Deborah Lough

 

In April 1944, a ship that would eventually be known as Landfall floated out of a shipyard on the Tyne.
Her official name at the time was HM LCT 7074. She was a landing craft, one of many, for tanks and motorised vehicles, and she'd soon be part of history.

Late in May of 1944, a couple were married. George was in the army. June was a WAAF. They had lettuce and tomato sandwiches and Brown Ale to celebrate.

A week later, George was waiting his turn to leave his landing craft, watching his friends mown down in front of him.

In early June 1944, Maureen Sweeney worked at a weather station in neutral Ireland, with her future husband, Ted. Despite Ireland's neutrality, they continued to take weather readings in County Mayo, the first part of northern Europe to see the real weather, and send them over to London via the Irish Met Office.

The weather had been good in May, and Americans forecast that it would continue into June. The RAF, (perhaps being more familiar with a British summer), weren't so sure.

On the 2^nd - 3^rd of June, Ms Sweeney submitted a routine report – that there was a storm coming in. On the 4^th of June she got a phone call, not a normal event, from a woman with an English accent, asking her to check the figures again. They did, and there was a storm coming in.

Operation Neptune would be postponed by 24 hours.

When the 6^th June finally arrived, the storm had passed.

And then began the biggest invasion by land, sea, and air that the world has ever seen.

First came 23,000 airborne troops.
156,000 infantry (by the end of June, 900,000).
196,000 naval personnel.
7,000 ships.

And more than 12,000 aircraft (and their crews).

On that day, now forever known as D-Day, Britain, America, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Denmark, and Luxembourg stood up to the might of Nazi Germany, who had swept across Europe and northern Africa, and said NO.

We should all know the rest of the bigger story. 20,000 men died in that invasion (on both sides). We must never forget it.

But the little stories...

Maureen and Ted only found out in 1956 how important their contribution had been. Eisenhower, when asked by John F Kennedy what he thought gave the Allies the edge on D-Day, replied that we had better meteorologists.
Maureen was awarded a medal in 2021 by the US Congress - she lived to be 100 years old, and died last year (2023).

Maureen and Ted Sweeney

George and June both survived the war, and spent 53 years together, till June died in the late 90s. George continued to live in the North East of England, and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur at St Nick's Cathedral for his actions on D-Day. He eventually moved south to become a Chelsea Pensioner, where he died in 2020, aged 98.

George Skipper

And that wee boat... HM LCT 7074 was decommissioned after the war. She became a floating nightclub in Liverpool, before being bought by a trust for restoration. They went bust, and she sank in her dock.
Years went by.
Then the National Museum of the Royal Navy got involved. It took over 100 dives, and nearly £1m (via a lottery grant), but she was refloated and transported to Portsmouth, where she was fully restored.
She's now on permanent display at the D Day Story museum in Southsea.
She is the last 'Landing Craft, Tank' in Britain.

Landing Craft, Tank, 7074

I decided to write this because the little stories are slowly passing out of living memory. We have the last few survivors with us – they're old. Obvs, if you were 18 in 1944, and you're still with us, you're now 98.

But they're the important ones. Every person involved, every ship, every aircraft, had a story.
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And also because we still owe a debt to every one of them for what they did. My Grandparents' generation truly were awe inspiring, not only for their actions during the war, but for what they did when they got back – the UN, the ECHR, the ICC, the NHS... doing their best to make sure we wouldn't have to live what they did.

As that generation fades away, we must remember their stories for them.