The War & Peace Show

UNTIL 7.30am on D-Day, Vic Longhurst (left),  who now lives at Orpington, Kent, had never been in action. Not yet 18, he had never really been to sea, until the Landing Craft Tank, on which he served, headed off across the Channel towards Juno Beach.
As the door went down and the vessel's cargo of tanks and Canadian infantrymen streamed ashore, all hell had broken loose.
Although he was a signalman, Vic was helping out on one of the landing craft's guns as they approached the beach.
"I noticed there was no No.2 on the gun, which made it difficult for the gunner to reload," he said. "When I reported that to the FO he said: ‘Well go down and do your best for me.'
"Heavy machine gun fire was being aimed at the bridge and the gun was alongside the bridge. I was behind the gun shield, but bullets were hitting the wheelhouse and ricocheting back. I got wounded in the right arm and a number of other places.
"The Coxswain inside the wheelhouse was killed instantly by a bullet through his head.
"On the way in we had hit a mine. I didn't know this at the time. It meant they couldn't lower the door in the normal way and had to let it down by hand."
Vic went back up to the wheelhouse and stood astride the coxswain's body to replace him at the wheel, as the craft backed off the beach.
On the day before D-Day he very nearly missed the boat altogether. As signalman he was sent from Southampton, where they were moored waiting to cross, to pick up some important messages. It was pouring with rain when he arrived back, and the LCT was no longer at its mooring.
The vessel had gone for some last minute repairs, and Vic had a long walk in pouring rain to find it.
"I was soaking wet and I'd had no food all day," he said. "The old man told me to go below and get some dry clothes but as I reached the hatchway, the vessel's intercom sounded ‘action stations', so I had to return to the bridge".
All the way across he was relaying messages by Aldis lamp, but only in the direction of the English coast, so the light would not be seen by the enemy. The messages went from ship to ship, but there was no way signallers in the leading ships could know if their messages had been picked up by vessels further back.
After the landing, and once the craft was out of harm's way, Vic was taken off to a Liberty ship to have his wounds dressed. He remembers feeling upset because regulations stipulated that the coxswain had to be buried at sea. "It would have been no problem to take him back to England for a proper burial," he said.
After recovering in hospital and being moved from one unit to another, Vic shipped to the Far East and helped with mopping up operations after the Japanese capitulated. On his return he toyed with the idea of signing on to continue his career with the Navy. Instead he demobbed, and found work in the building trade.