Ian Porter - Normandy

Colin Porter talking about his father Ian Porter. Ian was originally from Accrington in Lancashire, he joined the 43rd Reconnaissance Corps as part of a four man Bren gun carrier team.

"There was him, the driver and two guys in the back who operated the six pounder anti-tank gun. So the Reconnaissance Corps job was to go forward, find out where the enemy was, engage them and then go back and report further back behind the lines...12 days after D-day, he set sail to the Normandy beaches."

"He's just used to tell us about how they fought their way through to Caen, the Falaise Gap, Mont Pincon"

"He often mentioned Caen because the Germans really held out in Caen and the RAF had to come over and flatten it basically it there was hundreds of thousands of civilians killed because the Germans were like hiding in the rubble. His overriding thought of Normandy was the stench of death, like dead cattle lying in the fields, blown up, swelled up and lots of civilians killed when the Messerschmitts used to dive bomb them."

The driver was Edward Todd from South Shields:
"Edward Todd said to me father, he says, have you got a girlfriend Ian? And Ian said, no, no I haven't. He says, well, my niece would like somebody to write to. Oh. So he showed us a picture of his niece, Irene Redgrave from South Shields. Ian started writing to Irene Redgrave and became pen pals and sending letters to each other and then never actually seen each other. The war ended, so then were still in contact, then my dad got a train from Accrington up to South Shields and Irene lived in Stanhope Road near the West Park, went knocked on the door, they met, and then the rest is history"

"He did lose a lot of friends, he told me one of his friends was hit in the back with some shrapnel and dad cradled him back to the first aid post and he passed away, so dad used to talk about that."

"He's got the Defence Medal, the Victory Medal, the Normandy Medal, yeah and this is his cap badge off his beret. That's the 'Recce" Corps, it's supposed to be an arrow head and lightning striking because they used to go ahead into the enemy lines"
Ian referred to war as a 'lottery':
"He always said it was a lottery, because there was A squadron, B Squadron, C Squadron, he was in C Squadron and there was two vessels taking them over to France and there was one called the Dunkerry? So the A and B were put on the Dunkerry. My dad's regiment was put on the other vessel and the Dunkerry sailed out first. It was like left overnight because of the weather and a German limpet mine it blew it up and there was about 350 killed. My dad said if he had been on that vessel, you wouldn't be here. It's just a lottery. So he lost a lot of mates on that as well."

"I mean, you forget they were just kids, my dad was 18 when he went to France."

Many years after the war Colin remembered walking around Peasholm Park, Scarborough with his dad and a model gun exploded:
"My dad just dived down on the ground and I never understood why, it was like what we would call PTSD. He dived on the ground. Are you alright dad? Oh yeah. It was just a reflex thing."

Audio and transcription attached