Among the hundred thousand men who landed in Normandy on D Day were hundreds of lightermen. A fair number were Royal Navy but most were IWT Royal Engineers. They were there to ferry large numbers of tanks, vehicles and artillery from the landing ships (LSTs) to the 15 miles of hostile shore which lay between Ouistreham and Arromanches.

 

LSTs could not beach because of the nature of the approach. The beach had a slope of 1 in 40. The average slope of the approach to the beach was 1 in 300. This posed a problem for, in beaching mode an LST’s draught aft was nine feet and their draught forward was three feet. All D Day vehicles were waterproofed to go through three feet of water. This labelled Normandy "unsuitable for large scale landings by LST". In consequence Normandy was comparatively lightly defended until Rommel came on the scene and altered things.

 

Beaching LSTs on an ebb tide and then waiting two hours to unload was unthinkable during the early days when beaches would be under fire. Shallow draughted ramped craft acting as ferries on the last leg of the journey were the answer.

 

At each of the beaches (Sword, Juno, Gold) a Naval Commander was appointed as Senior Officer Ferry Control, with absolute authority. The largest of his LCTs could carry about a dozen vehicles, but the apple of his eye was the Rhino Ferry manned by Inland Water Transport Royal Engineers, for these could carry 50 vehicles or 12 tanks.

 

These craft first appeared at landings in Italy and had everything to commend them. They were floating platforms 180' long by 42' wide and had a depth from bottom to deck of 5'. Made up of 180 steel tanks they were unsinkable. They had a ramp forward and were propelled by two 120 hp petrol engines driving a direct thrust propeller of the Schottel type which could be aligned in any direction. Fully laden they could carry half an LST's load. After three exercises on the south coast we joined the fleet in the West Solent on 2nd June. As there was no accommodation on the Rhinos we lived on LSTs and waited for the hundred mile trip to France.

 

Our Company of 300 men, half of whom were lightermen, manned the fifteen Rhinos destined for Gold Beach which lay between the village of Ver-sur-Mer and Port en Bessan. Most of us were in our twenties, older lightermen having gone to the Persian Gulf some three years earlier.

 

Late on 5th June we left the West Solent towed on an LST’s stern anchor cable. Next morning we arrived a mile off the Normandy shore, we were put aboard our Rhino to release the towing gear and married up to the LST with its bow doors open and ramp half lowered. Once secure we filled our deck and made for the shore hoping to avoid obstacles there. The first crew ashore was admirably led by QMS Arthur Newcombe of Limehouse. Heavy guns at Arromanches took their toll, but seemed to be aimed well offshore. More worrying for us was the German equivalent of three inch mortar, and sniper fire which seemed to concentrate on DUKW drivers. Obstacles called "Hedgehogs" sometimes pierced our outer rows of tanks which were in six rows of thirty. Too many piercings caused our decks to develop a pronounced camber.

 

Just before the beach were hundreds of rows of pit-props, each with its own Tellermine on top. Brave sappers had earlier cleared passageways for us and marked them with white ribbons between which conventional craft could steer without difficulty. Our props had to be raised to avoid damage, they thrust upwards rather than horizontally. The consequent loss of steerage caused us to slide alongside the pit-props, but fortunately each explosive device was so well secured that I never learned of one falling onto a Rhino's deck.

 

Barring accidents it took about seven minutes to unload, then our own bulldozers would push us off into water deep enough to allow props to be lowered for us to return to load up once again for the next trip ashore.

By the end of D + 1 our Company had put ashore 2600 assorted guns and tanks, and vehicles which ranged from jeeps to tank-transporters. Our tally would have been more but one Rhino had gone adrift just off Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight and arrived one day late. Another did one trip only before joining the junk yard along the high water line. Most damage was done when our propellers struck drowned-out tanks which lay hidden just below the waterline. One Rhino lost both props on the way in and had to wait for powered LCVPs to replace them. We had our own Rhino Tugs; small editions of a Rhino made up of twenty one units (three rows of seven) and these were strapped alongside a disabled Rhino to keep it in service. When we ran out of Rhino Tugs an LCM manned by Royal Marines would be strapped alongside to replace the missing prop. It is universally accepted that "you can only have one captain on a boat". Considerable conflict arose when inter-service rivalry gave us three captains. Understandably the Marine Sergeant would under-rate the soldier corporal’s skill unaware of the man’s Thames background.

