MEMORIES is just back from a week in France, and on our drive to catch the ferry home from Ouistreham, near Caen, we made an unscheduled stop at Jerusalem, a tiny cemetery near Tilly-sur-Seulles (see Memories 426). It has just 48 graves, 23 of them belonging to members of the Durham Light Infantry who were killed in July 1944 in the immediate aftermath of D-Day.
The beautifully tended cemetery is beside the D6, a country road that leads to Bayeux, home of the famous tapestry.
On the classified maps that DLI officers had been given in advance of D-Day so they could familiarise themselves with where they were going, Bayeux had the codename “Tipperary” and Caen was called “Luton”.
It was only as they crossed the Channel on June 6, 1944, in airless, crammed, tossing craft, that the real identities of the towns became known.
They landed on Gold beach at 11.30am on D-Day, and three days later had made it around Bayeux to the small villages that dot the rural Normandy countryside. At St Pierre, they got caught in a terrible firefight that left five officers and 31 men dead and 130 wounded, and they were driven back to another dot signposted off the D6, Tilly-sur-Seulles.
Many of the fallen were buried in the Jerusalem cemetery, which is today overseen by a herd of inquisitive cows that mooched amiably across their field to inspect us as we called in.
The headstone of Pte Jack Banks caught the eye as it looked as if his family had recently left a wreath and his picture beside it.
At 16, Jack was one of the youngest British soldiers to die in the Second World War.
Jack (above) had left school in his native Darwen in Lancashire aged 14, worked at a glazed brickworks and excelled in the Home Guard. At 5ft 9ins tall aged 15, he was able to convince the military authorities that he was 18 and joined up.
His mother, Fanny, was not best pleased and when she learned he was being posted overseas, she revealed his true age to the authorities.
However, because of the secrecy surrounding the D-Day landings, the authorities were not able to locate Jack and so he landed with the Durhams on Gold beach.
On July 21, the Durhams were still stuck in the countryside around Tilly-sur-Seulles, and Jack’s battalion commander asked for three volunteers to take out an enemy machine gun position. As Jack and two comrades were preparing themselves for their attack, they were struck by mortar fire. The other two were killed outright but Jack lingered for a couple of hours in the field ambulance.
All three were buried in this now thankfully peaceful spot along with the other Durhams – men from Trimdon, Spennymoor and Darlington – who fell in those days at the start of the liberation of Europe.
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