ENPages
Page 1
COLLINS, Charles Leonard British 6th Airborne BOX 20, #13
Page 2
THE ASSAULT LANDINGS IN NORMANDY
D DAY: MIDNIGHT JUNE 5 -- MIDNIGHT JUNE 6 Brit Exc
What is your full name? Char1es Leonard COLLINS.
What is your present address? 12 Ainsdale Crescent, Pinner, Middlesex.
Telephone number: PINner 4713.
What was your unit, division, corps? 6th Airborne Armoured Recce' Regt. 6th Airbome Division.
Where did you land and at what time? In the vicinity of the village of Ranville - during the late afternoon.
What was your rank and age on June 6, 1944? Corporal - aged 22 years .
Were you married at that time? Yes - now separated.
What is your wife's name?
Did you nave any children at that time?
When did you know that you were going to be part of the invasion? General anticipation over two months before.
What was the trip like during the crossing of the Channel? Do you remember, for example, any conversations you had or how you passed the time? A good flight. The Tetrarch 6 ton, 3 man tanks of the Regt. were carried in the Hamilcar gliders towed by Halifax aircraft.
Passed the time 'sightseeing' i.e. watching other gliders, the fighter escort and the the ships in the Channe1.
No particular conversations recalled - trip[crossed out] z [end crossed out] didn't take long.
Were there any rumours aboard ship? (Some people remember hearing that the Germans had poured gasoline on the water and planned to set it afire when the troops came in.) No rumours.
Did you by any chance keep a diary of what happened to you that day? No.
Page 3
2.
Were any of your friends killed or wounded either during the landing or during the day? Yes.
Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became casualties? Ordinary [crossed out] [illegible] [end crossed out] conversations.
Were you wounded? No.
How were you wounded? -
Do you remember what it was like -- that is, do you remember whether you folt any pain or were you so surprised that you felt nothing? -
Do you remember seeing or hearing anything that seems funny now, even though it may not have seemed amusing at the time? Or anything unexpected or outof-place? Not really.
Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic, or simply memorable, that struck you more than anything else? No.
Page 4
3.
In times of great crisis, people generally show either great ingenuity or self-reliance; others do incredibly strange or stupid things. Do you remember any examples of either? No.
Do you know of anybody else who landed within the 24 hours (midnight 5 June to midnight 6 June) either as infantry, glider or airborne troops, whom we should write to? Yes - try :- Mr. M.J. KIELY, 40 Barton Way, Boreham Wood, Herts.
What do you do now? I an a Detective Sergeant in the C.I.D. of the Metropolitan Police.
Please let us have this questionnaire as soon as possible, so that we can include your experiences in the book. We hope that you will continue your story on separate sheets if we have not left sufficient room. Full acknowledgement will be given in a chapter called "Where They Are Now."
Cornelius Ryan Joan O. Isaacs See sep' sheet. The Reader's Digest
Page 5
Little things that have stuck in my mind. :-
The crawling about amonst the wrecked gliders on the landing zone, which was then retaken by the Germans, looking for potatoes , as we had heard it was a potato field and fresh potatos we had not brought with us. We went up there at night, each with a sack and, between bursts of machine gun fire, crept about stuffing weeds and alsorts into the sack hoping, in the dark, that we were getting some nice small new potatos. I came back with none
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The anger of the Colonel of the Regt who got his tank quietly into a forward observation position and was all set to sit and watch when his gunner accidently sent a smoke screen shell off - blocked the view and gave away their position.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My own anger at having my only pair of trousers covered with smelly contents of a sardine tin with I was foolish enough to use to steady a billy can on a fire. We had no spare trousers and people avoided me for a long time. The tin burst you see. ( I 'm no author ).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The shelling was quite fierce and I recall how we slept and sheltered in trenches lined with parachute silk. There were parachutes everywhere. Nearly all the men had a scarf made of the stuff and pieces of the white silk were fondly kept in the hope that perhaps a shirt could be made of it when we got home. Which reminds me of the moment when our tank was driving off of the landing zone and the driver called up on the intercomm saying that something was the matter with the running of one of the tanks tracks. We (the tank commander and myself) got out to see to it and found that [illegible] a parachute was wrapped around the track and that a poor dead British paratrooper was [crossed out] [illegible] [end crossed out] [inserted] nearly [end inserted] drawn into the wheels and sprockets. [crossed out] [illegible] [end crossed out]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Can't think of anything else at present - good luck with the book.
C.L.C.