I found my grandad’s D-Day diary and went to Normandy to retrace his steps
Diary entry, June 6 1944: “Land (invasion) 07.30hrs, done little in morning, afternoon with inf[antry], turned out 4 pillboxes. Met other AVREs at 17.00 (prox).”
Much has been written about D-Day. Though not much, it turns out, by my grandad, James “Jim” Baxter, who summed up his part in history’s biggest seaborne invasion using only 20 words.
I didn’t know Jim. He survived Hitler but died suddenly of a heart attack in 1982, when I was four years old. I’d been told he’d driven tanks during the war – hefty, specially designed Churchill AVREs (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers), used for bunker busting and obstacle clearance – but had no idea he’d kept a diary until last Christmas.
Somehow it came up over the festive whiskies and was pulled from a shelf: a tiny, crimson pocketbook, one week per spread, six little lines a day. Small enough to tuck into a tunic when roiling across the Channel, advancing on France. The entry for June 5 reads: “Start off at dawn, heavy sea still, most of lads sick.”
It is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, with numerous commemorations planned along the Normandy coast. But it’s also the end of an era. “There are still a few veterans coming over, but maybe for the last time,” Aurore Bourget of the Bayeux tourist office later told me. “This will be the last big anniversary.”
The baton of remembrance now needs to be passed to younger generations. However, it’s a challenge: a UK survey in 2023 found that 41 per cent of millennials didn’t know what D-Day was, and only 36 per cent believed it was important to have a good knowledge of the Second World War. Having discovered this precious, if scant, diary I definitely wanted to know more.
Some digging revealed that Jim was in the 1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers, 82 Assault Squadron, driving one of its AVREs. He was in the first wave to land on Gold Beach, near the village of Asnelles; his objective was to take the town of Bayeux, seven miles inland.
Eighty years on and, like Jim, my husband and I arrived in Normandy early morning, by boat. Though the experience couldn’t have been more different: calm seas, blush skies, a comfy cabin, breakfast delivered. There were no enemies to meet us on land either, just a cheerful Jér?me Barrier of Roulez JEUnesse Loisirs, waiting at Ouistreham port to hand over a couple of electric bicycles.
Our plan was to spend a few days pedalling west along the Normandy coast via the Vélomaritime cycleway and then backtrack to Bayeux. We would stop often, seek out links to Jim. Also, for all its historic horrors, this is a beautiful stretch of shore, where quiet roads and bicycle lanes weave between handsome villas and endless soft, blonde sands. It should be enjoyable, too.
We set off and detoured immediately for coffee, finding Ouistreham’s main street lined with flagpoles honouring war heroes. We paused again at the D-Day 70th Memorial. And then again at the statue of Bill Millin, who bagpiped his comrades onto Sword, the first of the five D-Day beaches. At this rate, our journey was going to take a while.
But eventually Sword segued into Juno, the second landing beach, and we found ourselves riding past the resort of Courseulles-sur-Mer. After finding my grandad’s diary, my parents also unearthed his copy of the 1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers 1943-1945 commemorative book, which reveals that 82 Squadron was concentrated near Courseulles in early August 1944, to undertake training for advancing on the Seine. Jim doesn’t give details.
The story at Juno is more a Canadian one, anyway – 14,000 Canadian troops landed here. It’s now home to the Juno Beach Centre, which preserves the Canadian legacy of D-Day, focusing on education and engaging younger visitors. Exhibits tell age-appropriate stories via technology and gamification, and Canadian student guides lead tours into the German bunkers outside. However, it was the centre’s film that hit hardest, especially the words of D-Day veterans: “We’d never felt so alone”; “Arms, legs, the dead, the drowned”; “I wanted to cry but I had no time”.
We left, sombre despite the sunshine, and almost immediately cycled past a Churchill AVRE, marooned behind the dunes at Graye-sur-Mer. It was fitted with a petard mortar, a wide, stubby weapon, nicknamed the ‘flying dustbin’, designed to fire at low velocity, short range, to take out bunkers. Jim’s tank was fitted with one of these.
Beyond Graye, we were entering Gold, the third D-Day beach. Some 25,000 British troops landed here on June 6 1944 – including Sapper J Baxter. The more chilling figure, however, is 22,442, the number of soldiers who died under British command during the Battle of Normandy. Every one of them is honoured on the British Normandy Memorial, a limestone colossus that rises on a hill near Ver-sur-Mer. We cycled there, speaking little. The sun was blazing, the sea blissful turquoise, but the site hit like a tornado. So many names. Now (until August 31) the memorial packs an even harder punch: an installation of 1,475 black silhouettes blankets the slope below, one for every serviceman under British command who died on D-Day itself.
