I've just brought Clare back from the Wells Film Centre, where she watched Pressure, a movie about the argument over the weather forecast before D-Day (6th June). The invasion had already been postponed from 5 June 1944. Now the forecasters were predicting a narrow break in the bad weather. Eisenhower had to decide whether it was enough.
My father, Fred Seel, went over to France on D plus ten: Friday, 16 June. Did he endure a Channel crossing in a tempest?
The contemporary records suggest the day was cloudy, with rain during the morning. There was good visibility and a moderate north-westerly wind but rough seas. Off Sword Beach, a midshipman aboard HMS Serapis recorded that the weather had improved since Friday, bringing more Allied bombers overhead. Further west, off Omaha, an American sailor aboard USS PC-553 was still complaining of the cold and cloud. Better weather for military purposes was not necessarily pleasant weather.
Men and equipment continued to arrive. The great storm which wrecked the American Mulberry harbour began on 19 June, three days after my father landed.
He was a REME welder. Much of his work involved repairing battle damage to tanks: welding back armour plates that had been blown off and working on damaged tracks. By D plus ten, his services must have been sorely required.
Here is what my father said himself, in his own written account. He joined REME as a craftsman welder in 1943 (he was 18 years old) and, before D-Day, served in various workshops, becoming “engaged on the final stages of building the Mulberry Harbour.”
His landing date is explicit: “I landed at Arromanches (Gold Beach) D + 10. (June 16th 1944) as a reinforcement.” He then “Joined 30 Corps Advanced Base Workshop for a few months before being posted to the 8th Armoured Brigade Workshop.”
His subsequent service took him to Nijmegen during the attempt to relieve Arnhem, then to the Ardennes that winter, where he celebrated his twentieth birthday with “a bottle of stout saved from my Christmas rations.”
He was at Bremerhaven when the war in Europe ended, and later transferred to the Light Aid Detachment of the 5th Royal Tank Regiment.
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