D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Mervyn Kersh

Mervyn Kersh, Age 98, Royal Army Ordnance Corps

Interviewed 4 July 2023

Landing on Gold beach three days after D-Day, Mervyn Kersh was a private helping to ensure that the advancing British Army had enough vehicles to win the battle for Normandy and push on into France and the occupied Low Countries. 

He said: "The first batch of reconnaissance were all killed on the way over, they were torpedoed.

"So they asked for volunteers to take their place. So I went on my own on any ship that was going looking for a suitable site. Which I did find.

"A lovely chateau with room for 1,000 vehicles and 200 men, the drivers.

"As soon as the engineers had cleared all the booby traps an Colonel came along and told me to clear off because I was a private. But then the unit came and we found somewhere in Bayeux. 

"And we set up business supplying any unit that lost vehicles which was of course all the time.

"It continued throughout the war."

The job was to ensure his team always had 1000 vehicles roadworthy and ready to go - replacing those constantly lost in action or in accidents.

He said: "Many of the ships that landed shed vehicles of all kinds. Anything from folded bicycles to a forty eight-wheel tank transporter.

"I wasn’t a driver but I soon learned to drive and I have never had a test since. Still driving. But we had to supply everything.

"It was something I had waited for a long, long time.

"A couple of years at least. And eventually it came and I was delighted to be in it."

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