Horror in the killing fields of France

Practically the first action the 6th Battalion saw was at 7.30am on June 7, D-Day+1, when it was attacked by US Thunderbolt planes. One personnel carrier was destroyed, although, fortunately, its occupants had managed to bail out.The Durhams did, of course, take part in skirmishes. On one occasion, only by a timely naval bombardment, which removed the enemy from in front of their eyes, were they saved from a major engagement.

Two of their number were captured and taken to a chateau in the village of Audrieu.

There, Private Evan Hayton, 20, from Lancashire, and Private William Barlow, 21, from Worksop, were executed along with 24 Canadians. SS troops who were members of the fanatical Hitler Youth organisation are believed to have been responsible.

A couple of days after D-Day, the Durhams' inland drive slowed as they came up against the crack 130th Panzer Lehr Division.

Their Normandy campaign boiled down to a series of head-to-heads around June 14.

These were bloody, brutal battles. The enemy was well dug in, often hidden in ditches with rifles lying on top. String was attached to the trigger so they could be fired without the soldier raising his head above the mudline.

This was close territory - small fields, verdant paddocks, little gullies, wellwatered thickets and sunken lanes - around the town of Tilly-sur-Seulles.

On these pages, Major Ian English tells of the battle fought by the 8th Battalion in the village of St Pierre, and Sergeant Charles Eagles begins his extraordinary tale of events at the battle for Lingevres with the 9th Battalion.

Which leaves the 6th Battalion heading south towards Tilly-sur-Seulles unaware of the horrors that history had in store for them.

Le Pont de la Guillette

'EDDIE always said that 13 was his lucky number, but he wasn't lucky that day, " says Ken Lodge. "On the 13th, we walked into the unknown.",

Ken, now 78, has just laid a poppy by the white headstone belonging to Private Eddie Fenwick. He was 18 when he died on June 13, 1944.

"I can remember the date we met, " says Ken. "It was November 18, 1943. We were called up and I met him at Brancepeth Camp and we became good friends."

Ken came from Pelton;

Eddie came from Birtley, and their training was targeted at the invasion of Normandy.

"He lasted a week, Eddie, " says Ken, the warm May sunshine making his forehead beneath his beret as moist as his eyes. "He was just in front of me. I think I heard him say something like 'mother', I don't know.

Then he was just lying there. . .

"And Bennett (Private Cyril Bennett, 30, from Liverpool) was lying in a ditch as if he had just rolled into it, and the lad behind was hit in both legs and the chap opposite had his wrist smashed open - I could see all the bones in his wrist - and I could hear the bullets buzzing as they went into the ground.

"They come so close you can feel them burn you.

They sting a bit with their speed.

"I was the only man in my section of eight that was not killed or hit."

The 6th Battalion had been moving south down the road from Bayeux to Tilly-sur-Seulles. A Company had turned off towards Le Pont de la Guillette and walked straight into an ambush.

"The Germans were waiting for us at the top of the bank. I never hit the ground so fast in all my life, " he says.

"I honestly thought I was gone."

He played dead. All went quiet. Very slowly, he crawled backwards, gradually shedding his cumbersome equipment.

"Then I got to the bank and stood up and ran like the clappers and I had to scale trees that had been blown over by the artillery and the men lying under them, " he says, barely stopping for breath. "I was absolutely terrified."

He made it to safety. Four dead, three severely injured, and him without a scratch.

"We went back to that area a couple of days later and the boys were black, still lying there, " he says, "and I recognised Eddie by his red hair. . ."

Verrieres

'NEXT day, " continues Ken, "a wide open cornfield and we attacked with fixed bayonets and the Germans were firing right across the field, thunderous machine gun fire cracks like a thousand whips."

He had been saved the slaughter at Le Pont de la Guillette, only to be thrown into the carnage in the cornfield at Verrieres.

His friend, Private Ernest Harvey, from Hetton-le-Hole, near Sunderland, takes up the story.

"It was the worst day of my life, " he says. "Everybody was two or three yards apart, but as soon as Jerry opened out, you dived to the bottom.

"Jerry just mowed us down, the fire cutting the corn as if it had been shears.

I could do nothing but lie there, listening to the moans of my wounded mates.

"I have never heard so many voices crying for their mothers."

He remembers his platoon sergeant, Andrew Moralee, cut down before his eyes.

Moralee was 26, and left a wife in Grange Villa near Beamish.

By sheer strength of numbers, the Durhams were able to capture the cornfield.

Once the fighting had ceased, Ernie was ordered to collect the ammunition from the pouches of his dead colleagues. The padre, tears streaming down his face, stopped him.

Ernie, who worked in Hetton Downs Co-op, returned to the hedge on the edge of the cornfield.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a German dashed out of his hiding place.

"Someone started firing at him, but the padre knocked the gun out of his hands and called out:

'Don't fire, don't fire.

Haven't you done enough killing for one day?'."

In all probability, the padre was correct. In this cornfield alone, 23 members of 6th Battalion had been killed, 64 were wounded and 15 were missing.

At this terrible cost, the objective had been secured.

At similarly terrible costs at St Pierre and Lingevres, the other battalions eventually secured their objectives.

The 130 Panzer Lehr Division had been stilled in its attempt to overturn the D-Day landings.

Over the course of the next month, the Germans would be gradually pushed back and out of Normandy - and, for many troops, D-Day was just the beginning of this process and nowhere near the end.