Sudbury & Great Cornard Men Remembered

As We Commemorate D-Day 80

 On 6 June it will be 80 years since Operation Overlord, more commonly known as D-Day.   It was the largest ever combined amphibious and airborne landing in history when more than 156,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy.  In the following weeks huge numbers of support troops joined them and Sudbury saw part of their great trek southwards towards the channel ports on the way to France.   On D-Day some of the first contingents passed through the town from early morning forming an erratically moving queue from the town centre up Ballingdon Hill towards Halstead.  It rumbled on an endless stream of tanks, troop carriers, petrol bowsers, Bren gun carriers and other paraphernalia of war.  Peter Minter an 11 year old school boy watched it from the a window at Salters Hall School.

Sudbury men were involved in the landings including Freddie Pepper, serving with the Durham Light Infantry. He and 150 others had already spent four days in port in cramped conditions onboard an American Navy landing craft when he landed on Gold Beach where ‘After 200 to 300 yards all hell broke loose as shell fire flew around’.  Freddie survived the landings but 3 months later died of wounds as the Allies fought their way across France.

Two Sudbury men and a Great Cornard man lost their lives in the aftermath of the landings.  Lance Corporal Douglas Stock serving with the Irish Guards was killed by a mortar shell in the battle to secure Cagny, a small town near Caen. Before the war Douglas (24) was a reporter for the Suffolk Free Press.  He lies buried at Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery.   RAF Sergeant Harold Mills, whose parents live din Melford road was reported ‘missing believed killed’ in an accident. Three others died alongside him and they are buried together in a single grave in Bayeux War Cemetery.  Royal Marine Tommy Harrington served with 45 Commando,1 Special Service Brigade under the command of the Airborne Division. They landed at Sword Beach with the task of capturing the port of Ouistreham and then linking up with the airborne forces at the Caen Canal Bridge later renamed Pegasus Bridge.  Tommy died in August 1944 and lies in Ranville War Cemetery just a short distance form Pegasus Bridge.

Citations for the men on the Sudbury Heritage link and for cornard www.cornard.info (local history and Roll of Honour).

Douglas Stock