Framed portrait Photograph of Cyril Simms. Overall size incl...

Hammer

£40

Framed portrait Photograph of Cyril Simms. Overall size including frame 76cm x 56cm. This is his story: "We approached Juno beach in the early hours of June the 6th and the coast suddenly emerged from the dark. It was all so quiet, until the RAF turned up and started bombing the beach. Then the big ships started shelling the German positions too and with HMS Warspite behind us, the noise was so intense that it merged into one big ‘hiss’, which has effected my hearing to this day. With the amount of pounding that beach took, you wouldn’t expect a cat to have survived, but soon as our commandos landed and started being knocked over by machine gun fire, we knew that that wasn’t the case. Despite seeing our casualties, we were too busy to be frightened and after offloading our troops onto the beach from our LCG (Landing Craft Gun) we then went back into the water and gave supporting fire from our two 4.7 inch guns and concentrated on silencing the German pill boxes. We also established a ‘TROUT’ line, which was a continuation of the front line out to sea and for the next four months, we patrolled the sea to protect it. Not much has been written about how hard the Germans tried to destroy this line, but near enough every night they would be coming in with midget submarines to try and torpedo the supply ships. It was our job to stop them and we did, along with the radio controlled ‘weasel’ motor boats packed with explosives that their E boats aimed at our shipping. There were so many casualties that you never wanted to talk about them. As the years went by, I was lucky that I was able to put things to one side in my mind and never suffered with some of the problems that others have had to face. Strange that the feeling of guilt still stayed with me for many years, until finally age put paid to that".

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Very good condition.