Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

64 Triumph and tragedy his fellow officers were informed they would be crossing on the twelfth day of the operation. On June 16 th the unit moved close to Brighton and 48 hours later they made a night-time crossing from Newhaven to Arromanches, all without any undue alarms. After a brief rest period, the Battalion assembled at Bretteville l’Orgueille before making steady progress through the Normandy countryside. Their task was to clear the villages and hamlets of any remaining pockets of resistance. At first, their progress was trouble-free, as many of the war-weary Germans were young and only too keen to surrender, but greater hazards came from above as the Luftwaffe launched several bombing missions to halt the Allied progress. As Maurice and his brigade took shelter wherever they could, all around them were the grim reminders of the fierce battles from the preceding days with bomb-damaged buildings, the rotting corpses of Nazi troops and the bloated carcases of farm animals. Not surprisingly, his letters home reflected his mood as he saw the grim reality of the hostilities: “My worst difficulty is to get sleep. It is entirely my fault, but I average one and a half hours a day, except when we are resting. There is always something to be done, someone calling for you. The company was so unready in my opinion – I refer to the frills rather than the honest-to-God side of training. The weather has been abominable and the German air force has got its tail up Maurice Turnbull at Weston-super-Mare during the 1930s.