Frank Gelder's D-Day

When I was a kid there was always talk of a box of stuff in my Nan and Granddad’s loft with something in it that explained why my Granddad was estranged from his siblings. When he died I got the task of climbing into his loft to clear it out. I’d forgotten about the fabled box but as soon as I saw it the memory came flooding back.

It contained life insurance policies for his brother and sister which must have been the cause of the falling out, but the most interesting thing was a pocket diary for 1944.

It was the sort with a week to a double page with a weekly notes section to fill the 8^th space. He’d filled it in from 1^st January until the 21^st October with the exception of May. There’s no indication of why he skipped May or stopped writing in October. There’s one additional entry post October on 3^rd December but it only says ‘Rain’.

The pages from 8^th to the 21^st of June have been torn out. We have no idea if he removed them because he didn’t want anybody to see what he’d written about the D-Day landings of whether the government had censored the diary by removing them – not sure who suggested that but it sounds like it could be true.

At the beginning of the year he is on training manoeuvres which he calls ‘stunts’ in Thetford, then Lowestoft, Inverary and finally Bournemouth before heading to Southampton and the crossing to France on D-Day.

The most striking thing about the training time is how often he goes to the ‘pictures’ (the cinema) and how excited he gets about visits from/to my Nan – he mentions how much he loves her on many pages. ‘I love my wife very much,’ he says on the day he goes back to camp after a two day visit home to Bradford.

On 6^th June he says the following: ‘D DAY Invasion started. One of the last to land. Sergeant ??? shot in the head. It was hell.’ I haven’t been able to decipher the name of the Sergeant who was less fortunate than my Granddad – he was shot in the head on 5^th July ‘Two more prisoners. Shelled again. Plenty of strafing. Hit one on helmet, souvenir.’ I find it really hard to comprehend him calmly describing this terrifying incident as a ‘souvenir.’

He advanced across France, through Belgium and was in Holland when he stopped making entries.

On 2^nd September they passed the WWI battle fields and memorials, ‘Off again. Passed through Amiens. Quite a lot of bomb damage here. We are now on battle areas of last war. Saw the Vimy memorial.’ I’ve been to the Vimy memorial and it’s a very emotional place, can’t imagine what it would have been like seeing it in my Granddad’s circumstances.

Amongst the harrowing entries: ‘Dead cows all over. Stinks of death. Rained a lot. Fed up,’ ‘Lost some of my best pals while we've been here,’ ‘Felt rotten after Abie was killed. One of the best lads I've known,’ there are some more uplifting entries: ‘Went to rest camp. Marvellous night’s sleep,’ ‘Went to pictures, had a lovely bath. Quiet,’ ‘Jerry withdrawn fast at last. We've got him moving,’ ‘Breakthrough jerry going back,’ ‘Getting ready for moving again. It's good to know that we are winning,’ ‘People here very happy to see us. Filled our trucks high with fruit, tomatoes, lemonade and beer.’ That was in Brussels on 5^th September, my Granddad would have had the lemonade not the beer.

There’s also this strange entry: ‘Saw some women collaborators have hair shaved by FF.’

If my Grandchildren find this in a box in the loft when I die I would like them to know that I too love my wife very much.