"It was only about a day later that we were indeed given our mission, our assignment. We were to assemble at Poole, which is a nice harbor for landing craft because it’s shallow. Big ships can’t go in there but you could put a ton of landing…

"Now we had the skipper on the bridge, the helmsman below him, and the engine room below him, and the radar man. And the fifth man fired the rockets, and that dubious distinction was mine. I got to do the firing. Well, somehow in some sort of…