D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: George Harmer

George Harmer, Age: 100, Royal Navy

Interviewed 23 September 2023

A crewman on board a trawler requisitioned by the Navy, George Harmer spent D-Day taking supplies and messages between vessels in the Channel.

Trawlers were also tasked with spotting debris which might damage propellers and impede large ships or landing craft and stop them making the crossing. 

He said: "On the evening before D-Day we set sail from Portsmouth to France.

"Coronation was just an old fishing trawler that had been salvaged from the shipyard and went into the docks in London and was refurbished to a certain extent and then we went on to D-Day.

"We were more or less a little ship to go round and about. We had no armaments on board. We had no radio. No signalmen, nothing. A runabout really. We didn’t go into deep water really. 

"If one of the ships had something to take to another ship, say if it was a big ship and couldn’t get in or out we used to take it."

An important job at night was to search for parachute mines which would later be cleared by minesweepers.

"We did more duties at night than we did in the daytime," Mr Harmer said.

"They had these things that were almost like big concrete houses that they had to sink to make a harbour for us.

"Our old skipper, an old fishing skipper, said he wasn’t going in there because of the weather and we might sink. We used to just steam into the wind because it was a team engine, not diesel.

"All those ships that did go inside got washed up on the shore. 

"Once we stopped for lunch and there was a boat. The back of it was hollow and they used to make submarine nets on the back. The tide changed and it brought up a mine and it sunk the ship. 

"You took it day by day and that was it and you didn’t have to let anything worry you.

"I was in the Navy five and a half years and I still can’t swim."

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