Leicestershire veteran describes 'absolute chaos' of D-Day landing

On June 6, 1944, the land, air and sea forces of the Allied armies stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France with 160,000 troops. D-Day would would come to be known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history, launching Operation Overlord and marking a major turning point in WWII.

As we reach the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we delved into our archives for this amazing story. Neville Hassall spoke to the Leicester Mercury in 2004, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.

A commando, he landed on Gold Beach in the early hours. Here is his description of the day, as told to features writer Alex Dawson.

From the archives

Steven Spielberg got it right, says Neville Hassall, with the ghost of a nod: D-Day was exactly how it looks in that harrowing first reel of Saving Private Ryan.

The seas rose and fell, the daylight darkened with billowing smoke and the landing craft pitched and rolled as they surged relentlessly towards the burning Normandy coast. Over the strain of the engines, the deafening bombardment of the beaches and the murderous rattle of machine-gun fire, came the regular sound of vomiting as young men braced themselves for death.

“I’m easily sick at sea, and the sea was rough,” says Neville. “I was too scared to be sick then, though.’’

Blinkered by the high sides of the craft, the raised ramp blocking the vision of the shore dead ahead, Neville passed the hour-long minutes to the beach mentally tracking the whistles of shells overhead.

“That’s missed us,” he’d say to himself, like a mantra. “That’s missed us, that’s missed us – someone’s been hit.”

Sixty years ago, Neville’s name was prefixed by the rank Marine; and he was among the elite of the armed forces – a commando, who landed on Gold Beach in the early hours.

He’d left on June 5, 1944, one of 500 or so Royal Marines who squeezed on to a cross-Channel steamer, the Princess Josephine Charlotte, for a journey that was just about as far from a pleasure cruise as it’s possible to imagine. Neville, of Kirby Muxloe, was 22, and unbloodied.

“I felt frightened getting on the ship but I got on, because everyone else did – you didn’t want to stand out.

“The mood on board was very sombre. A lot of lads were playing cards. I went up on deck. “I wasn’t a loner, but I wanted to be on my own.’’ As dark fell, Neville dozed, to the relentless drone of bombers in the gloom above.

Before light broke, the commandos shared a breakfast of sorts then followed two time-worn Marine rituals: Blacking-up their faces with burned cork and taking a swig of rum.

“We were Marines,” says Neville, with a smile: “We were entitled to rum, so we had it.’’

A few miles from the coast, the landing craft were lowered down and the commandos made final preparations for invasion.

“We had to clamber down rope-ladders to get in,” says Neville. “It was difficult, the seas were bad and we were carrying a hundredweight of equipment.” When each had loaded up with its human cargo of 30 men, the swarms of landing craft headed for the beaches.

Then the onslaught began.

Neville and his comrades had trained for this for months: Day after day after day practising landings in Dorset. Nothing, though, could prepare them for the reality.

“We were one of the earliest ones in,” he says. “We got through because the German guns hadn’t yet got the range of the boats. And they had plenty of targets to choose from.”

The landing craft powered on, surging towards the shore as if drawn by a magnetic force.
As the craft reached the shallows, and the din of battle for a beachhead reached a climax, the landing craft struck one of the jumble of angular obstacles guarding the coast from seaborne attack.

“The boat was going so fast, it just ripped out the bottom,” says Neville.

Already on a knife-edge, the men tensed at this ear-splitting tearing of metal by metal, but the landing craft raced on up the beach, dropping its ramp as it ground to a wounded halt. Neville waded thigh-deep on to the shore and headlong into the bewildering confusion of war.

“It was chaos on the beach,” he says. “Absolute chaos.

“The shells were going over us and gunfire was coming across us. Some fell, some didn’t.”

On the eve of D-Day, American Colonel Paul W Thompson had told his troops the first 1,000 yards of the invasion would be the toughest. Neville managed barely 20 yards, and it was already too tough.

“We just didn’t know what to do,” he says. So he followed an instinct of self-preservation; got down low and grabbed for his shovel.

“There was so much gunfire,” he says. “Every now and again somebody would get hit.”

Neville lay pinned down in his foxhole for almost four hours, praying it wouldn’t become his grave.

The gunfire would sweep down the beach, like driving rain. In the sand, the half-buried men would squash themselves a further millimetre or two down, every muscle braced for a hit.

“Then, there were the mortars,” says Neville. “They were pretty grim. It was mayhem. And being on your own in a little hole didn’t help matters. You couldn’t even talk to anybody.”

Gradually, the defensive gunfire died out, as the German positions were overrun.

Suddenly a figure was looming over Neville’s makeshift trench. “It was a man from the Pioneer Corps,” he says. “I’ll never forget this: He offered me a mug of tea.”

As he stood for the first time on Occupied Soil, Neville had his first chance to take in the infernal vision of the D-Day beach.

Behind him, lay the wrecks of the landing craft, the second and third waves lying further out to sea, where heavily-laden troops had charged out into water deep enough to drown in.

“There were all sorts of things in that water,” says Neville. “There were a number of bodies.”

It was a haunting sight; Neville can’t even remember it registering at the time. “I suppose I was in a state of shock all the time,” he muses.

With the survivors of his unit Neville moved off the beach, passing German dead as they headed forward into Normandy.

The days that followed would burn yet more unshakeable images into Neville’s mind: A grandstand view of a tank battle; a bloody but victorious night battle for the strategically vital Port En Bassin; the deaths of fellow commandos caught in a minefield.

But that huddle of young men in the landing craft, armed to the teeth and blacked up like warriors but dreading what lay ahead: That’s the memory Neville returns to again and again.

“They say the first time you go into action is when you’re the bravest. After that, when you’ve seen it and what happens, well’’ and his voice trails off.

“Coming into the beach, that was the worst,” he says. “The fear, the real fear.’’