What are all the Minesweepers Doing Here?

In 1944, word came about that we were going to go on a mission. Everybody was figuring, “What’s this mission? ” So, right after January, after Christmas, they got them on the, they got all the minesweepers, and they said, “We’re sending you overseas. We want you to take minesweeping training overseas. You’ll be stationed in England, and your, your job will be to sweep the English Channel and keep it clear of mines. No talk about D-Day invasions that time, but that was our . . . that, that was the message that we got. June the 5th, we all got called, and they said, you know, make your home port Plymouth or Portsmouth and you, you’ll get orders from there. All the minesweepers . . . it was strange to see them. Just nothing else but minesweepers, and everybody was saying, “What? ” you know “what, what’s going on? What are all these sweepers? What are they doing here? ” So, they told us, you gotta go, and you’re gonna get a briefing from the Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said he’s got you people. So we all marched up to a great big warehouse, end of the lake, and they had, and they had everybody there was packed in solid, the whole minesweeper crew, and he told us there, “Gentleman, soldiers, sailors, airmen” you know, “we are going to embark upon a great crusade.” And then he said, “We are going to invade Germany. We are going to invade France. We have to have a sweep from Dover, England to Calais, France, which is 21 miles, 21 miles across the ocean. And we gotta put a sweep there. We want the channel clear.” So, they said as he spoke he give us the briefing. I had a briefing there, and he told us, like, you know, that we were about to embark upon a great crusade of our life, one of them, almost, of our life. And he said that the enemy was well trained and well-oiled, but us fellas there would be just as super to them, and that if we fought and got this thing, the D-Day, that victory would be ours.