FrontLine | The D-Day Issue
REVISITED: JOSEPH CONNOR Last December, we met Joseph Connor, a sprightly World War Two veteran from Glasgow. Now in his nineties, Joseph shared with us his memories of serving in the Normandy Campaign in the months after D-Day. When did you join up? I was 18 in August of 1942 and I was called up on 7th January 1943. I went up to Perth to the Black Watch barracks for six weeks of training. Then from there, they sent us to Felton where the reconnaissance was based. How did you prepare for landing in France? We used to do a lot of night travel. I spent three months waterproofing my vehicle and I took it up to Scarborough to test it out. Then we went from there to Angmering and then on to the East India Dock and loaded up to go to France. We couldn’t get landed because there wasn’t enough ground
Universal carriers and infantry of 15th (Scottish) Division move forward during Operation ‘Bluecoat’, the offensive south-east of Caumont, 30 July 1944.
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gained for us. So we travelled up and down the channel for a couple of days until we got the call to go in.
outside it. We could see this hole was punctured, as if somebody had drilled it.
What happened after you landed?
What was your role? I was a driver with the 15th (Scottish) Reconnaissance Regiment, and our job was to go forward and try to find where the enemy were. We would fire on them hoping we would get a return fire, from which we could pinpoint their position. We would radio back and they would send in the Typhoons or other heavy equipment, sometimes artillery. That noise frightened us, just going over the top of us. It was like a steam engine screaming through the air. Terrifying.
I remember we went up onto the road. There was a German body lying on the ground and everyone was driving over it to get into the field. We were there ten minutes and we heard this ‘Moaning Minnie’, they called it - it was a six or seven-barrel mortar the Germans fired and it landed in the middle of the field. That was the first time we came under fire. The next day we moved on and we saw this tank at the side of the road, with just legs sitting
