Eric Dove was a Royal Navy Commmando on Juno Beach on D-Day. Chris Webber spoke to him.

SURVEYING the awesome scene of epic military might on D-Day, Eric Dove's thoughts turned to a moment two years earlier and an altogether more humdrum British "war weapon".

"It was 1942 and we were told a German invasion was imminent and we were to be given something for the fight," says Mr Dove, from Stockton, who was a telegraph operator in the Royal Navy.

"A lorry came and tipped these things all along the parade ground. We could not believe our eyes."

What Mr Dove and his comrades saw were wooden clubs with a bit of lead hammered in at the end with a couple of tacks.

"We called them 'Britain's secret weapon'," he says. "If the Germans had invaded us we'd have had it."

Two years on and this time it was the Allies who were invading. In those two years Scarborough-born Mr Dove, then living in Redcar, had undergone basic Commando training in Scotland and fought in North Africa, Sicily and Salerno, in Italy, where he saw his bloodiest action.

Battle-hardened at the age of only 21, he and his comrades were camped at Weymouth, Dorset, preparing for the greatest invasion the world has ever seen.

"I remember the day before D-Day, the day we were told what was going on," says the 80-year-old.

"We all had to stand to attention for King George VI, thousands of us. We had to wait three hours, some of the men in heavy gear, while he went by on a motor launch half-a-mile away.

"It looked no larger than a matchbox held at arm's length. It's fair to say some of the men weren't exactly overjoyed."

A keen artist, Mr Dove pushes over a picture he has recently drawn of the moment.

A Navy buffer addresses the men as the king approaches: "N'aw listen you lot, w'en 'is majesty passes by, on my command yer brings yer feet together, off caps and shout, ''ip, 'ip 'urra!' not, on any account are yer to say, ''ip, 'ip hurray!' Yer got it?"

Come D-Day the laughing stopped.

Mr Dove, his company and the Canadian soldiers on their relatively small Landing Craft Tank ship destined for Juno Beach, set out, but they had barely left Southampton harbour when disaster struck.

"One of our tank ships, much bigger than ours, accidentally rammed us," says Mr Dove who has spent many hours researching the Second World War. "Officially 70 ships collided but there were undoubtedly much more than that in all the chaos.

"My wireless and all my equipment went in the sea but we made it back to Southampton on a French tug.

"Out came the rum. We thought, 'we're survivors, we're going to go home'.

"Of course we were soon told: 'Going home? you're going back. You've a job to do.'"

Equipment was replaced, a ship found, and Mr Dove and the other men were sent back to Juno.

They were about two hours behind schedule. "Several landing craft were on fire when we touched down and the air stank of cordite fumes," he recalls. "The enemy had been driven off the beach, apart from a sniper who made us keep our heads down.

"The Pioneer Corps were digging graves just in front of our dug-out.

"The dead were wrapped in Army blankets before they were dropped in a hole.

"The padre was having a busy time as the little graveyard filled up fast during D-Day."

From his hole in the sand, Mr Dove telegraphed back information about the movement of men and equipment.

He spent three weeks on the beach before being told to go home and prepare for Japan.

"A big bomb put paid to that idea though," he says, referring to the US' nuclear intervention.

Mr Dove found life back on Civvy Street difficult and drifted for three years.

"A lot of men just couldn't live with that clock on the factory wall after everything we'd been through," he says.

Eventually he settled down, working for a number of engineering companies before becoming a company director.

He married Joan and had two children and is now a grandfather.

Recently he took a call from the son of an old comrade and fellow telegraphist, Joe McGann.

"Joe was badly injured on that beach," Mr Dove said.

"He was in hospital a long time and we lost touch. His son, the actor Paul McGann, who was in the BBC programme the Monocled Mutineer, said he never really explained what happened and I'm trying to help him find out."