My D-day experience actually began on 24 April 1944, after returning to Chatham Barracks from service with the Fleet Air Arm in Trinidad. Whilst awaiting a ship I went home to see my girl, and was a few hours adrift from my overnight pass, and was consequently put on Captain’s Report.

Being in the rattle, a black list man, when the tannoy called for volunteers for Party Pun and Party Game, I was first in the queue, with no idea what it would entail.

We had to fall in, in ‘rig of the day’ which was overalls, seaboots and life belts.

I began to wonder what I had let myself in for when we were issued with red lights and batteries for our life belts. When asked for my Station Card, I had to admit that it was in the possession of the Master at Arms.

They were anxious to get us off, so I was grudgingly told that it was too late to do anything about it then, but I must be quite certain to report back to the Master at Arms office as soon as the job was over. Naturally, I never did go back and ask for punishment.

We were taken to Sheerness in lorries, where we were confronted by what looked like blocks of flats with no windows alongside a quay.

We climbed the ladder and found ourselves on top of a huge, concrete, sort of egg-box type thing with no top. There was a bit of concrete at one end on which to stand.

We were towed at night round past Dover to Dungeness Bay, where we opened the sluices and part submerged it. The Germans used to shell ‘Hell Fire Corner’ of course, and we felt very vulnerable crawling along behind a tug. Our base at this time was the dear old paddle-steamer Queen of Thanet, where our kit was stowed and in theory we slept.

This routine continued, bringing these great caissons called Phoenixes round to Dungeness and Selsey Bill. They were about 60 ft high, 60 ft wide, 200 ft long and around 7,000 tons.

When we tried to pump them out to refloat them, our pumps were useless, so civilian contractors were brought in with bigger ones, and, to our great disgust, they were paid danger money just for setting foot on the things. Some stuck firmly to the bottom,

despite all our efforts, some broke in half, but most were refloated to be towed across to Normandy.