Driving an Ambulance on D-Day

Harold Brown joined the Royal Army Service Corps as an ambulance driver in April 1941. On 6th June 1944, aged 24, he drove his ambulance off the troop carrier and underwater before driving up the beach during the D-Day landings.

Subsequently, his unit, the VIII Corps, fought their way up through Holland where he took part in the liberation of Eindhoven in September 1944. They then went on to Germany where Harold was on duty during the liberation of prisoners from the Belsen Concentration Camp. On VE Day he was stationed west of Lubeck in Germany and recorded in his diary "VE Day, war over. Had a letter from E".

"E" was his wife Rose Elizabeth (nee Johnson) who was an Army Nursing sister. She was stationed in various hospitals in England and Scotland during the war. She kept an autograph book in which her patients recorded their names and messages, and often added drawings. In November 1940 she was stationed in Coventry to nurse survivors of the Coventry Blitz. She and Harold met when they were both stationed at West Haddon in Northamptonshire and they were married in December 1942.