One landing craft survives

Heroes Remember

One landing craft survives

Transcript

Then once day break came, then the other thing was the bombardment of the Naval ships, the battleships and cruisers and other ships and in some cases they were firing over our ship. We could hear the shells going over some of the time and we could see the some of the explosions on the beach to some extent as it came, although we were a fair distance away. And of course we could see the flame and fire from the battleships and cruisers, if they were near enough to us, we could see them in the distance. But the beaches themselves, from my point of view, I couldn't see them and again, a good part of the time you're in the radar cabin as well so. On duty I was, my Action Station was on the radar gunnery set and we didn't fire our guns at all that day, so although if, you're there and everybody's closed up, ready for action, we didn't ourselves have to fire our guns and so on, that wasn't our job. We started, the troops started loading around six o'clock in the morning and they were due to land at about 7:30. So the first wave of the landing craft went in. We lost all of our landing craft that day, except one, but none of, we didn't lose any of our crew. They managed to get back to the ship later but all, and the one landing craft was really detailed as a communications landing craft so it managed to survive and we got one landing craft back later.

Description

Mr. Gorsline talks about D-Day

John Henry Gorsline

Mr. Gorsline was born on November 12, 1924 in Collingwood, Ontario. He joined the Navy in November of 1942 on his 18th birthday. Mr. Gorsline served aboard the HMCS Prince David as a radar operator and returned to civilian life in September 1945.

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