Rough Seas

Interview Contact: Alex Stewart

My grandfather, Alex Stewart, served during WWII in the invasion of Normandy or D-Day. As a flotilla comander based in Poole, England, he was responsible for the sixty lifesaving boats that rescued about sixteen-hundred men. He received a declaration for his efforts. Even though it was "all in a day's work"; I still think it is something to be proud of.

"Well, the flotilla was designated USCG Res. Flot. One. It was a one and only, consisting of sixty subchasers. It came into being rather late because all the plans had been made for the invasion and when they were submitted to the President, FDR, ah, he asked the question, "What would happen when some of these large oceanliners with ten or twelve thousand men aboard were sunk by the Luftwaffe [German Air Force]?" Somebody remembered that the coast guard was having built for them a [group of] coast-wise convoy excort, anti-submarine subchasers. There were several hundred of 'em, some on the West Coast [of the U.S.] and some all up and down the East Coast. They were shipped over about ten weeks before the invasion, on the decks of freighters.

None of the skippers on those freighters were familiar with radar. [The subchasers] all had radar on them. [The skippers] hooked up enough electricity to 'em to use the radar on these subchasers sitting on their decks for their own navigation. They thought it was wonderful and couldn't wait to get some.

Thess boats were small eighty-three foot, wooden-hulled subchasers. The power came from two Sterling Vikings [engines], ten-thousand horse power each and two twin screws. We had a thousand gallon bronze gas tank. That was quite a hazard. We had visions of that being hit... you hit a thousand gallons of gasoline and an awful lot of things happen.

The British turned over a boatyard to me; with two or three railroads in it... I had more than just a seagoing operation. In fact, I even had the town library; my office was on the second floor. The way we never got any bombs from the air raids is, out just beyond Poole, [in the water] they'd rigged up lights all over the place like street lights. Everything in Poole would be blacked out, but the planes looking down could see the outline of a city... all these little lights blinkin' here and there... and they'd drop bombs on that; they never did drop any bombs on Poole.

Just before the invasion [of Normandy], while all the boats were waiting offshore for the mine sweepers to finish, we would come within hailing distance and sometimes we would be told someone was in the water, over there... You're not racing around at full speed, you're just sort of drifting around, keeping your eyes open and seeing what's going on. So much was going on that time went very quickly that day. It was the fastest day of my life, [but] they often call it the longest day, 'cause it lasted more than just one day; we went over the night before and some of us didn't come back to England until a day or so after things had calmed down.

I'd been there [to Omaha Beach] and back halfway out when 'H-hour' occurred, and that's when all hell broke loose. All of the batteries opened up from the naval ships. We were supposed to have a small flight of bombers come over and pulverize the beach, but they never showed up.

As it began to get towards the end of the day, some of the thirty ships I had at Omaha [the other thirty were at another beach] began to get very low on gasoline. Everything was organized right down to who was going to go back to England that night. It was pretty routine from then on; we had a continuous rotation of ships from Poole to the several beaches we were haunting with our life-saving operation. There was an LST and hospital ship [in the area]. We saved a nurse [and] some Canadian airmen whose plan wound up in the drink; I guess old FDR knew what he was worrying about. I was still over there [in England] from June to December of that year, 1944.

Ian Stewart