“Dad was on his deathbed when he told me about D-Day”

Joe McGann was on his deathbed when he told his son Stephen all about his heroic role on D-Day.

Kensington-born actor Stephen, 61, has always been interested in his family history – particularly his father’s experiences as a Royal Naval Commando in the Second World War. However, like many who served, Joe was not always willing to open up.

Stephen told the ECHO: “Like a lot of guys in his day, he never talked much about the details. He knew I was interested when I was a kid and told me things.

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“My father suddenly became seriously ill in 1984. I thought he would die overnight, but the four of us boys were in London, being actors.

“We all rushed to Liverpool and he was dying but he survived the night and lived another seven days with heart problems. I had time with him.

“One of the things I did with the time I had was to ask him to tell me about the war – he used to talk occasionally if a film like ‘The Longest Day’ was on and that would he opened up a bit about the logistics all the boys liked – it was like the Commando comics.

“But on my deathbed, I said to him one day, ‘Dad, tell us about this one more time.’ He smiled at me because he knew what I was asking.

“I had already started the family history by then. To his credit – I will always love him for it – he started right from the start of his war service.

“He only told me once, all the way through. A lot of that comes from his account that day, mixed in with the other research I was able to do.”

Joe was born in Liverpool in 1924 and grew up on Upper Frederick Street. As a teenager he helped the Liverpool guards during the May Blitz, which .

He joined the Navy in 1943. A year later – on June 6, 1944 – he found himself on Gold Beach, one of the five sites targeted by the Allies on D-Day.

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings – which saw Allied forces invade Normandy by sea to begin the liberation of France and Western Europe from the Nazis. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history, laying the foundation for Allied victory.

Joe played a heroic role. But it was one that nearly cost him his life and lived with him for the rest of his days.

Stephen said: “In 1943, like many people in Liverpool, he was a navy guy. He was on a ship called The Royal Arthur, which was in the North Sea – a trawler that escorted convoys.

“My father thought he was a submariner. So he went to his commander and said this.

“The next thing he knew, he was posted to Scotland and was part of what they called Combined Operations, which was a combined service for the forerunners of the SAS and the commandos.

“They formed a special squad of specialist commandos – these guys had to land in the first wave on D-Day, set up a signal station on the beach and get everyone else moving through it as quickly as possible, clearing the messiest parts of it.

“It combined all the services into special operations groups – one of those groups was the Royal Naval Commandos.

“Dad was in the radio signal section and his job on D-Day was to go to the first wave on the beach with a radio on the back and coordinate the bombing. First, he had to get up on the beach. and survive.”

It was far from a simple task.

Stephen added: “It was a rough night the night before. He remembered going in a landing craft in the first wave, shells going overhead.

“When he got to the beach, as many accounts say, they were too far from the beach and the beaches were already a mess. It was crazy there – people were drowning in the water and there was a patrol party already shooting at them when they arrived.

“Dad went over the edge – some of his friends drowned. One thing I’ll never forget when he talked about it with me was that he took a deep breath and said “war, son, is a terrible, terrible thing.”

“That’s what he used to say, like you could see through his eyes.

“What he was able to convey to me was the horror and chaos of it. They struggled, he was wet, his radio package was destroyed.

“He was struggling behind one of those beach defenses the Germans had put up. He stayed there for a while but realized that if he was going to live he was going to have to get up on the beach. He saw his mate die from the friendly fire, he watched terrible things.

“But it zig-zagged and went up the beach. The Royal Marines were also coming and he managed to get to them.

“The marines gave him a tommy gun and he made it to the beach wall. He must have done well to get there, but the next thing he knew a stick grenade came over the wall and he didn’t see it until it was too late. .

“He took 50 separate pieces of shrapnel in his body – he turned on his side and all these things went up his body. He was bleeding on the beach.”

Joe passed out. When he awoke he was in a bed at Leicester Royal Infirmary – a logistical error had sent him to the East Midlands rather than home to Liverpool.

Since she hadn’t heard from her son, Joe’s mother thought he had died during the landing. But he was nursed back to health in Leicester with the help of penicillin – then a cutting edge medical innovation.

Joe’s physical injuries were healed. However, his sanity would never recover from the events of that day.

“The experience stayed with him for the rest of his life,” Stephen said. “He was only 20 years old.

“He always managed to convey the right sense of confusion, of terrible blind luck that can happen to good men, good men who have lost, what courage is. As his son, what I’m wondering is, when are you behind that beach. defense what makes you get up and move on My old man got up?

“Every boy looks at that when he’s little and thinks ‘what would I do?’ The honest answer is you don’t know. Maybe you would wake up, but maybe you wouldn’t. My dad was tested and he did it, so bless him for that, but it was a grueling experience.”

After the war, life went on for Joe. She raised her four sons (all actors – Stephen, Paul, Mark and Joe Junior) and daughter Claire, named after their mother.

But the war stayed with him. Most acutely, this came in the form of the words “Anxiety Neurosis” being stamped on his war record. Now understood as post-traumatic stress disorder, being labeled with such a phrase weighed heavily on Joe’s shoulders.

Stephen said: “People talk very easily about long distance conflict and war now. That generation – the generation I grew up with – the war was in their front rooms.

“My dad never went abroad after D-Day. We used to laugh about it – the only time he left England someone tried to kill him, they threw a grenade at him. So we all went to Butlin’s instead.

“Dad came back from France and was well, recovered, served the day well and did his duty. But because he was such an old-fashioned man, it was very difficult for him to reconcile this.

“There must have been a nervousness with him. His file was stamped with the words “Anxiety Neurosis.”

“Today, they sent him to talk to someone, to detox. Then it became a mark of shame for him, it was in his file and someone had seen it. We were not enlightened then.

“Soldiers are going through the same things now, they rightly have access to support. It’s not a normal situation – this 20-year-old has to go back and pretend nothing happened and hang over him.

“He thought you should stand up straight, so he hit him pretty hard. You never saw it – kept it in, down and hidden.

“He never talked about it, I found out later that it was a sign of personal shame for him – that it was somewhere in his file.”

Joe died of heart failure in 1984 at the age of 60. Stephen is extremely proud of the part his father played on D-Day, but wishes he could have reconciled with him.

“Even if my dad had lived to be 60 years old from D-Day, it would have been wonderful for him to see that,” Stephen said. “I just wish I could have seen a little more.

“I wish I could have seen how the world remembered him more than he thought and respected him more than he thought. Through my father, I enjoyed real peace. But he and his generation paid a hell of a price for that peace – many could never reckon with it.

“The world went on after D-Day, it was worth it in the end, but it was a miserable thing to have to go through.”

Stephen and Paul McGann tell their father Joe McGann’s story in episode eight of Noiser’s new D-Day podcast, to be distributed by BBC Sounds.