Marshalling and Embarkation Area 'D1' Sub area 'Z'. Camp D-3 Yellowham

Please do not enter the woodland without the farmers permission as it is used for shooting.

 

Map of area W.

Plan of the woodland : the green track is the main access. Starting at A the guard hut and moving up the hill to the main camp. Used in the spring of 1944 as a "Marshalling area" for soldiers going to France for D-day and then possibly reused as POW camps afterwards.

Yellowham was Marshalling area 'D', sub area 'W', Camp No. D 3 Yellowham. It was staffed by the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, there duties were to clean, build, camouflage, staff and organise these camps for the purpose of feeding, supplying, entertaining, guarding and administering to the 1500 combat troops and 220 vehicles that were here.

Guard room hut A. 'A' the first hut at the bottom of the hill just off the track was the Guard Room. The hut could have been a wooden hut or a Nissan hut. I am trying to locate the units that used the wood but I think they may have been members of the 16th US Inf. Destined for Omaha Beach. I know 'A' Company were at D1 which is Puddletown just over the hill to the NE.

Guard room hut A.

Guard room hut A entrance.

Looking up the hill towards the main camp.

Looking up the hill towards the main camp.

Hut 'B'. You can just make out the steps up and the base of this hut. There are three huts like this. Dimensions are, the main hut (all dimensions in feet and inches) 40ft x 24ft and the extension with the steps 36ft x 15ft.

Hut 'C' higher up the hill. Not too exciting I know but when I am told "There is nothing left to see", I usually find something.

Around hut 'C' are several screw picket posts. It would be nice to think that this was the hut which had the plans for the D-day beach that the soldiers camped here were to land on. From the book 'The Bedford Boys' "sentries were posted everywhere to keep us from escaping. Barbed wire curled along high perimeter fences, giving D-1 the look of a POW enclosure.

There are two pieces of this type of pottery (I have no clue as to what they were used for) it was made at West Howe Pottery on the outskirts of Bournemouth. Now all that remains of the pottery is a road named Elliotts Road, West Howe, Bournemouth.

Thread to bolt down a piece of 4x2 timber for the hut. I am not sure what style of hut was built in any of the D-Camps, I would like to know. They could be wooden huts or an asbestoses type as I have found asbestos on one site.

There are two of these frames, I have again no idea if they are contemporary to the camp.

Hard to see in these pictures but this is a metal 'Mat' laid down to help vehicles to climb, what would have been a muddy track without churning it up and making it unusable. I think it was Bar & Rod and Sommerfeld tracking. I have also found it on Omaha Beach Wn60.

The track was purpose built and has quite heavy foundations

Bars and rods.

Drainage and mains water supply. They would have needed a lot of water up here.

Cable man hole, there is also one at D4 Came Park.

Not sure of this structure. At D4 Came Park is a circular building, here its a half circle.

Trenches all over the area.

Tree markings.

--1944-- Buffalo Could it be Buffalo New York.