Baie de la Seine

July 2, 1944 – Normandy, France

This is the scene Albert Allsop would have gazed upon in the early morning of July 2, 1944.

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Albert was strapped into the driver’s seat of a fuel truck being transported across the English Channel, on a barge like this one.  His orders were to drive the fuel truck onto the shore when it landed at Juno Beach.

The truck and its cargo were to reach the mainland, “at any cost”.

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I gathered the story of Albert Allsop’s crossing the English Channel in segments. He never told the story from start to finish, it was fed to me at intervals, during conversations over several years.  I have pieced together those snippets of conversation and overlayed them with historical records. I apologize in advance if the narrative that follows comes across like intermittent machine-gun fire.

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Al’s unit remained in southern England after the Allied invasion of occupied France on June 6, 1944. The 39th continued to fly reconnaissance missions which provided valuable military intelligence on German positions. That data helped the Allies establish a foothold on the continent. 

By July, the Reconnaissance wing was ready to move their base to France. Al and the other soldiers prepared to relocate their entire platoon of men, equipment, fuel, and aircraft, across the Channel.

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Al told me that large helium balloons were attached to each barge, with high-tensile wire used as a tether.  The balloons and wire were a deterrent to enemy aircraft; if they came in low to fire on the barges, they would get tangled in the wires.

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As they neared the beach, lookouts were positioned on the gunnels on either side of the ramp gate.  The soldiers were tasked with directing the boat’s pilot with hand signals, to navigate through shallow water. Al watched as the lookouts gave their signals and hoped that they would find a safe place to land.

The barge approached shore at full speed. Al told me that they hit an unexpected sandbar, which propelled the lookouts overboard.

“I never saw those poor bastards again”.

The barge pilot attempted to reverse off the sandbar but couldn’t move.  The troop leader on board gave a command to lower the ramp. As it came down, Al saw what looked like an ocean of water between his truck and the shore. When the ramp was fully lowered into the water, Al placed the shifter in low gear and eased off the clutch. The loaded fuel truck, with Al strapped in the seat, rolled into the Baie de la Seine.

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When the truck drove off the ramp the tires contacted solid sand bottom.  Al’s elation with this development was short-lived.  The sea floor remained solid, but it sloped downward, not up toward the beach.  The truck crawled through ever deeper water, inching toward shore.  Sea water rose past the floorboards and climbed the steering column.  The truck, still in the lowest gear, pushed a wall of water with the grill. The shore was still a long way off.

Back in England, Al and the other drivers had been strapped into their trucks with seatbelts in such a way that they could not release themselves from their position in the driver’s seat.  Officers were aware that there was a chance that trucks might enter deep water when the barges landed on the French shore and they were taking no chances that drivers could abandon the trucks and their precious cargo of fuel.

Panic was creeping into Al’s mind as the water level reached his waist, then his chest, with no way to bail out, as the truck descended ever deeper. 

Al told me that the channel crossing was his worst experience of the entire war.  He was convinced that he was going to drown, strapped into a truck, with no way of saving himself.

Fortunately, the bottom of the Bay levelled out and started to slope upward. The engine never failed.  Al triumphantly drove his truck and cargo onto Juno beach that day.  He was cut out of the driver’s seat by his crew mates.

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Albert’s humility, and our freedom, were both forged in the chilly waters of the …

… Baie de la Seine.

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This is the fifth in a series of posts following Albert Allsop’s trek through Europe in 1944-45. The series begins September 28, 2025.

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