THE FIRST ON JUNO BEACH

As a member of the RAF Beach Squadrons, Teacher's job was to help unload and dispatch personnel and equipment

A mid a choppy sea on 6 June 1944, a 20-year-old leading aircraftman of the RAF Beach Squadrons sat on top of his truck and observed the vast armada he was part of: “It was unbelievable. You could not realise what was going on. There were thousands of ships and landing craft, battleships, destroyers, aircraft flying overhead… the noise was unbelievable. When the navy started bombarding a couple of hours before we went ashore, it was horrendous.”

As the flotilla made its way south, David Teacher remembers wanting to start what he had trained for months to do: “I just wanted to get on with it. I was just keen to get ashore and get started. We’d been trained repeatedly and now it was a case of putting it all into practice and seeing how well it went. As it happens it went very well indeed. The weather caused more damage than the enemy.”

The official orders for the Beach Squadrons on D-Day were as follows: “Nos. 1, 2 and 4 RAF Beach Squadrons will work with the Army Beach Organisation to supervise the discharge of RAF personnel, vehicles and stores, and movement to the forward area of all units.” The ‘discharge’ area for Teacher would be on Juno sector.

Juno formed part of five Allied assault sectors along the Normandy coast. The area was a 6-mile (10km) stretch of coast centred around the small fishing village of Courseulles-sur-Mer and split into three sectors known as ‘Love’, ‘Mike’ and ‘Nan’. Unlike Gold and Sword sectors, which were primarily assaulted by the British, Juno was in the hands of the Canadian 3rd Division. Their task would be to link up with Gold to the west and Sword to the east. Nevertheless, before the bulk of the Canadians could land, the beach units – including Teacher’s – had to disembark and establish themselves.