Martin Smith MBE FSyI’s Post

"Letters from Henry" - https://lnkd.in/eKxxV5Px Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. My dad was there on the day, I am proud to tell his story - see the link above. On 6 June 1944, some 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel. One of them was my father, Sub Lieutenant Henry Smith RNVR aged 19 years. He was second-in-command of Landing Craft Tank (LCT) 770 transporting Canadian troops and their tanks to Juno Beach. I have written before about my father’s war. He met my mother at a dance in the summer of 1943, when he had been sent with his crew to Teesside to pick up his brand-new landing craft. Over a hectic couple of weeks, they found time to meet at every opportunity before he sailed his small ship back to Portsmouth to prepare for D-Day. From then on, he wrote to her whenever he could, proposed to her in writing, and then managed to get back briefly to Teesside to marry her in the simplest of ceremonies before he left to meet his fate on the beaches. He came home safe, thank goodness, and my parents went on to live a long and happy life together. My mother kept those hundreds of Henry’s letters. Last winter it was one of the greatest privileges of my life to draw them together into a narrative “Letters from Henry – a simple love story” which I gifted to my children. I’ve attached this priceless Smith heirloom for you to browse if you so wish. I haven’t edited the letters so they may seem somewhat repetitive, but the other chapters (especially Chapter 10) make a cracking yarn even if I say so myself. But amazingly, during my research I discovered that Dad’s skipper, Lieutenant Roy Clark RN, had kept a full diary of the little ship’s D-Day mission complete with photographs, now held by the Imperial War Museum. This rare treasure trove gave me a completely new perspective to the one I had originally reconstructed from the letters. I had actual pictures of him on the beach, on the day. Roy’s account added depth and detail about D-Day itself and the weeks and months of tedium and danger that preceded and followed. It will allow me one day soon to visit the actual spot where they landed during the afternoon of Day 1 and – when the tide went out - were stranded for several hours in the middle of the action. My father knew nothing of Roy’s diary nor the photos. I’d give anything to be able to sit with him and go through them and share his memories, but it’s too late. But at least it’s all now captured for posterity.