John Patrick Grogan - Clip 1

We knew what we were supposed to do all right. We were to get to land and get over the beach as quickly as we could and get up over the sea wall. But on landing, I guess the first thing I recall is that some of the people who had landed before me . . . the was the beach lined with people all laying there. And the stones. There were big stones, huge stones on that beach. And it seemed to me to be crazy for these people to be lying down there. We had a habit in manoeuvres, you'd run so far then of duck down or you might crawl a bit. But I just couldn't understand what they were all lying there for. But they were dead. They were either dead or they had all been hit. I got up near the sea wall and near the sea wall you were fairly safe. But out from the sea wall six or seven feet there was no one living. So these people that were down by the water's edge when I went off had all been hit. And the ones that I had waved good-bye to that morning, and the one's we had joked with such as Sammy Adams, he was one of the first that I saw, Joe Coffey, Huey Clements, Ernie Good, all of these people all dead in such a short space of time.

John Patrick Grogan - Clip 2

Then I heard a loud speaker. The fellow talking English with an accent, a German accent. But he spoke perfect English. He said that we didn't have a chance, "to throw down your arms". He called us brave Canadians and he said, "but to throw down your arms and surrender", and that the wounded would be taken care of or else we would be annihilated. Then I heard someone say, going running by, I heard the word "surrender" you see. I ventured our from where I was and could see down a piece a group of people with white bandages and an odd white towel and with their hands up. Things began to get quiet. Just as if there was great stillness. After all of this noise, everything stopped for a bit. The first thing you know, someone else I guess, took a look out they said that the beach was swarming with German soldiers.

Vic Sparrow - Clip 1

I hit the beach and everything was just going like crazy. I just curled up and I don't think I moved a muscle for a while. I would peek out and all of a sudden I would see a guy a little piece away from me and he'd look up and the next thing he was gone. He got it. It was that way. Finally things did quieten down a bit. I got up and walked along the beach a piece and I covered up this one chap and covered up a couple of lads. A fella by the name of Billy Lynch, who was in my outfit, he started to write a book. I got a copy of the transcript and in it he said he looked up, he was down by this timber, and he looked up and saw Lieutenant Shackelton and Sapper Sparrow running up and down the beach. He said the crazy so and so's, they're going to get killed. Well I didn't get killed. I didn't get a scratch as far as that was concerned. But, I saw one chap when he tried to go over the wire, he got hit and he was just burned to a crisp right there. It was almost impossible to move without getting hit.

Vic Sparrow - Clip 2

Somebody told me that one of the German soldiers took a watch off one of our chaps and that a German officer shot him right there. I heard just the other day that one chap landed on the beach and he was there and a soldier came up with a rifle and it was his brother. His own brother.