 

One in four LSTs were equipped as Hospital Carriers. Armed, they did not qualify as Hospital Ships so they wore no red cross. Equipped with pipe cots in the tank deck and a team of medics led by a surgeon they were ready to operate on casualties while returning to UK. The wardroom was the operating theatr and I remember breakfasting in the early hours and looking up at the special theatre lights over the dining table. Returning to a half-empty hospital carrier to complete her discharge a Rhino crew would load for a second time and be ready to return to the shore. With perfect timing a convoy of DUKWs loaded with wounded would make its way across the beach to get afloat and then to form a large circle and wait for the last vehicle to be transferred. As soon as the last vehicle was aboard the ship would raise its ramp and the Rhino would make for the shore. Looking back the Rhino crew would see the ship's ramp being lowered into the water to allow the DUKWs to drive up into the tank deck to be unloaded. During the morning one of my sergeants with severe shell-splinter wounds returned to the UK this way. After treatment on board he was put ashore at Netley Hospital having completed the return trip in under thirty hours. At Narvik four years earlier I had seen the chaos with which we sometimes met the enemy, and I had been terrified. On D Day our morale was high as we witnessed the efficient evacuation of casualties.

 

Ten days before D Day an admiral at HMS Squid said to me "If your men can last out for four days they will have earned every penny of their soldiers pay since enlistment". Those who survived were working on the beaches for four months until Ostend and Antwerp were liberated.

 

Officers in our Company spent the early days handling problems mostly caused by heavy weather. Men on Rhinos which were trouble free quietly got on with the job. On D+6 I searched for a Rhino to go immediately to an LST which had been hit by an E-Boat. I found Sergeant Ernie Maxwell with his unshaven crew who had worked without relief for the whole week. When threatened with immediate relief there were protests. They did not want to go ashore and live on tinned food and biscuits when dining afloat on American LSTs which offered unlimited quantities of cereals with maple syrup, turkey, coffee on tap, and especially ice cream and white bread both of which we had not seen in Britain for four years. At HMS Squid in late May orders had gone out that every effort had to be made to keep the Rhinos moving. With 6000 square feet (600 square metres) of deck space they were the largest vessels of the Ferry Fleet and four times larger then the second largest. All 2000 vessels of Gold Force were ordered to assist Rhinos in difficulty even to the extent of supplying hot meals. When half the LSTs in Gold Force were American it did not take my men long to decide where to go for something to eat.

 

Of the many brave actions carried out on D Day only one resulted in a Victoria Cross, that was at Le Hamel on Gold. Among the 300 men I was privileged to serve was Doug Bates, another of Union's apprentices. He was awarded a well-earned Mention in Despatches after squeezing his Rhino, in the dark, into so confined a space that he scraped alongside a row of mined pit-props to discharge heavy guns onto the beach. There happened to be a brigadier on board who was impressed enough to put his name forward. Our bulldozers acted as mooring posts for Rhinos while they unloaded and were able to give a good push off afloat to allow propellers to be lowered.. Among the 70000 pit-props were some which had lost their tellermines due to heavy weather. The loose mines were scattered over a wide area of sand and two of my bulldozers fell victim to them. Three of my Rhinos sat on mines, reducing their deck area considerably but they continued to be used up to the time of the great gale which began on D + 13. With QMS Arthur Newcombe I was on Rhino F100 on D+6 after she had dried-out on the approach on the late ebb. She required repairs to ramps and engines and a working party were in two groups when she came afloat on the early flood immediately setting off a mine amidships where no one happened to be; no casualties. After the gale all three they were joined end-on to form a causeway named Rhino Alley at Asnelles just outside the concrete sections of Mulberry Harbour.

 

During the great four-day gale which started on 19th June all my Rhinos blew ashore. One of them, fully laden with vehicles and artillery, fetched-up under the cliffs beyond Arromanches and broke up. My commanding officer was Lt/Col.Auriol Gaselee, responsible for all Rhinos on Sword, Juno and Gold. I reported the loss of Rhino F28 and heard no more of it.

 

It is in the nature of man to recall most clearly those events out of which he comes rather well, so when one of my grandchildren asked me thirty years ago "What did you do in the war Grandad?" I replied "I once arranged for a signal to be sent to all ships in Gold Force that whenever a Rhino crew came alongside requiring a hot meal they should be given one".

So, when you come across an old (over ninety now) lighterman who was there, ask him about it because soon it will be too late and you will never know what lightermen did all those years ago on the Normandy beaches.

 

Ted Hunt.

 

Royal Engineers and Freeman of The Company of Watermen and Lightermen of The River Thames.

　

　

30th October 2015.