D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Dorothy Marsh

Dorothy Marsh, Age 99, Women’s Royal Naval Service

Interviewed 7 February 2024

An evacuee who as a teenager, worked in a building firm in her home city of Portsmouth, Mrs Marsh watched the build up of thousands of soldiers, vehicles and ships in the run-up to D-Day.

On 6 June itself she was away on her Wren training, but for many months saw thousands of men and machines gathering along the south coast.

She said: "The troops were all building up to D-Day and there were masses and masses and masses of them.

"When I came back a lot of them were gone.

Dorothy Marsh saw thousands of men and machines gathering along the south coast over many months. Credit: ITV Meridian

"They were ordinary young men, and Southsea, where I was living, was just covered with men and lorries.

"And when I came with the Wrens to serve in Southampton, there was always a constant stream of lorries down the avenue ready for embarcation.’’

"The preparations for the invasion were shrouded in secrecy, with no official word about what might happen next.

"Alongside the gathering of ships, the pieces of the artificial harbour that was to be towed across the English Channel were also being assembled.

"I do remember ,and it’s still there as far as I know, that when I worked in a builder’s firm before I went into the Wrens, the chippies there had to go into the dockyard and build great big wooden crates. 

"We couldn’t think why they were being built, but they were tipping concrete into those crates and they were actually building Mulberry Harbour, which were the great big concrete slabs put over in Normandy for the ships to tie up to."

Mrs Marsh later worked for the Fleet Air Arm in Lee-on-the-Solent. Credit: ITV Meridian

Mrs Marsh remembers there were many American troops, lining Portsmouth to "an American town" for a while.

People she knew got hitched and moved across the Atlantic after meeting them.

"One went to live in San Francisco", she said. "One in Idaho, one in Texas. A lot of the Wrens married Americans.

Mrs Marsh later worked for the Port radar office in Southampton and for the Fleet Air Arm in Lee-on-the-Solent.

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