Normandy veterans speak: Vic Mackenzie I was the driver of a truck bringing shells for tanks and other ammunition right into the front line...The division moved forward, a huge column, to capture a town called Villers-Bocage (on 13 June). We thought we were doing fine until we ran into German tanks, just a handful of them. They took out the first tank in our column and the last vehicle and they pounded and pounded us. We lost 200 vehicles in two days. Later, crossing the river Orne, a shell hit the truck in front of mine. The driver, Corporal Archie, "Johnny" Ellis, was my best friend. He was our joker, the man who could always make us laugh. He was blown to bits. A piece of shrapnel came through the front window of my truck and grazed my head. I still have it. When I get together with other veterans, it all seems unreal to us now, like a dream. Did we really do those things? Was it really us? There were 75 members of my branch of the Normandy Veterans' Association (the Hackney branch) when I joined. Now we get six or seven along to a meeting. It's important that people should remember but I'm not sure that young people these days understand or want to know. It's all a long time ago for them. What I would like them to know is this: we were fighting for our lives, for everything we had. I never heard anyone express any doubts about why we there. Maybe it is justified; maybe it is not. But then we knew we that we were fighting against something monstrous and for everything that was dear to us. After I saw those heaps of bodies at Belsen I never wanted to go back to Germany again.