Many soldiers. That was an understatement.
One couldn’t spend any amount of time in Devon without hearing about the disaster at Slapton Sands.
Shortly after midnight on April 28, 1944, two LSTs, carrying more than a thousand men each, sank in a few fiery, terror-filled minutes after being torpedoed by German subs on routine patrol that had slipped, undetected, through Allied defenses. A third LST, although damaged, had limped back to Portsmouth harbor. ‘I can see why visiting the memorial is important to you,’ I said.
She sucked in her lips and nodded. ‘I hate the word “closure”, but that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Hannah? Closure.’
I couldn’t think of anything to add to that, so I simply smiled reassuringly and returned to whacking the tops off my soft-boiled eggs.
‘Say,’ Cathy continued after a moment. Head bent, she fumbled once more in her commodious bag, coming up with a set of car keys. She plunked them down on the table in front of Paul, although they were clearly intended for me, one chair over. ‘Hannah. If you can drive me down to see the Sherman tank, you’ll be my BFF.’
BFF. Best friends forever. ‘Your friend, certainly,’ I agreed, thinking that one out of three was the best this pushy American was going to get, at least for the time being. Maybe she was an acquired taste.
Cathy’s eyes widened hopefully. ‘You’ll do it?’
She looked so childlike, so vulnerable, that I felt my defenses weakening. ‘Sure,’ I agreed, figuring that there were a lot worse things than a long drive on a glorious English summer day. ‘Shall we say this afternoon, then? Nothing else on my schedule.’
Speaking of Dads, I was thanking my own, still alive and thriving back in Maryland, as I climbed into Cathy’s Vauxhall Corsa with… wait for it… manual transmission.
Back when I was sixteen, Dad forced me to drive stick. ‘You never know when it will come in handy, Hannah.’
I’m sure he was thinking about rushing somebody to a hospital, or moving a car, fast, out of the path of an oncoming locomotive, or it could even come in handy should my getaway driver accidentally lock himself in the bank vault. But, for me the ‘when’ was ‘now’, in Devon with Cathy, an American I had just met, taking her for a rendezvous – of sorts – with her own father.
As she climbed into the passenger seat to my left and buckled up, I took a moment to familiarize myself with the controls. ‘Ready?’
She nodded.
‘We’re off, then.’ Using my left hand, I shifted into reverse, backed out of the parking space, put the car in first and headed for the exit on The Quay near the Flavel Arts Centre. Fortunately, the brake and accelerator pedals are not reversed on English cars, or I would have sent the Vauxhall crashing through the plate glass window of the Visitors’ Center when I braked to avoid a child who darted out from behind an SUV. After the frisky little tot had been chased around the car park and corralled by his mother, we continued up College Way past the Naval College to the roundabout on the A379 where we made the turn toward Stoke Fleming.
I was feeling pretty comfortable behind the wheel until we got behind an articulated lorry just outside Stoke Fleming. As the huge, double-jointed truck slowed to wind its way through the twisting, one-lane, two-way streets of the village, I grabbed what I thought was the gearshift and instead of downshifting to second, rolled down my window. Next to me, Cathy noticed and laughed out loud. ‘See what I mean!’
I had to laugh, too.
Thankfully, we lost the lorry when it headed west on the road toward Bowden, Ash and Bugford. We continued along the A379 hugging the coastline. Just outside Strete, we popped over the crest of a hill to see the vast panorama of the sea spread out below us, sunlight dancing on the water like a carpet of diamonds. There was no one behind me, so I pulled to the side of the road for a moment so that Cathy could appreciate the view. ‘On a clear day, you can see France,’ I told my passenger.
‘Is that Slapton Sands?’ she asked, pointing to an expanse of beach dotted with bathers, beach chairs and umbrellas.
‘Not yet. You’re looking at Blackpool Sands, just north of Slapton. It’s a beach club now, but this area was requisitioned during the war, too.’
After a few moments, I drove on. The road, shaded by overhanging branches, narrowed even further. I took one turn a little too fast for comfort, and Cathy yipped like a terrier as branches slapped the passenger’s side door.
‘Ooops, sorry,’ I apologized, tapping the brakes. ‘I hope I didn’t scratch the paint.’
‘Scratches, smatches,’ Cathy said. ‘That’s what insurance is for.’
Eventually we popped out of the trees and over the headland, beginning the long, winding descent to Slapton Sands. Below us the sea, the beach, the road, and the Ley – a reed-dotted, freshwater lagoon – formed parallel ribbons of aquamarine, beige, slate and blue which eventually yielded to the patchwork yellows and greens of the fields in the surrounding countryside. In the bright afternoon sun, the effect was stunning. I slowed to a crawl.
Cathy rolled down her window to admire the view. ‘I can see why the Allies chose this area for the rehearsal.’ She propped both arms on the windowsill and rested her chin on them. ‘It looks just like all the aerial photos I’ve ever seen of Utah Beach in France. I can’t wait to walk on it.’
‘Soon. But first, I want to show you the memorial.’ We drove to the north end of the beach, where I swung left into the car park, slotted the rental car into one of the marked spaces, turned off the ignition, and climbed out.
Cathy followed me on to the beach. ‘I thought this was supposed to be Slapton Sands,’ she complained, tiptoeing carefully over the rocky ground in her sling-back sandals, eyes on her feet. ‘This looks like gravel to me.’
‘The Brits call it shingle,’ I explained as she caught up to me.
Arms spread wide for balance, Cathy tottered along at my side as we made our way along the wide swath of pebbles that ranged in size from marbles to golf balls. Before long, we were standing before a chunky granite obelisk perhaps twenty feet high incised with confident black lettering.
Cathy pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. ‘This memorial was presented by the United States Army authorities,’ she read aloud, ‘to the people of the South Hams who generously left their homes and their lands to provide a battle practice area for the successful assault in Normandy in June 1944. Their action resulted in the saving of many hundreds of lives. Blah blah blah. I think it’s fishy,’ she added, turning to face me, blinking back tears, arms folded across her chest like a petulant child. ‘This ugly thing was put up in 1954, but does it mention anywhere the guys like my dad who died here? It does not. All these people did was lose their homes for a couple of months. It’s sad that they were forced to clear out and all that, but at least they got to come back to them eventually. My dad’s out there somewhere.’ She swept her arm in a wide arc, indicating the fields on the hills behind us, rising up gracefully over the Ley. ‘Or maybe there,’ she added, tugging her sunglasses down to cover her eyes and turning her face out to sea.
I stepped away, putting some distance between us, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
After a few minutes Cathy announced, ‘I’m ready to see the tank, now.’
I fished the car keys out of my pocket. ‘Let’s go then.’
We crunched our way along the shingle back to the car park, then drove another five miles to Torcross at the southern end of the beach.
Finding the Sherman tank wasn’t difficult. Hard to hide a thirty-two-ton hulk of metal in a tiny village. After being dragged out of the sea, the tank had been installed on a concrete slab atop a plinth of smooth round stones the size of baked potatoes. Its gun, silent now, stood frozen at a forty-five-degree angle, pointing out over the English Channel. Memorial plaques dedicated to the various military divisions who trained at Slapton Sands during World War Two were placed at various intervals around the tank.