D-Day Window Cleaning Veteran Talks

Ken said: “I was window cleaning before the war and the bloke I was working for said to me, ‘if you come home, there’s always a job here for you’, and that’s what I did.

D-Day 70th anniversary video: Bucknall survivor Ken Wright tells his story of landings - Ken Wright was fighting in France when he heard his brother had been killed. His other brother was risking his life for King and country too. This is his story...

Ken Wright was still a teenager when he was called up to join the infantry and fight the Nazis in the Second World War. Despite his mother, Mary Alice Wright, telling him he could not go because she already had two sons serving in France, Ken found himself in a troop ship on D-Day, about to take part in the invasion of Europe.

D-Day veteran Ken Wright, pictured during the war.

Some time later, he passed through Caen, where his elder brother Ralph was stationed, but in the darkness and the confusion of thousands of troops passing through the area, there was no hope of a chance reunion. Within two months of D-Day, Ralph was dead, killed by mortar fire during intense fighting around Caen. Mrs Wright wouldn’t tell her surviving sons the news until after the war, but Ken found out himself within days, because his brother’s mail instead went to him.

Ken, of Werrington Road, Bucknall, who is now aged 88, said: “The three of us were over in France at the same time. My brother Harry was OK, because he was in the Royal Army Service Corps. He used to take up ammunition. “But I was infantry and Ralph was. He got killed in Caen by a mortar shell. My mother didn’t let me know, but I knew, because I had all his letters. “We were ‘up the line’ and I couldn’t do anything about it. I went to see the padre, but he said there was nothing to do as we couldn’t move. There was nothing to do anyway. After that I didn’t care. I was mad. “I was very thankful that I made it and Harry made it through. “But Ralph didn’t.

Corporal Ralph Wright, of Burslem, was aged 22 when he was killed on August 18, 1944. He is buried at the Bayeaux War Cemetery in France. Ralph was a battle-hardened veteran when he landed on Queen Beach, a sub-division of Sword Beach, on June 6. Ralph fought through France in the early stages of the invasion of Europe, until his death. Meanwhile, his younger brother Ken was an 18-year-old raw recruit serving with the 51st Highland Division – and took part in his very first action on D-Day. He said: “I was 18 and they were calling you up then. You had no option but to go. I went in the Army. I had three months of training in Shrewsbury, then I went out on D-Day – June 6, 1944.

D-Day – June 6, 1944.

“My mother said: ‘You can’t go, your two brothers are out there’. That meant three of the family would be out there, but of course you had got to go, you had no option. “I had joined the North Staffords, but I was transferred to the 51st Highland Division. I was in the infantry – ‘plodders’, as they called them.

“We would get carried away in a big truck, dropped off, then we would probably have to walk four or five miles to get to the action. It was hard, but when you are young, it didn’t bother you much. “After training, we went out on a big troop ship on D-Day. It was a happy atmosphere on the crossing. We were singing ‘It’s A Long Way to Tipperary’.

“I was only 18 and I had never been abroad before. It was nice. We were all young, all the same age and when you are 18 or 19-years-old, you don’t bother about the danger. You don’t think anything will happen to you. In any case, there’s nothing you can do about it. “You’ve never been in action. You don’t know what it is like. But you soon find out. “You worry more about those you are leaving behind. There was only my mother and my sister, Joan.”

On D-Day, the 51st Highland Division landed as a second echelon division to support and fill in behind the first wave. Ken said: “I just followed the others off the beach. All you did was you got your head down, because you could hear the shells coming over. “Then, when it stops, you walk on. If it’s a good way to march, when you stop, you dig a trench and that’s where you stay.

“I can remember we stopped at a cemetery in Belgium and there were all these coffins ready to be put down and that acted as a trench, which was a bit naughty. “After every little battle you always buried your dead – whoever was in your own company. “You would wrap them in a blanket and bury them in a hole. After the war, the War Graves Commission came and dug them up and buried them in cemeteries and that’s what happened to Ralph.

“If you were not fighting, we would have a cook and he would do soup or something like that – nothing fancy. If we were going somewhere and came through a farm, we killed the chickens. “I remember one bloke, he was a full corporal, he kicked this pig and killed it – but we all ate it. If you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat. “If the Germans had been anywhere, we’d often find eggs left behind, and that helped us a lot. “As an infantry man, a lot of the time you didn’t know when you were going to eat. You had to wait for this little truck to come up with bowls of soup.”

After D-Day, Ken – and the 51st Highland Division – was involved in virtually every major conflict up until the end of the war, including in France, Holland, Ardennes – the notorious Battle of the Bulge – and ultimately, across the Rheine and into Germany itself. “You never forget. It always stays with you – but I don’t like to talk about it,” said Ken.

SWORD invasion beach on D-Day.

“I didn’t worry (that I was killing people). You looked after your mates, and they looked after you. You never have such good mates in Civvy Street as you do in the Army. I had a lot of good friends and I lost a few of them. “We had a bloke from Chesterton. He was going on about what he was going to do when he got out there. He was all wind and nothing else. “We went to Le Havre and we never saw him again. He scarpered – did a runner. He went to a camp in Le Havre. I don’t know what happened to him. He was a waste of time. I didn’t think much of him.

“We went to one place in Germany, we were going through these houses we broke in. “There was one where there was a cellar full of women and children. They were shouting, don’t throw anything down (like a grenade) and ‘boom’. “We didn’t, but we went down just to make sure there were no Jerries and they really were just women and children. “In those days, we didn’t have much pity, but I would hate to think I did something like that.”

After the war, Ken returned to his job as a window cleaner, which he did until he retired. He married his wife Lily, now aged 84, in 1952 and the couple had one son, Gary Ralph Wright, now aged 50, and two grandchildren, Christopher, aged 26, and Grace, aged 23. Ken’s second brother Harry died many years ago from lung cancer, aged 49, but he is still close to his sister, Joan Pedley, now aged 84.

Ken said: “I was window cleaning before the war and the bloke I was working for said to me, ‘if you come home, there’s always a job here for you’, and that’s what I did.

“I was de-mobbed from the Army at the end of the war. We were given £40, which was a bit of a pension, but once it was gone you didn’t get anymore. “But you didn’t have a lot of money. It was quite hard for them back home to live. “I used to get 21 shillings as a soldier and I would send 14 bob of that home. Mother had not got any money really. Some of the lads hit the town, but I used to save my money and bring it home. “I had some good times as well. I enjoyed some of it. But there were a lot of bad times. “I do like to go over to France to see Ralph’s grave. I will go again. I would go every month if I could.”