Dennis Haydock | 1923-2016
Troop 3
Squadron 2
1st Coldstream Guards
Guards Armoured Division
Dennis Haydock landed in Normandy on June 30, 1944, as a Sherman tank driver with Troop 3, Squadron 2, 1st Coldstream Guards (Guards Armoured Division). This operation was also Dennis’s first trip outside Great Britain. He described his arrival in France as follows: “We left the landing craft and reached the beach; the water wasn’t deep, and from there we drove due south.”
He notably participated in Operation Goodwood with his unit, beginning on July 18, 1944, near Cagny. However, in August 1944, his tank was hit by a German tank near Sourdeval in Calvados. Dennis Haydock was wounded by shrapnel in his left arm. He managed to escape from his tank and then tried to rejoin his unit. But the Germans had destroyed one of the bridges that allowed crossing a wetland: not knowing how to swim, Dennis was nevertheless able to cross the river using the stones from the bridge that were scattered underwater.
Back in his unit, Dennis Haydock was placed on rest while he recovered from this injury. He then participated in the liberation of Enschede in the Netherlands in April 1945.
Decorated by France with the Legion of Honor just a few months before his death in September 2016, he was particularly influenced by a Normandy man he met during commemorations of the Battle of Normandy: the man, who was a teenager in 1944, had thanked him at length for the liberation, even though he had lost his mother in the bombing.
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