The D-Day landings in Normandy are remembered here through Reg’s experience at the River Dives and its aftermath. At one in the morning, he entered the river in full equipment and led fifty men and an officer through chest-deep water, swamp, and undergrowth. The account gives the operation both its immediate military pressure and its continuing human cost, visible in Reg’s changed condition and his visits to bereaved families.

The River Dives crossing

At one in the morning on D-Day, Reg went into the River Dives fully equipped. He brought fifty men and an officer through the difficult terrain, pressing the slowest forward so the group could continue. The detail presents leadership as a matter of getting the whole party through, even when Reg’s way of doing so made him difficult company.

The aftermath for Reg

By this point, Reg was tense and irritable. He had developed a stammer, and his coordination was impaired. The narrator connects these changes to the campaign’s continuing strain without assigning them a diagnosis. Combat is not confined to the crossing: its effects remain apparent in Reg’s manner and capacities afterward.

Visiting the bereaved

During every period of leave, Reg visited relatives of the dead. When the narrator told him that these visits were doing no good, Reg replied, “Mind your own business,” but the two went to see the families. The account locates the losses across communities reached by blacked-out trains, among bereaved people and homes altered by the war. Reg’s repeated visits and the narrator’s eventual participation extend the remembered event beyond the battlefield, showing how D-Day’s consequences entered the lives of the dead men’s families as well as those who had fought.