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THE ASSAULT LANDINGS IN NORMANDY D DAY: MIDNIGHT JUNE 5 -- MIDNIGHT JUNE 6
What is your full name? PETER WEIR BALD.
What is your present address? No 3 NETHERTON HILL LENNOXTOWN STIRLINGSHIRE.
Telephone number: L/TOWN 417.
What was your unit, division, corps? 75 COY. PIONEER CORP. 50th (TT) DIV. ATT No 9 BEACH GROUP.
Where did you land and at what time? VER SUR MERE BY 7.45. AM. JUNE 6th "JIG" BEACH ARROMANCHES.
What was your rank and age on June 6, 1944? PTE. 19 YEARS. 10 MONTH
Were you married at that time? NO What is your wife's name? Did you have any children at that time?
When did you know that you were going to be part of the invasion? UNOFFICIALLY. FEB. 44 OFFICIALLY MAY 44.
What was the trip like during the crossing of the Channel? Do you remember, for example, any conversations you had or how you passed the time? Rather rough for poor sailors but ample supplies of Rum available. (I won same but never collected) Our section held a sweepstake on actual point of landing
Were there any rumours aboard ship? (Some people remember hearing that the Germans had poured gasoline on the water and planned to set it afire when the troops came in.) Spirits generally were exceptionally high but the 24 hrs postponement of sailing upset quite a few owing to the fact that the element of surprise was worth a few [illegible] once a landing was made.
Did you by chance keep a diary of what happed to you that day? Yes but someone helped themselves to it in Berlin 1945. So - no diary available.
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Were any of your friends killed or wounded either during the landing or during the day? No.
Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became casualties?
Were you wounded? No.
How were you wounded? No.
Do you remember what it was like -- that is, do you remember whether you felt any pain or were you so surprised that you felt nothing?
Do you remember seeing or hearing anything that seems funny now, even though it may not have seemed amusing at the time? Or anything unexpected or out- of-place?
Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic, or simply memorable, that struck you more than anything else? (Green Howards and Hampshire Regts) The young lads of my own age who lay for 48 hours in teh centre of a mine field, crippled, and of the desperate attempts by Engineers to get to [?grips?] with the wooden anti personnel mines which barred progress.
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In times of great crisis, people generally show either great ingenuity or self-reliance; others do incredibly strange or stupid things. Do you remember any examples of either?
Do you know of anybody else who landed within the 24 hours (midnight 5 June to midnight 6 June) either as infantry, glider or airborne troops, whom we should write to?
What do you do now? Foreman Mechanic in a Hospital Board Garage
Please let us have this questionnaire as soon as possible, so that we can include your experiences in the book. We hope that you will continue your story on separate sheets if we have not left sufficient room. Full acknowledgement will be given in a chapter called "Where They Are Now."
Cornelius Ryan Joan O. Isaacs The Reader's Digest
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At approx 7.30 AM on the morning of June 7th I with a small group of lads were sitting quite near a mobile A.A. gun just at the exit to Jig Beach. we were tucking in to our first hot meal since leaving ship when a jeep pulled up and a stern faced Colonel bellowed at the Ack Ack bombardier that "on the 2nd front there would be no surrender."-(the term applying to a signal wire clothes line [crossed out] containg [end crossed out] containing Gun crews smalls towels etc which were fairly conspicuous outside the camouflage) The words were no sooner out of the Colonels mouth when the sirens sounded a raid warning. and about 8 black cross machines started strafing strategic points on the beaches. By 8 AM. the crews had put 3 notches on their gun with probably a 4th as the planes were literally shot out of the air. and a very red faced Colonel patted the bombardier on the shoulder and could only remark "wizard show lads! carry on!". The effect it had on the multitudes [?thronging?] the beaches was real heart warming. The majority of onlookers were under the impression that the planes were shot down by the shell ricochetting of a nearby hillside. to this day nothing will convince me that it happened any other way
LINE OF FIRE TO ME. PLANE.
BEACH. LATERAL ROAD. GUN. MINEFIELD. HILL.