Landing with her war hero grandad on the Normandy beach where he fought almost 80 years ago, Vicky McClure is “completely floored” with emotion.
The Line of Duty and Trigger Point actress wipes away tears as 97-year-old Ralph McClure describes D-Day as “hell let loose” as he looks wistfully out to sea.
He says: “It’s hard to equate it. All that water around there was absolutely full of boats and troops. It was a bit noisier than this.”
For a long time, he didn’t tell anyone in his family about the role he played on one of the Second World War’s most important days.
“I kept it in the back of my mind,” says the former Royal Navy signalman, who joined up aged 17 after quitting his butcher’s job.
Vicky, who visited Normandy on the French coast for an ITV documentary, reveals her grandad’s war story hit her “like a ton of bricks” because she previously had no idea what he had been through.
In the programme – Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War – she wants to find out how a lad from Nottingham found himself in the Royal Navy and at the centre of the battle on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.
It’s a powerful experience as Vicky learns about Ralph’s role in the Navy, the training, the terrifying conditions and tank-like boats that made sailors violently sick, as well as the moment he saw a bomb land on his friend’s ship.
On the ferry to Normandy, Ralph recalls being on his landing craft on the 22-hour voyage from Newhaven, East Sussex, with the task of delivering heavy tanks under German fire.
Ralph, who would stand on the bridge on lookout, recalls the conditions on board being “rough but enough”.
He adds: “I wasn’t excited or scared, just wondering what to expect.
“We knew it was on, so the sooner we got it over the better. The sea was very rough.
“I will never forget coming in for the landing. I was on the bridge, bending down to see.
“We will have dropped anchor a long way from the shore. We would have to wait for the signal from the beach.
“Going in, we wouldn’t see anything. You’re down, being fired at as you went in.
“On the beach it was all mined... There were all these houses, that’s where the snipers were.
“Explosives dropped on the sea and exploded. They did a lot of damage. We just concentrated on getting the tanks in.”
When Vicky asks Ralph what he expected on the beach, he thinks for a moment before saying: “Trouble”.
The D-Day landings came up against fierce resistance. More than 4,400 Allied soldiers were killed on that first day.
Vicky tells her grandad: “The thought of being in the sea under gunfire, just the incredible bravery of you and all those with you on the ship, it takes my breath away.”
“Just doing a job weren’t we,” says Ralph, who was responsible for communications on his ship – HMS LCT 952 – using things such as Morse code and signal flags.
Arriving back on Sword Beach, near the town of Ouistreham, Ralph – wearing his military uniform and medals – says: “We were carrying eight tanks to the beaches. When I realised there were snipers, we went straight to the tanks where they couldn’t touch us.”
With her make-up running down her face, Vicky asks her grandad if he feels proud.
“I think I ought to be now,” says Ralph after a moment. “Yes I am.”
In a bid to experience a little of what it might have been like on D-Day for the heroes who assaulted the beaches, 40-year-old Vicky tries to wade in and out of the sea in battle dress. “I would have died,” she says, exhausted.
Then, at the British Normandy Memorial, which bears all 22,442 names of the men and women who died under British command on D-Day and at the Battle of Normandy, Ralph wants to look for a name.
He says: “He was a friend, about the same age, probably 18, from Leeds. After the landing he was on the next ship and I called across, ‘We’re ready for a pint’, and he said, ‘Oh, we’ll have more than one when we get home’.
“That’s when a shell dropped on the ship. There was a big flash where he was standing. I never found out whether it killed him or not.”
The name is not on the memorial, which gives him hope his pal may have survived.
On Winston Churchill’s visit to Normandy after D-Day, Ralph says: “I was on the bridge with the binoculars watching him. He came ashore in his car with his cigar in his mouth.
“He threw it out of the car. About 15 or 20 soldiers dived into the sand scraping around trying to get it for a souvenir.”
On hearing Ralph finally opening up, Vicky says: “This has completely floored me.
“Everyone that sees him with his medals on wants to meet him and shake his hand. Everyone who has approached him has got emotional and they don’t know him. There are not many people left to thank.
“To hear about D-Day from my grandad, who was there, means an awful lot to me.”
Vicky is very close to Ralph, who lives round the corner from her in Nottingham.
She says: “He’s a lovely man. He loves his garden, he loves football – he’s still a Notts County season-ticket holder.”
Great-grandad Ralph, who married Vicky’s nan Jean in 1948, says the family love to see Vicky on telly.
Ralph grew up in a working class area of Nottingham called The Meadows, with a tin bath in the living room and an outside toilet.
His life revolved around footie but his mum persuaded him being a butcher was a more stable career. He remembers the air attack on the city in 1941, saying: “When the raid came over we were in the house. We went underneath the table when they dropped [a] bomb and it demolished three rows nearby.
“Most people in them were killed. We had windows and doors blown out.”
A year later he signed up despite having an exemption from duty on the grounds of supplying the public with food. He says his boss called him a “fool” for joining up.
After his military service, Ralph returned to his life as a butcher.
On Ralph’s war revelations, Vicky says: “Knowing now more than I did, it’s hard because he’s always just been my grandad.
“I’ve seen pictures around the house where he’s got his uniform on, and thought nothing of it as a kid. But if his name was on that memorial wall, I wouldn’t be here.”
Vicky McClure: My Grandad’s War is on Monday June 5, ITV1, 9pm.
