A Kiwi view

The Maori battalion pushed forward on our left flank, charging into the enemy with blood thirsty cries and much shouting. On approaching a small group of stone houses we met with a withering fire from machine-gun positions in upper and lower floors of the houses. These we attacked with fierce determination and succeeded in wiping them out. One house in particular put up a stubborn resistance and was causing many casualties on our men. Lieutenant Maxwell, our platoon officer, called for hand grenades. I was the only one in the platoon that had one, this he took from me and called on us to give him covering fire whilst he dashed forward and flung the grenade at the door of the house. With an ear-splitting blast the door blew off its hinges, whilst we kept up a steady fire through all the shuttered windows. This had the desired effect, about six to eight Germans emerged with arms raised. These were taken prisoner and moved back under guard.

The advance continued and on our right now was the beach, the sight that met our eyes was one of violent destruction and carnage, scores of gliders lay scattered everywhere the whole length of the beach where they crash landed ploughing into one another in a tangled mass of wreckage, some were still burning. Again we came under fire apparently from one of the crashed aircraft, with one concerted charge at the point of the bayonet we overrun the Germans wiping out six or seven. Before moving off we entered one of the gliders, noticing a large urn with a tap fixed to the fuselage, we turned on the tap and dark brown ersatz coffee ran out - still warm. The sky was now turning grey heralding the pre-dawn. We were well behind schedule.

Finally we fought our way to the perimeter of the airfield which was like a platoon in front of us, on slightly higher ground, we advanced to the edge of the "drome" shielded by the raised ground in front of us from fire from the airfield. Once we were in position we were told by our officer that this was to be the final assault on the "drome".

At his command we rose as one man and stormed up the slope. I had just gained the higher ground in full view of the aerodrome and with bren gun at hip when I felt a tremendous blow to my left shoulder which flung me backwards down the slope I had just surmounted, at the same instant that I came to rest a mortar bomb exploded with a terrific blast several yards from me and I felt another blow in my right arm, this blast momentarily stunned me and when I eventually clambered to my feet I felt a numbing sensation in my arm and realised I had been hit by a splinter from the bomb. I had difficulty in carrying the heavy bren gun but at this moment a soldier passed me and exchanged the bren gun for his much lighter rifle.

As I was making up my mind as to what I should do, a medical officer approached me and asked if I was all right; having told him of my wounds he set to work and applied field dressings, then tying a "wounded" label on my battle dress blouse he told me to make my way back to the first aid post - about a mile back. As he was telling me this a German fighter plane skimmed over us at tree top level machine gunning, one soldier had been caught in the hail of bullets, he ran past me screaming holding his intestines in with his hands, my last glimpse of him was the medical officer had thrown him to the ground and was doing what he could for the soldier.

Beel made his way to 2/7 General Hospital which was treating both German and British wounded.