“Weren’t you ever seasick?”
“I’ve been through some fairly heavy seas in little merchant ships and I’m never seasick. I might have had a bit of a headache. I left the Berwick in October 1943 to become an upper yardsman.”
“What’s that?”
“Selection for officer rank from the lower deck. After a few months’ training in Victory, three months onto HMS Collingwood at Fareham to do the upper yardsman course - two to three months and was then rejected. They then suggested a warrant officer’s course at Portsmouth, which I passed with flying colours as a WO. In order to get some experience as a boatswain I was drafted to HMS Orestes, an Algerine class minesweeper and I spent 1944-46 minesweeping with the 18th Minesweeping Flotilla, serving all the way up Holland to Germany, the Scheldt River. I was waiting my turn to become a warrant officer and I decided to buy myself out of the service. I paid £24 for that, November 1947. I became a Chartered Engineer - nine years at college and with the MOD in Enfield for 26 years. I was called up twice to Pompey [Portsmouth] on the reserve.”
Preparations for the D-Day Invasion - Mulberry Harbour Caissons
Following the assault on Dieppe in 1942, when several thousand Allied troops attacked military targets and remained ashore in occupied Europe for nine hours, it was realised that the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe could not realistically take place using existing European harbours. The vital experience gained at Dieppe was costly in terms of heavy casualties and numbers of prisoners taken by the enemy. In any full-scale invasion of continental Europe, large numbers of men would need to land in a comparatively short time, with considerable logistic support. It was not feasible to attempt this at any existing, defended port and the German army were expected to destroy all suitable harbours.
It is thought that the solution to this problem was first suggested by Commodore John Hughes-Hallett. If a harbour could not be found, one would have to be built and floated across the France. This idea led to two floating Mulberry Harbours being constructed. Their construction was essential to the Normandy invasion plan. They were to be towed across the sea to the landing beaches and used for the disembarkation of troops and stores. They would make possible the invasion of beaches where there was no natural harbour and give the tactical advantage of surprise as well as providing facilities for unloading and disembarkation. In the words of Guy Hartcup, they were “an imaginative use of technology to overcome the disadvantages of landing on a defended shore at the mercy of the weather”.
Landing craft and barges would be able to unload without grounding and could turn round regardless of the state of the tide. The Mulberries were designed to provide shelter for craft in bad weather and accommodation for Liberty ships, coasters, tugs and ferries, all with up to three sunken ships in the harbour. They also had anti-aircraft guns, storage for ammunition, oil and water, plus accommodation for up to 500 officers and other ranks. They were to be big enough to allow for the handling of up to 12,000 tons of stores and 2500 vehicles each day. The harbours would have to be the size of Dover harbour. In the event, only one of the harbours towed to Normandy became fully operational; the other suffered storm damage.
Parts of the harbours had to be specially designed and built. These submerged cement caissons were code-named Phoenixes. (The project is described by Martin Doughty in Hampshire and D-Day.) A Phoenix construction site on Hayling Island was just south of the Ferry Boat Inn. Here, at least four caissons originally ordered were built. The large workforce did not know what they were for and called them concrete barges.
At the Hayling site, now a car park, strong metal rings remain to which the caissons were anchored. Also, traces of their concrete slipway are indicated by straight rows of seaweed at very low tide.
George Hickinbottom of Dudley worked for Naughton Tiverdale Ltd at Tipton in the West Midlands as an overhead crane driver on parts for a Mulberry. Then aged 14, he recalls that he used to help turn parts about the size of a double-decker bus for them to be welded on their reverse side. These were then taken to different ports by transport company Betty Box, ready for the invasion.
C. J. Mitchell of Portchester was employed as a mechanical equipment driver by Trevor Construction Company, a firm recruited to build caissons on Hayling. While working on the Mulberry, he recalls that he and fellow workers from Portsmouth sometimes reached the site by bus and ferry while others used the railway. Some of the labourers, who were mostly Irish, were billeted in huts at Cams Hill, Fareham, and arrived in Southdown buses. There was no shift work but the men worked to the finish when concreting.
Mulberry Harbour caissons under construction
Mr Mitchell recalls the autumn of 1943 was cold and wet. They were issued with wet weather gear and their only shelter was the hut where they had meals. Work continued until the last minute of any air raid warning. Snacks brought to them during the morning and afternoon were eaten while working and they went for lunch a few at a time, when possible. Sand and ballast was continuously brought by road in lorries, day and night. A special grade of “winter use” cement was also supplied. Some of these materials were said to have arrived on the Island by rail. Sand and gravel were brought from nearby Sinah, from land which is now a small lake, by Hayling Coal and Transport lorries.
Security was such that workers did not know what they were building until the first caisson was launched and moored in Langstone Channel for the final build. Nobody had talked about it while building though Mr Mitchell remembers referring to the caissons as “concrete barges”.
There was no water supply when the project began. Later, water was brought via two-inch steel pipes laid on the road surface from the funfair area. All equipment had to be transported from South Hayling station by lorry. Huts were erected for offices, canteens and stores. Everything was manhandled from the railway trucks until they had enough equipment to begin.
Walls and foundations were constructed first. Sand kept falling back into the trench before the concrete was tipped in, but the difficulty was overcome. Next, the “barge” floor was laid. There were no concrete-pumps then, so when the steel-fixers had done their job, the concrete was put in place by wheelbarrow. Each floor took over 24 hours to lay, in one slab with no joins. It was exhausting work. When one floor was finished and the shuttering fixed, workers moved to the next “barge” and repeated the exercise.
Royal Marine G. L. Parker, born in 1923, was on Hayling for January and February 1944 as a driver-mechanic on a course about the Gray marine diesel and Hall-Scott (Invader) Marine engines, i.e. invasion preparation. Guard and security duties and the study of course notes left him little spare time, he recalls, but he managed to visit his parents at Worthing - by train when he could afford it, otherwise by cycle.
Wren June Carter, born on 15th June 1926 (now Mrs R) married her present husband, a former Royal Marine, in March 1998 having recently met him. Each, unknown to the other, had served on Hayling Island during World War II.
June recalls that she knew Wrens in her home town, Brighton, and their job seemed glamorous, so she joined up aged 17 and was almost 18 when she came to Hayling, early in 1944, to do general clerical work. She was first stationed at the Victoria Hotel; then Treloar House, Sandy Point, at the Suntrap School; and eventually at HMS Northney III. After the invasion, she lived at Broadview House, Seaview Road. The girls understood they were releasing men to do other things.
They were able to wear civilian clothes off duty but could buy their own underwear, for which they were given chits. She searched shops in Havant unsuccessfully for her preferred brand of bra, but was eventually offered