That was enough for one day, and we cycled quickly to Arromanches. We’d backtrack to Gold tomorrow; now, we needed wine. Though at dusk we strolled across the beach, where you can’t ignore the barnacled remains of the Allies’ Mulberry B harbour. We thought we were dreaming when we heard bagpipes – the ghost of Bill Millin? But no, two men on the jetty were piping Amazing Grace into the wind.
The next day was cloudier, but thankfully not too rough. We were cycling back to Asnelles to meet guide Valentin Fessard to hit the waves ourselves. As we dragged kayaks into the shallows, I asked Valentin if locals think constantly of D-Day. “Not the young,” he said. “And you want to have a happy life, of course. But it’s there in the back of your mind. Especially now, with the way the world is…”
We paddled out against the waves and around a sinking phalanx of Phoenix caissons. These warehouse-size blocks of concrete formed the breakwater of Mulberry B, the audacious harbour built to resupply the invading troops. Its components were towed across the Channel at walking pace from June 6; the first parts were in place by the 7th; it was operational by the 18th.
“I remember one day – boom! – a caisson just collapsed,” Valentin told us. And then sailed us through a crack, right into one. We bobbed in its hollow belly, looking up at the soaring walls, now poxed with squishy anemones. “The caissons weren’t built to last,” Valentin said. “In 30 years, they’ll be gone.”
Turning our kayaks back towards the beach, it struck me that this was it: this place, this approach from the sea. Jim’s route in – minus every ounce of peril. It was impossible to imagine. So, back on land, we visited Widerstandsnest 37, the defensive post that guarded part of Asnelles and plagued the Allies on D-Day – its blockhouse still squats on the promenade. WN37 was finally neutralised at 3pm on June 6 by the Essex Yeomanry.
But they were assisted by the Hampshires and the AVRE of Lance Sergeant Scaife, who’d lost contact with the rest of 82 Squadron and so joined the Hampshires to help clear obstacles. According to reports, LSgt Scaife used his petard against the position “with considerable success”; he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions. My grandad was in LSgt Scaife’s AVRE. The Hampshires are the “Inf” he joined; this was one of his “4 pillboxes”.
We continued cycling the coast as far as Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, on Omaha Beach, a place of even bloodier stories. But my mind was now on Bayeux. So the next day we pedalled inland, down lanes only just tank-width, to reach the medieval city. It’s a handsome place, with an imposing cathedral and shop windows gaily illustrated for the 80th anniversary. Jim had nights out here. On July 1, he wrote: “ENSA [Entertainments National Service Association] concert in Bayeux. Swing band.” I wasn’t in the mood for dancing myself, especially after visiting the town’s British Military Cemetery where, among the 4,648 graves, I found Major HGA Elphinstone, commander of 82 Squadron. He was killed almost immediately on D-Day.
There was one last place I wanted to go, though. On June 7, Jim wrote: “Move off at dawn to attack village with fighting tanks. Found Jerry had flown. Village before Bayeux.” Frustratingly vague. But the Brigade book mentions that, on that date, the 82 “rallied at St Sulpice”. I found it on the map, a speck north-east of the ring road, “before Bayeux” from the direction of Gold Beach. Off we went.
There was little to see except the 13th-century church, from where Bayeux’s cathedral spires were visible in the distance. The church was locked but we walked around the graves: Bernard Sallent, born 1932; Thérese Blet, born 1934. Kids in 1944. Were they here when the British tanks rolled in? Would they have remembered Jim Baxter, and the brave men like him? I certainly do.
How to do it
Brittany Ferries (0330 159 7000; brittany-ferries.co.uk) offers Portsmouth-Caen/Ouistreham return crossings from ￡98 for foot passengers, from ￡206 for car plus two passengers.
H?tel L’Ideal in Arromanches (hotel-lideal.fr) has B&B doubles from ￡67pn. La Sapiniere in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer (la-sapiniere.fr) has doubles from ￡120 room-only. Hotel de Brunville in Bayeux (hotel-de-brunville.com) has B&B doubles from ￡60pn.
E-bike hire costs ￡29 per day, ￡70 for three days (roulezjeunesse.bike). Kayaking from Asnelles costs ￡35pp (charavoile-asnelles.fr).
Further info at calvados-tourisme.co.uk; bayeux-bessin-tourisme.com; en.normandie-tourisme.fr.
Recommended reading includes the Bradt guide to the D-Day Landings (￡9.99; bradtguides.com).
