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Langdon got men ashore without loss Wendy Aldiss
Last updated at 12:01AM, November 21 2015
Marine who was in charge of landing troops on to
Sword beach during the D-Day landings
John Langdon commanded the first wave of landing craft
putting British troops ashore at Sword beach on D-Day. As a
Royal Marines lieutenant, he had nine landing craft assault
(LCAs), each manned by four Marines to carry the leading
companies of the 1st South Lancashires and 2nd East
Yorkshires seven miles through a heavy swell to the Normandy
shoreline.
Shortly before the men clambered into the LCAs from the
landing ship Empire Broadsword, he had listened to Major
Charles King of the East Yorkshires — who would win the DSO
and bar before being killed in France — read aloud to his men
Shakespeare’s Henry Vspeech before Agincourt:
“And gentlemen in England now-a-bed/ Shall think
themselves accurs’d they were not here/And hold their
manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/That fought with us upon
Saint Crispin’s day.”
The sea was alive with ships below attacking aircraft. The
Norwegian destroyer Svenner was torpedoed and sunk abeam
of Broadsword. Survivors were picked up, but heading for the
shore Langdon had eyes only for mines on the surface, any one
of which could rip the bottom out of an LCA. The Marines of
538 Flotilla got the infantry ashore without loss — yet 25 per
cent of them died or were seriously wounded on the beaches in
the hours ahead.
Returning to Broadsword lying off Ouistreham, Langdon was
asked to ferry ashore a beach control party whose LCA had
been wrecked. After the second wave of LCAs had returned
from the shore, Broadsword picked up some wounded men,
including enemy soldiers, before returning to the Solent. She
made four more Channel crossings, ferrying American troops
to Utah beach north of Carentan, with Langdon leading groups
of the ship’s own LCAs ashore or utilising others that had been
stranded on the beach.
Returning from her fifth crossing, Broadsword struck two
mines almost simultaneously and began sinking by the stern.
Langdon just had time to collect his Bible and a pair of tennis
rackets that he had used to keep his men active. Throwing the
rackets into one of the LCAs, he jumped into the sea.
Broadsword delivered more than 5,000 British and US troops
to the beaches before being sunk.
After ten days leave, Langdon went to the Far East to join No
44 (Royal Marines) Commando in Burma. While he was
embarking in a landing craft to capture Ramree Island off
Arakan, a Japanese shell killed the coxswain. Langdon took
over the wheel and steered to safety. The island was captured,
with many of the enemy killed by salt-water crocodiles as they
attempted to escape.
John Bonsall Langdon was born in 1921 in Enderby in the
Canadian Rockies, where the family lived in a log cabin built
by his father, Colonel JFP Langdon. He was educated at
Oundle and commissioned into the Royal Marines in 1942.
After the war, he studied PPE at Lincoln College, Oxford.
He was ordained in 1954 and, after several curacies, he
became rector of St Mary’s Swillington near Leeds in 1960.
There were two working pits in the parish and he went down
them to see the conditions in which he might have to
administer the last rites.
Langdon did a course in London that required him to live
homeless and penniless to discover how the destitute survive.
When trying to get a job at the Hilton hotel, he was told to go
to the back door. The Yorkshire Post picked up the story under
the headline, “Rector told to move on by the police.”
In 1985, he moved to St Mark’s, Leeds Woodhouse, where the
vicar had committed suicide, the vicarage burnt down and the
half-built replacement occupied by squatters. He camped in
the burnt-out ruin, which was burgled while he was in Leeds
Infirmary suffering from exhaustion. His mother’s jewellery
and his television were taken, but he recovered the TV by
paying a lad £5 to find it.
Langdon, who was unmarried, was honorary minor canon of
Ripon Cathedral until his death. He revisited the Normandy
beaches for the 70th anniversary of D-Day, carrying the Bible
he had rescued from the Empire Broadsword. France
appointed him to the Legion of Honour while he was in
hospital shortly before he died. He pinned the medal to his
NHS gown with quiet satisfaction.
The Rev John Langdon, D-Day veteran, was born on
April 24, 1921. He died on November 4, 2015, aged 94