Ken Cooke D Day veteran talks to school children at Stonefall Cemetery for the Light their Legacy event

Yorkshire Post

Year 6 pupils visited Stonefall Cemetery in harrigate to chat with D Day Veteran Ken Cooke.  The event is part of CWGC’s ‘Lighting Their Legacy’ torch roadshow event series which has been created with building connections between veterans and young people at the heart of the programme, in a bid to improve education, connect with younger generations and inspire them to understand the lessons of the Second World War.

Transcript

00:00 The story goes that a paratrooper that landed at Pegasus Bridge wrote this poem and it's

00:15 still there at Pegasus Bridge on one of the walls in the cafe there.

00:24 They ask us why we do it, why we still parade, now we are getting older and just a little

00:34 afraid.

00:35 It's not for the sake of glory or the medals on our chest, it's simply we are comrades

00:43 who stood the final test.

00:47 On the 6th of June, that fateful day, a day we will never forget.

00:53 Many a lad laid down his life and paid the final debt.

00:59 So when you see a veteran, give the man your hand, for those medals on his chest were won

01:08 in a foreign land.

01:11 And when God asks the question, "Who are you, my man?"

01:17 I will proudly answer, "Sir, I am a veteran."

01:24 Ken, you were actually there on D-Day.

01:29 Well, to me as an 18 year old, it was, I say it was a Boy Scouts adventure, to me as an

01:39 18 year old.

01:41 Never been on the beach before, never been on a ship before.

01:47 I'm just going to ask the children.

01:50 You've all been abroad on holiday I suppose.

01:52 You went on a train or a ship or a plane.

01:58 What did it feel like the first time you went on a plane or a train or a ship?

02:07 I felt kind of scared because I never, I wasn't like in the air flying ever before, so I was

02:17 like scared of heights.

02:19 But now after I've been abroad a lot more, I feel less scared.

02:28 Is it exciting?

02:29 Do you lots of exciting when you're travelling?

02:33 First time you've been somewhere?

02:36 You've never seen a train before or a plane or a ship.

02:41 It's all exciting.

02:44 It's a new adventure.

02:45 That's exactly how I felt when I went and stepped onto the landing craft.

02:52 I can't tell you why, but that's how I felt.

02:57 Just one of those things.

03:01 When you stepped off into France, what happened to you?

03:06 What do you mean?

03:07 Your feet.

03:10 I'm thinking about that little story that you tell about your feet.

03:16 We were called Revali at half past three on the big ship.

03:24 We went to the ship's mess, had our breakfast and then we were told to go down to our bunks,

03:33 get all our equipment together and get back up to the top deck.

03:40 The officer said, "Right lads, we're going over the side down the scramble nets."

03:45 Now I think you've seen pictures on the television and other pictures of the scramble nets that's

03:52 on the side of the ship.

03:54 You make your way down, putting your feet in a certain spot every time you go down until

04:01 you get down to the landing craft.

04:03 You have to be careful because on that day the seas were a bit rough and the big ship's

04:10 going up and down like that and the landing craft is going up and down like that.

04:16 So you've got to be careful stepping off that scramble net into the landing craft.

04:23 We were very lucky on our craft because I think everyone on our craft got down the nets

04:31 safely.

04:32 There was one or two that did put their feet in the wrong place.

04:37 Instead of putting it on the step of the scramble net, they put their foot through and it overbalanced

04:42 them a bit.

04:43 So we grabbed hold of them and put them back in position.

04:47 But there were some stories on other ships on the scramble nets.

04:53 Some of the lads missed the step, overbalanced and fell into the water where all the equipment

05:02 drowned.

05:03 There was never a chance.

05:06 With all their equipment on, they still went straight down to the bottom.

05:14 One or two fell in between the landing craft and the big ship as well and they got crushed

05:21 there.

05:22 There were a few, not a lot, but these accidents happen.

05:30 And anyway we made our way towards the beach.

05:35 Now most of our lads were sat in the bottom of the landing craft or stood round.

05:43 Myself, I was leaning on the side of the landing craft watching all the fireworks, the rockets,

05:52 the battleships firing and every other artillery, all the noise, the dust.

05:59 And it was all exciting to me.

06:02 I don't know what the other lads felt like, but to me it was like watching Bonfire Night

06:09 a thousand times as big.

06:14 Anyway we saw the battleships and everything going, alpha leather kind of thing.

06:25 As we approached the beach, on that coast, the current in the water was very big.

06:38 Over the years it had formed mounds of sand under the water with the sand drifting and

06:45 it would hit the water.

06:50 Now some of the landing craft came in and they hit one of these mounds of sand.

06:57 They thought they'd landed on the beach, so they dropped the ramp and the lads just stepped

07:04 off into the water, but instead of stepping into about 6 inches or a foot, they stepped

07:10 into about 15 foot, 10 foot water with all their equipment on.

07:15 And they drowned unfortunately.

07:24 Some of the defences on the beach, you've seen the photographs of the cross pieces on

07:31 the beach with the mines on top.

07:33 Well the engineers went in first and they defused the mines, or most of them anyway,

07:40 they did a marvellous job of defusing all these mines.

07:47 One or two must have missed them because they exploded and they blew some of the landing

07:52 craft to pieces.

07:53 Shall we see if any of the children would like to ask you a question Ken?

07:59 On the ship, it was like if you went on a ship on the holiday, just ordinary, you know,

08:17 you moved about on the ship, talked to your friends, or played cards, just had a walk

08:26 round with the ship and sometimes the officer said we'll have a session of chatting to each

08:36 other and talking about what was going to happen.

08:41 That's what we did on the big ships.

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