On the beach

I don’t know what I would do without Ralph Margetson—especially at this time of year. He has been such a rich store of knowledge and insight for me these past half dozen years. He is knowledgeable about a great many things, but particularly he helps me to understand what it was like to be a young man in France in the summer of 1944, pushing eastward toward Germany.

His memories remain so vivid and troubling. His instinct tells him to bury these hurtful memories but his conscience won’t let him. So he pushes himself through tears and heartache to tell the stories—not for his sake—but to remember and honour those who didn’t come home. I didn’t have these stories growing up. My parents were too young, my grandparents too old. For me the stories of war were told through history textbooks or movies—which, if they were to be believed, involved mostly ragtag bands of American misfits overcoming impossible odds to save the Western world.

Over time one witnesses enough pain and sorrow that the veneer of the textbooks and films wears away. But it wasn’t until I got to know Ralph that I began to understand what it was to be alive and breathing in the dark, with an enemy just a few hundred metres away, doing everything he could to try and kill you—and you doing the same.

Ralph told me the story this week of the day he landed in France. Ralph was a supply officer—meaning that he ferried equipment, food and ammunition from the supply lines to the front.

Still in England, about a month before he was sent to France, Ralph was issued a brand new GMC three-quarterton truck. He spent the next few weeks waterproofing the new vehicle. Then orders came to ship out. Ralph was instructed to deliver the truck to Tilbury Docks in London. He parked it beside a large crane. Nearby a large ship lay waiting. Soon both Ralph and his truck were sailing toward the Normandy coast.

It was July—the initial invasion, on D-Day had been made a month earlier—but the Allies were bogged down. In a month they had moved the line back just 10 miles from the coast. Memories of the disastrous landing in Dieppe two years earlier were etched in their minds. The Allies were at risk of becoming isolated, overwhelmed and pushed back onto the beach and into the channel. Fortunately, help was on the way.

Soon Ralph’s ship was underway as part of a large convoy of ships steaming across the channel between England and France. They were accompanied by barrage balloons— large tethered balloons attached to the ships and used to defend against low-level air attacks—forcing the attacking aircraft to navigate around or through the tethers.

It was four days before he would see his truck again. Then, as they neared the beach at Normandy, the vehicles transferred to landing craft. By now the tension and fear aboard the ship were palpable. Everyone’s eyes scanned the bluffs looking for sniper fire. They had arrived in hell.

“It seemed that anything you planned—once you got there it went wrong,” recalls Margetson. “You couldn’t depend on nothing—because of the bombing, the weather and the water.”

“They dropped the unloading ramp and shouted ‘let’s go.’ That was when my troubles started.”

He pushed the starter. Nothing happened. Pushed again, still nothing. He was now a sitting duck, not moving, stuck on the landing craft. He remembers a lot of shouting. A lot of noise. With the help of some other men he pushed the truck down the ramp and into about two feet of water. He tried the starter again—still nothing.

“I realized I must have been so nervous, upset or frightened that I had left the switch on when I left it at Tilbury Docks.”

Now, when he needed it most, his battery was dead. He feared he might soon be as well.

The landing craft was pulling away and he and his truck sat alone and helpless on the blustery Normandy beach as shells pounded overhead—Allied bombers droning overhead delivering their lethal cargo to enemy targets just a few miles away.

Eventually a bulldozer ventured out to retrieve Ralph and his truck. They had made it to Normandy. He was still alive. “That was the start of my war,” said Margetson.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca