Before D-day

'They Set-Out to Go to War'

The previous page was: "2010 Review"

By the morning of, and, indeed, long before D-Day, all four Commandos Brigades were ready, they had reached the highest pitch of efficiency. The Commando Brigades were eager to lead the Allied advace through Western Europe.

Battle experience combined with intensive, hard and gruelling training had produced a human military machine as perfect as any in history can show. Never before has such a finely tuned elite soldier entered the battlefield; his competency being strikingly different with performance in all of the aspects of warfare.

From the individual Commando soldier 'clean, smart and tidy,' every Commando soldier who landed on D-Day was washed, shaved and with clean boots, and to the tall, immaculate Brigadier, an atmosphere of absolute efficiency prevailed.'

2010 Review

A sense of exhilaration

To this a sense of exhilaration which was produced by the solemnity of the hour; the words of their commander was added.

"It was truely inspiring," says one of them, an officer of the Marines who listened that day to Lovat as he addressed his men before embarkation, "There was no nonsense, no cheap appeal to patriotism; he spoke simply but he embued each man with the spirit of the task that lay before them."

During that afternoon on 5th June 1945, the Commandos embarked at Spithead and at Southampton "in a grotesque gala atmosphere," records Captain A.D.C. Smith, "more like a regatta than a page of history, with gay music from the ships' loud hailers and more than the usual quota of jocular farewells passed around between friends.

That was the atmosphere on the upper decks; but below decks the climate surrounding the men writing letters to their loved ones was atmospherically different. Not one letter but many; some wrote to all of their loved ones; others wrote all of their letters to the one that they loved. Innumerable numbers of men writing home; all believing they would never return to their birthplace.

Modern-day Pages Fast Boats Pages Joe Wezley Pages

Commando Troops Going to War

It was a perfect summer's evening, the Isle of white lay green and friendly and tantalisingly peacefull behind the tapestry of hundreds of grey warships.

At 21:00 hours the Commando Troops 'set out to go to war' in the first row of nineteen ships in line ahead, 'with Lord Lovat's piper playing in the bows.

It was exhilerating, glorious, and heartbreaking with the crews and our troops going to war, many never returning home. Then they began to cheer; at first the cheers rolled faintly across the water; and then they were gradually taken up by ship after ship where they grew louder for the world to hear.

The Admiral looking all around threw his hat in the air saying.

"I never loved England so much as at this moment."

The next Link below will be: "Commando Conception"

Before D-day Commando Conception

"Pirates Trilogy" $20