BRITISH VETERAN HAS ANSWERS ABOUT D-DAY
By JEFF STURGEON
The Roanoke Times
Monday, May 29, 2000
He commanded the boats that delivered 35 soldiers from the Bedford area to a beach in France where Germans killed 19 of them.
In the whole of the British Navy during World War II, Jimmy Green was just a cog - one of many wartime naval officers.
In Bedford this long weekend, he is prominent. He'll address today's dedication of the National D-Day Memorial. For Green has a story to tell.
Green, 78, commanded the boats that delivered 35 soldiers from the Bedford area to a beach in France where Germans killed 19 of them in the opening battle of D-Day on June 6, 1944. Two more deaths later that day distinguished Bedford as the community with the nation's highest per-capita loss of life on D-Day.
Green had followed orders. The bloodshed stemmed from stronger than expected German resistance and some snafus with the invasion. But France was eventually retaken, the war ended within a year and a half and Green went on to a career in education. He didn't keep in close touch with fellow veterans. As decades passed, the ties with fellow fighting men ebbed.
Five years ago, restless and despondent after his wife's death, Green decided it was time to reconnect. "I thought if I could find my old friends, it might give me a new interest and it has," said Green, now a retired history teacher living in Axminster, England.
His son-in-law, Kevan Elsby, a food company executive in Stratford-upon-Avon, used Internet research and e-mail to connect Green with legions of D-Day veterans and veterans' families. Those efforts put him in touch with a cluster in the Bedford area that had been looking for, but couldn't find, the leader of the flotilla that included the Bedford fighting men.
Since then, Green and those he has met in Bedford have exchanged calls, notes, Christmas cards and family photos. Green recently came 4,000 miles from England to meet them and to speak at the dedication, which he called an honor.
The meetings have been happy with moments of sadness, he said. "A bit of a sorta little tear trickled down occasionally from one or other of us," Green said.
To execute the D-Day invasion, the troops rode part of the way in large ships and then took smaller landing boats into Normandy in several waves. Green, a sublieutenant, rode in one first-wave landing boat and commanded seven others with hand flags.
His flotilla of eight boats contained about 250 people, including the young men of Company A, made up largely of Bedford-area men. The only Bedford soldier he knew on D-Day was Taylor Fellers, commander of Company A. The two had to discuss strategy. Green was to get the troops to shore; Fellers was to direct them in the land assault.
Because of a low tide, the boats beached short of their target. Fellers got off first and led his roughly 30 men to shore, Green said. Their job was to get control of a gap in the cliffs that provided a passageway to points farther inland. Green last saw them assembling on dry land. He ordered the crew to turn the boat around and rescue troops in the water from other boats that didn't make it to shore. Meanwhile, Fellers and his troops were fired on and killed.
Green is now in touch with some who were aboard the other boats and some of the relatives of the dead. He visited the Bedford home of Ray Nance, had breakfast with Robert Sales of Madison Heights and invited Roy Stevens of Bedford to his hotel. Green had plans Sunday to also see Bob Slaughter of Roanoke, who was part of the invasion force, and Bertie Woodford of Bedford County, Fellers' sister.
"I told her how her brother died," Green said, adding that there had been some confusion about this.
Green said author Stephen Ambrose wrote in "D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II," that the first boat into Normandy and all its occupants were "vaporized" in combat. Not true, said Green, who insists Fellers and his men made it to shore. Fellers "was probably the first soldier to land on French soil on D-Day."
Green said he has corresponded with Ambrose about what he sees as several factual lapses in the book and expects Ambrose to revise the relevant book chapter at the next printing.
How could everyone aboard have been vaporized? Green asked. "I'm here."
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