Dad's Navy Days: July 1943 - Sicily

     "July 10, 1943. We arrived off Sicily in the middle of the night

     and stopped about four miles out. Other ships were landing troops

     and new LCIs (landing craft infantry), fairly large barges. Soldiers

     went off each side of the foc'sle, down steps into the water and

     then ashore, during which time we saw much tracer fire. This was

     to be our worst yet invasion. Those left aboard had to wait

     until daylight so we went fishing for an hour or more,

     but there were no fish." Page 31, "DAD, WELL DONE":
     The Naval Memoirs of Leading Seaman Coxswain
     Gordon Douglas Harrison, by Gordon A. Harrison 

["A full house from ship to shore on board LCI (Large) 311"
Photo D. Lewis, pg. 254 St. Nazaire to Singapore:
The Canadian Amphibious War, Vol. 2]

Seventy years ago, July 1943, members of the Allied Forces (i.e., chiefly British, American and Canadian forces: Canada was represented by many men from the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve or RCNVR) participated in their second D - Day as they approached the bristling shores of Sicily. They were under the cover of darkness, says my father Doug Harrison, RCNVR, V8809.

Their first D - Day occurred when they landed successfully upon the shores of North Africa in the fall of 1942. My father, trained in part to operate LCMs (landing craft mechanized), carried American troops and machinery to a beach near Arzew and became skillful at ducking behind dozer blades when snipers fired at him.

Their third D - Day took place in September, 1943 when Allied landing craft dropped thousands of troops and millions of pieces of the machinery of war (tanks, jerry cans of gasoline, rations, guns and ammunition and more, much more) onto the shores of Italy. Again my father was there and survived the ordeal.

The fourth and final D - Day, in Normandy, on the French coast, took place about a year later. By the time the Allies were ready to launch the biggest Allied invasion of WW2, my father was back in Canada as part of a Canadian Navy and Commando Training Center in Comox, Vancouver Island, B.C.

"It was heaven," he said.

But before he got to heaven he went through three of four D - Days, and many shattering events that occurred in Sicily seventy years ago this month.

Photo by GH

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