Just an ordinary, routine day that ended in bloody carnage

JULY 22, 1944, was just an ordinary, routine day in Normandy. D-Day was a month-and-a-half behind the Durham Light Infantry, and we were beginning to make forward progress into France.

For S Company of the 9th Battalion - the specialist company in mine clearance - the job was an ordinary, routine job. There were some mines on a minor road junction. They didn't take too long to clear and we were in good form as we threw our bits back in to the personnel carrier to return to base.

I stood next to the driver, and the other two members of my crew sat in the back.

The driver reversed into the field. As he pulled away, there was a hell of a bang - the loudest noise I've ever heard.

Then I felt as if I was flying, and it was only when I came to a couple of seconds later that I realised that I was 15ft from where I should have been. And I was caught in the lower branches of a tree.

I tumbled to the ground and rushed over to the wreckage of the carrier. The driver was lying half out of it. His legs were blown off, and he was already black.

The other two lads were on the ground in grotesque positions. They were black, too. It was a shattering scene.

I panicked. They had to hold me down. I was yelling blue murder.

I had to get those mines cleared before they blew up anyone else. I broke away. I dashed down a road to get help. A sergeant and an officer rugby-tackled me to bring me to a halt, and dragged me off to a first-aid post.

It was then that I realised I was injured. In fact, I saw that I was covered in blood. The medics cut off my boots and I looked down and could see my legs and ankles were terribly swollen. They gave me some sweet tea to calm me down . . .

And the next I remember is a week or so later being carried on a stretcher off a boat, probably into Eastbourne.

My legs were black and swollen; the base of my back wasn't too good either, and there was still some shrapnel lodged in my thumb which was refusing to heal. The doctors were talking about amputating it but decided instead to give a new antiseptic cream a try. It was penicillin, and I still have five digits on my right hand.

Sedated, I was transferred to Dryburn Hospital, in Durham City. They thought it was near my home town, but I come from near Newcastle-under-Lyme and not Newcastle-upon-Tyne!

Never mind. My mam back in Staffordshire was very excited that I was alive because, a couple of weeks earlier, she'd received a letter saying "missing presumed dead".

Convalescents like myself were kitted out in hospital blues with a red tie and, once our daily treatments were over, we were allowed into the city and further afield.

Everywhere we went we were treated like heroes. We travelled for free and we drank for free.

The "local" for the convalescents of Dryburn was Valente's coffee bar and there I met a lass called Irene. She came from Meadowfield, near Brandon, but was working away in Coventry manufacturing aircraft parts, coming home on leave for a few days at a time.

I was in Dryburn for three months and then discharged, the doctor telling me that because of what the blast compression damage had done to my ankles, knees and lower back, I'd be in a wheelchair by the time I was 40. I'm 79 now and still on my own two feet - but I must admit it is becoming an increasingly painful struggle.

Still, though, I must not grumble. I am alive - and I still thank my guardian angel, old Uncle Tom Kerry, for that. Especially as in the 45 days between us landing on Gold Beach on D-Day and me being blown up on that ordinary, routine job, 74 men had passed through my platoon. That's 74 men either killed or wounded or just missing.

I recently returned, for the first time, to Normandy and stood in front of the grave of my best mate, Private Lew Turner, in Bayeux Cemetery.

He was a Durham who was killed at Lingvres on June 14. He was only 21. Such a young lad. Such a horrible death. He'd practically had no life.

I've had 60 years more, married Irene, had a couple of children and grandchildren, lived in Canada for a couple of years, and set up my own photographic business - Charles Eagles and Son, with branches in Sunderland and Durham. Even when Irene died in 1982, I was fortunate to find Lyn whom I married in 1991.

But them, young lads like Lew? They'd never even lived. It was a waste of lives.

Yet a couple of years ago, I got a letter from one of the Germans who'd been at Lingvres. He was probably six months younger than me, and he'd been a loader on one of the Tiger tanks in the woods - one of the two tanks that had caused so much carnage amongst us Durhams. In 90 minutes that day, we'd suffered 248 casualties of which 32 were dead, including the commanding officer and, of course, Lew.

The German was clearly very upset even after all those years, and he was writing asking for forgiveness. He sounded absolutely thrilled when I wrote back saying I bore him no animosity whatsoever for what he'd done to me and my mates.

But how could I say anything else? Because while he was so successfully killing the Durhams in that small cornfield, myself and the rest of Durhams were desperately trying to kill him.

Adapted by Chris Lloyd

* Tomorrow: Charles Eagles is reunited with the American who dropped him on Gold Beach on D-Day and with relatives of the Spennymoor man whose life he saved.

* Between May 31 and June 7, to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day, The Northern Echo published a series of articles that follow the invasion through the eyes of local soldiers from the first drop of Paratroopers through the aerial and naval bombardments to the landings on the beaches. The articles have been uploaded on to our website and can be found at www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/dday. The section includes many pictures and also the Durhams' D-Day Diary.