Alfred landed in June and fought on the frontline until January 1945. As his Unit was destrpyed, he was picked-up by the Gordon Highlanders (who were astonished to find a survivor from the first-wave about one month into the Landings). He was a professional soldier from 1940-1946 and defended the UK Mainland between 1940-1944 (there are family rumours he was in Italy in 1943, but this does not show-up on his edited MOD Military Record). He was in the Territorial Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (1st Buckinghamshire Battalion) and served in an Anti-Tank Platoon. He was barracked with his Irish wife (Gladys Kilmurray) in South Devon and trained on and around the Exeter Canal System – as it was very similar to the canal system around the French town of Caen. He trained alongside the Glider-Landed Troops – trained to sit 30 to a wooden glider (a platoon) and crash-land on a military target before deploying (if surviving). Alfred either landed on Sword Beach in the first landing-boats and fought his way (ten-miles) in-land to relieve the British Glider Troops landed in Caen – or he landed in Caen with the Glider Troops and tried to hold the area until relieved by the British Army. Either way (we are not exactly sure – but must assume the former) the German resistance was so intense the first-wave Units were decimated and many of the early objectives were not achieved. My grandfather, when talking about his experiences many years later, described how he had to kill many people as he moved through the French and German countryside. He would fight his way to Hamburg before he was granted rest and leave. It was this killing that negatively affected him psychologically. Indeed, there hundreds of thousands of men in the UK who had to re-integrate into British society and pretend nothing had happened.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 