Beyond the Normandy Beach

Heroes Remember

Beyond the Normandy Beach

Transcript

There was cruisers, battleships. Another thing I forgot to mention on the D-Day landings, floating back and forth in behind our guns, our barges, was rocket barges and they were firing (inaudible) rockets over our heads onto the beaches. I forgot about them. There were just banks of them, they just swish! Away they go. But there we had, there were all kinds of heavy, from the navy, would come in ashore over our heads all the time. There was air planes over head, there was bombs dropping, and there was, the anti-aircraft guns were firing and there was, oh, you just had one idea; self preservation and that’s what your, and make sure if the lines went out, you had to go out and fix them. If you went to the switchboard, you done that and make sure everything got through. But we had, very fortunate. We had very few mix-ups, but we didn’t know who was on each side of us, for a while. We didn’t know if we had any support on either side of us cause we were quite a ways up that night. Interviewer: The second day, you had the opportunity of seeing clearly where you were. The build up was coming in behind you, moving forward. What happened that second day? Now you got me puzzled. Same as the first day. We either, I’m not sure if we moved in or not. I can, history will tell, every move we made is in our regimental history. But I know we moved quite often and maybe not very far, but we had to stay within firing range. But then you start having to bring ammunition up to us see. The ordnance come in with their trucks and bring ammunition up and unloading and that, and trying to get something to eat. But it was just one steady, just fire going everywhere, planes overhead, and German planes and our planes. The navy just blasted away all the time and the tanks were rolling through, tank regiments coming through our position, moving up. It’s kinda hard to really piece together what did happen, I mean. Interviewer: But in your regiment, one of the principles is if you are to fire, you fire for a period of time and then move before counter battery fire comes in. Well, you know, we’ve had counter battery fire, but we moved when they required us to move so we could reach the farthest point of our guns can go. That was the main moving thing. We had some counter battery, but none of it really done any damage to us. But it didn’t seem to be so much cause I don’t think the Germans had that much artillery up there at that time. There was tanks around, there was lots of infantry and small arms fire. But our move, I know we took a long time to cover a short distance, but we made quite a few moves over here and over there to support an attack going in. Cause some days I seen us there firing, one battery firing this way and another guy would be firing that way. Depends where, cause we were sitting out on our own, kind of lonesome. Then when you got a chance to sleep, you just layed down and went to sleep. You hope you could.

Description

The 12th Field Regiment encountered relatively light opposition along their section of the beach and managed to move seven miles inland on the first day. As night came, it continued to be a noisy and active operation.

Frederick Rogers

Mr. Rogers was an infant when his father died as a result of gas poisoning during his service in the First World War. His mother brought him and his only sister to Canada when he was about two years old. Mr. Rogers joined the Essex Regiment Tank (militia) in Windsor, Ontario when he was 14 or 15 years old. He went on to complete Grade 10 and at the age of 16 went to work on a farm to support himself. He enlisted in the Canadian Army on February 18, 1941. Basic training was provided in Kitchener, Ontario and he was then sent to Camp Petawawa and, finally, to Sussex, New Brunswick to join the 12th Field regiment as a replacement. The regiment arrived in Liverpool, England on July 31, 1941 and were immediately taken by train to Bramshot, England.

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