D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Cecil Newton
Cecil Newton, Age: 100, Royal Dragoon Guards
Interviewed 12 December 2023
Leaving from Lepe and landing in an amphibious tank on Gold Beach on D-Day, Cecil Newton from Wiltshire was among those tasked with attacking part of the German concrete defences.
Duplex Drive or 'DD tanks' had a canvas surround which enabled them to float in water.
Mr Newton said: "They were Sherman tanks adapted to land over inflatable screens.
"I was a gunner-loader - the gunner would fire the gun, and the loader would put the shell in the breech.
"The gun is in a turret on the actual tank."
Mr Newton was among a section ordered to attack a blockhouse.
"We landed in our floating tank and it drove up the beach," he added.
"There was a ramp up to the German blockhouse and we went down a shell hole and lost the tank. We got out and weren’t injured, and we made sure that we were safe.
"They weren’t expecting us. I spotted a bike and I went for a ride down the beach and back again, waiting for another lot to go in."
Mr Newton was among those who liberated the town of Cruelly where a school is now named after him.
One week after the landing, his squadron was involved in heavy fighting in Verne-Sur-Mer in which half of his troop - more than 100 men - were killed.
"As we appeared they knobbled us," he said.
"The Germans had settled down on a forward-looking slope and as we appeared they knobbled us.
"I had a new tank and went on and continued through Europe."
In November 1944 near the German border Mr Newton was shot in the leg and chest as he got out of his tank.
He still has a fragment from a shell that was embedded in his foot, given as a souvenir by the surgeon at a casualty clearing station.
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