Residents are the heart and soul of almshouses and we are always interested to hear their personal stories; they bring alive the buildings and continue to remind us of the importance of preserving history, be it the buildings, the stories, lives or legacies.
98 year old Phil Sweet is a resident of Municipal Charities in Stratford-Upon-Avon and his memories of the D Day landings have been kindly sent in to us by the Charity’s Chief Officer William Clemmey..
There are only thought to be about half a dozen British veterans of the D-Day landings left alive. We are proud to say that one of them is Phil Sweet who is a resident of one of our almshouses in Stratford-upon-Avon. Phil is 98 and recalls the following:
“I was sent to a place called Lochailort in the Highlands where I did six weeks of hefty nautical and ability training. Those six weeks were the toughest I have experienced in my life both physically and mentally. At the end of each week you had exams and if you were not good enough you would be dropped. But I lasted and was appointed an officer then sent to Troon for officer training for another six weeks and then appointed to a tank landing craft ready for the D-Day landings.
The war had been going for quite a considerable period of time for my training was in readiness for the D-Day landings the time of which we did not know then.
I was part of the initial wave that landed at the village of La Rivière as part of the Gold Beach landings.I was in a flotilla which were the first to go into the beach with two tanks on top of each other on the landing craft so that they could bombard the beach with shells as they were coming in to land. We didn’t lose anybody that day although the landing craft was damaged by the underwater objects as we were going in.
Then following the landing we were offloading equipment to the beaches and whilst doing so I had to go to the tented hospital at Bayeux with suspected peritonitis which turned out to be appendicitis.
I was sent to Plymouth to HMS Foliot, running all the movement of landing craft. We were tropicalizing (adding refrigeration and air conditioning) landing craft ready for the Far East but of course that collapsed because they dropped the atomic bomb.”
We are hoping that Phil will be able to join in the 80th anniversary celebrations in Normandy next year.
Many thanks to The Municipal Charities of Stratford-upon-Avon for sending in Phil’s story. You can read more in their newsletter here.
posted 21 September 2023