D-Day hero chokes back tears as he revisits the beach where his comrades fell
D-Day hero Peter Smoothy choked back tears as he stood on the beach where many of his comrades fell.
The Normandy warrior, 99, returned to where the gates to hell opened exactly 80 years ago today, saying: “I am so proud that we did it - it could have been so different.”
Royal Navy braveheart Peter from Herne Bay, Kent, was just 19 and serving aboard on Landing Ship Tank 215 on June 6, 1944, ferrying soldiers and equipment onto Juno Beach under heavy and constant bombardment.
Revisiting the exact spot where eight decades earlier pandemonium erupted, the wave of emotions that hit him became too much and the lionheart bowed his head, taking a moment to compose himself, before saying: “Sadly there are very few of us left. I was 19 in 1944. How many people can say that? I just wish the public gave us more credit [for what we did] and thanked us for the easy way of life they have. If we had been defeated it could have all been so very different. I dare not think about it.”
Conquering hero Peter was mobbed by hundreds of locals who each wanted a picture with the lionheart and to shake his hand for the role he played in helping to liberate Nazi-occupied France.
Some young enough to be his grandchildren were in tears, clasping him tightly as they thanked him for his service. One man grabbed him by the arm and simply said: “Sir, thank you on behalf of us all.”
As he rose from his wheelchair and took tentative steps back across the golden sands of Northern France yesterday <<Weds>>, memories of the ear-shattering screech of machine guns and shelling came flooding back as a soft voice called to him.
It was on the beach that Peter was greeted by another D-Day hero, Ken Cooke, who landed at nearby Gold Beach as an 18-year-old.
Normandy Giant Ken, 98, who served with the 7th Battalion Green Howards and is the last of the York Normandy Veterans group, held him close and told him: “It really is very special to be here 80 years on, it really is.”
Both men are among a select group of veterans in France for the landmark anniversary of the mighty Allied invasion which helped secure victory in the Second World War.
Their fleeting encounter and warm, tender embrace spoke more than any words could of the unique and unbreakable bond the band of brothers from the Greatest Generation share.
Peter was part of a crew of 99 men with their landing ship carrying 28 tanks, 45 lorries and 200 soldiers, drivers and crew for vehicles of the invading seaborne army.
Each was left shattered by the horrors of war but, in a moment of quiet reflection staring out across the calm English Channel eight decades after his date with destiny, Peter said: "We were all very young men and said at the time, 'If our names are on a bullet, it's our bad luck' – we were lucky that our names weren't.
"We sailed out of The Solent on the evening of June 5 with hundreds of other landing craft. The Germans didn't really know we were coming. At about 2am on D-Day, halfway across the Channel, we were called to action stations.
"We got into Juno Beach at about 7.30am. There were quite a few shells firing at us.
The ones you could hear were all right. It was the ones you couldn't that were the deadliest.
"There were shells dropping about, but we didn't get bombed. The first wave of beach landings had been in front of us. They'd had the worst task finding themselves immediately face to face with the Germans.”
Later in his naval career Peter served in Italy and Burma and this week he is part of a group of 12 British veterans on a pilgrimage to Northern France with the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans.
Tomorrow he will visit Pegasus Bridge and Ranville Cemetery, near Caen, the final resting place for hundreds of British soldiers killed during the early stages of the bloody three-month Battle of Normandy.
