"What Did You Do in The War Daddy?" A detailed account of D-Day and its aftermath.

Tony Hart was was a schoolboy at Malvern College when the war broke out and was evacuated to Blenheim Palace for a year. Leaving school in 1941, he worked as an articled clerk to a firm of chartered accountants in the City. Joining the army in April 1942, he spent a short time studying in Cambridge and was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in "April 1943 aged 19 3/4." The story of D-Day, his experiences in France and crossing into Germany are very detailed and matter of fact: building bridges, and seeing action including around Pegasus Bridge, just outside Caen. Details of organisation and activity are interspersed with sober accounts of death, including that of the "souvenir hunters" in the booby trapped area around La Riviere. There is also a degree of deadpan humour including the story of Blackburn, his driver, who was a slaughterman from Birmingham; the captured German sergeant and the family of pigs; fishing in the canal with sticks of gelignite; the terrified German machine gunners, only too happy to surrender; and receiving Calvados from a grateful farmer after clearing mines. His section suffered surprisingly few casualties. The written account outlines the invaluable contribution of the "Sappers" as they construct and rebuild bridges all the way from Normandy to the Rhine.