had lost, a brother in North Africa and he
wasn't particularly solicitus towards these Germans. He said "Come
out, and if you make a single move, God help you all." They stood
there quite dumbfounded and terror-stricken. He turned round to a
little Cockney and said, "Look at these super blokes, just look at
them. Here take them out of my sight." It was then that he suddenly
realised that they must have been watching him all the time, so he
walked back down to the beach to make himself a cup of tea. As he
heated water to make himself this tea an officer came up. He looked
at the sergeant and said, "Now look here sergeant, this is no time to
be making tea", and Delacy looked at this young officer who "had still
down on his chin" and the 21 year in the army sergeant said "Sir,we
are not playing at soldiers now, this is real war. Now why don't
you go away and come back in five minutes and have a nice cup of tea."
The officer turned round and neatly walked away, five minutes later
he came back and had a cup of tea with the sergeant.

That afternoon he saw an American sailor from one of the American
landing craft calmly walking down his beach with a bren gun. He stopped
him and asked "where are you going with that?". The sailor said, "well,