Normandy survivor gets top honour
By Xie Fang (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-06 05:56
HANGZHOU: Huang Tingxin, the only survivor of 24 Chinese naval officers who
participated in the Normandy D-Day landings 62 years ago, received France's
highest honour yesterday in recognition of his valour during World War II.
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| Huang
Tingxin wearing the medal at yesterday's ceremony. |
| Jean-Marin Schuh, French consul
general in Shanghai, travelled to the veteran's home in Hangzhou, capital of
East China's Zhejiang Province, to present him the award.
Huang, 88, suffers from a heart ailment and Parkinson's Disease.
A native of Anhui Province, Huang graduated from a naval school in Qingdao,
Shandong Province, in the late 1930s. In 1942, during the War of Resistance
against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), Huang and 23 other naval officers were
chosen by the then Nationalist government to study at the Britannia Royal Naval
College in Greenwich, Britain.
They were then posted to fleets operating in different war theatres for
internship in March 1944.
Huang served on escort carrier "Searcher" and his duty was to keep watch over
the angle of the carrier on the sea and its position in the fleet formation.
"It was no small task as the smooth landing and take-off of aircraft depended
on the tilt of the carrier," Huang recalled in earlier interviews.
At midnight on June 5, 1944 the eve of D-Day his warship slipped its moorings
in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and sailed south; and it was not until the next
morning that Huang and his peers heard on the BBC that the allied forces had
landed at Normandy.
"Only then did we know what our mission was that night," Huang said. "All of
us were overjoyed at the news, but we didn't feel completely relieved until our
escort mission ended."
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