The rare Second War Landing-Craft Operations Clearance Unit (L.C.O.C.U.) D.S.M. group of...

The rare Second War Landing-Craft Operations Clearance Unit (L.C.O.C.U.) D.S.M. group of five awarded to Petty Officer H. C. Gore, Royal Navy, who was decorated for his gallantry as a frogman and demolition expert on D-Day and in the contested landings in the South of France Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (P.O., H. C. Gore. R/JX.209374) officially engraved naming; 1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, mounted as worn, extremely fine (5) £2,400-£2,800 --- Importation Duty This lot is subject to importation duty of 5% on the hammer price unless exported outside the UK --- --- Seedies Roll lists a total of just 10 D.S.M.s, 3 D.S.C.s, and one D.S.C. and Bar to L.C.O.C. Units during the Second World War, mainly for the landings in Normandy and the South of France. D.S.M. London Gazette 6 November 1945: ‘For bravery, skill and great devotion to duty in the reconnaissance and destruction of unknown obstacles and mines, and in the rescuing of survivors whose craft had been destroyed in a minefield during the Allied landings in the Baie de Cavalaire in the South of France, June-August 1944. And for similar good services in the landings in Normandy.’ The recommendations for this batch of awards are to be found in the National Archives under reference ADM1/30497 which reads: ‘The Honours and Awards Committee has considered the good services of certain ratings in the destruction of underwater obstacles and mines during the invasion of the South of France, and submits that the King may be asked to approve the Awards set forth below. During the landings in the Baie de Cavallaire in the South of France these ratings successfully carried out under fire the initial reconnaissance of unknown obstacles and mines and achieved their destruction. They also did good work in helping to save the lives of wounded soldiers of the United States Army when the craft in which they were embarked struck mines and was sunk.’ Henry Charles Gore was a frogman in a Landing-Craft Obstruction Clearance Unit, one of 120 such men engaged on D-Day, two of whom were killed and ten wounded; six of them were awarded the D.S.M. Just two L.C.O.C.U. units subsequently participated in the landings in the South of France, making Gore’s award of the D.S.M. most unusual. Lieutenant H. Hargreaves, a L.C.O.C.U. commander, later described what he and his fellow frogmen, such as Gore, faced on D-Day: ‘The invasion of Normandy to the average person was the greatest combined operation that had ever taken place, and that in fact was the truth. However, few people know of the work carried out by small, special units, both before the operation, and during the initial assaults. We were one of the small units which had this particular role to play. A role which was not easy, and from which many of us did not expect to return, but one which we were determined to carry out until our work was completed. For the invasion of Normandy the Force Commanders used approximately a hundred and twenty officers and men of the ‘Locku’ units divided into ten parties, or units. Each unit had an officer and eleven men, and each was allotted to its own beach and had its own particular job to do. In my case, and that of a brother officer, we found ourselves detailed to deal with the obstacles on a beach near the village of La Riviere. We were supposed to go in at H hour, which was the very beginning of the assault. We were dropped into our craft from an L.S.I. at seven o’clock in the morning and went hell-for-leather for the beach, and arrived hoping to find the front row of obstacles on the water’s edge, and not in the water, but discovered some two or three feet of water over them. We left our craft and got to work at once on posts with mines secured to the tops of them, specially constructed wooden ramps which were mined, and steel hedgehogs with mines and anti-aircraft shells on top of them, and we were subjected the whole time to quite a hot fire from rockets, shells and bombs. We must have been about four hundred yards from the beach when the firing first started, and they didn’t forget to inform us that they knew we were coming. When we finally got on the beach we discovered that we were being systematically sniped, not only with rifles but also by odd bursts of machine-gun fire - a most unpleasant experience - but one that we soon got used to. As time went on we almost forgot about it until we realised that opposition was dying down because in the meantime the Army had landed and was dealing with machine-gun posts, mortar posts, and all the other unpleasant places Jerry had prepared for us. The weather was very much worse than anyone would have expected in June, and we had the greatest difficulty working in a very heavy surf. It was hard going and we soon got pretty tired, but in the meantime the obstacles were being slowly but systematically destroyed. As we made an initial gap for the landing craft to come through, so we increased the size of the gap as time went on. We succeeded in clearing the whole of the beach some thousand yards in length, with obstacles going out to over four hundred yards by the end of D Day. That didn’t end our work, of course, although the worst was over. Landing craft of all shapes and sizes were simply pouring on to the beach, and in the meantime, having cleared that beach, we had to proceed to another beach and get rid of the obstacles there. In all, we successfully disposed of over two thousand five hundred obstacles, practically every one mined, in addition to this, as a sort of savoury, we cleared the explosives out of half a dozen beetle tanks. Not long before D Day a special jacket had been invented to protect us against that terrible blast which can be experienced when a mine or shell explodes underwater. This jacket was known as a ‘Kapok Jacket’ and was worn underneath our swim suits. It proved to be a most wonderful thing, and saved the lives of no less than three of my men. One of my Petty Officers, who was working in about six feet of water, had a shell or mortar bomb explode in the water quite close to him, and although he was completely knocked out, and in fact paralysed for several hours, he had no injuries whatever, and no after effects. A Royal Engineer who was swimming towards the beach from one of the landing craft, and was some distance farther away from the explosion than the Petty Officer, was killed outright, and I have no doubt that many men suffered the same fate on that day. I would like to make it quite clear that we don’t in any way look upon ourselves as supermen, or heroes, or anything like that at all, and we did not by any means clear all the obstacles off the beaches in time for the landing craft to get in. There were nowhere near enough of us to have hoped to do it. What we could, and did do, was to clear an initial gap for the landing craft to beach safely, and to increase that gap as quickly as possible until the beach was entirely free from obstacles. Consequently many of the landing craft who didn’t use the gap, because of the simple fact that there just wasn’t room for them, struck obstacles, or had holes blown in them or their bottoms torn out, with the result that many men had to swim ashore with full equipment. When our original job had been completed we had to keep our reputation as ‘Jack the Handyman’ by doing many jobs to assist on the beaches, such as winching drowned vehicles out of the water. We did this by taking a wire with a hook on the end, right out to sea in our swim suits and breathing sets, hook up the vehicle, come to the surface and signal to the operator ashore to...