A FEW years ago, I wrote a poem, for a Writers' Circle competition, about the 1944 D-Day training exercise at Slapton Sands, Devon, that went tragically wrong when hundreds of American soldiers were killed when their landing strips were attacked by German E-boats.

I researched the incident with the help of a friend and sent my poem to a local newspaper near Slapton.

To my knowledge, it was never published. This led me to believe that, after all these years, it was still 'hush hush' and an embarrassment to the Government.

I was interested, therefore, to see the Channel 4 'Secret History' documentary on July 27 about the disaster of 'Operation Tiger.'

A line in my poem which is very poignant to me and which came to me from nowhere was:

"Helmets bobbed on raging waves

Like turtles out to sea."

And when, on TV, I saw the short of an American soldier's helmet on the shingle bank of Slapton Sands, I knew that the line in my poem was sadly correct.

I believe a Sherman tank used in the exercise was recovered and later placed on the shingle bank and can be seen by visitors today, though it was not shown in the film.

It is a fitting memorial to the American soldiers who lost their young lives on the South Devon coast in Operation Tiger a month before D-Day.

ELSIE COLLINGE, Towneley Street, Burnley.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.