大象传媒

TANKS FOR THE MEMORY

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by John Hughes, a volunteer from Three Counties Radio, on behalf of his father in law, Ken Derrick, and has been added to the site with his permission. Ken fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was a young man when I was called up from the Territorials to the Regulars in 1939, 18 years old, but I grew up very fast over the next six years, most of which were spent overseas, and I didn鈥檛 see home or family for months on end. However, the Army Post Office worked remarkably well and letters and parcels eventually found me. Unfortunately, not all parcels arrived intact because they were not packed well enough to withstand the journey to the front line troops. Sometimes, the contents were repacked by the Army Post and became a bit mixed up. My employers, formerly Robinsons, the cattle feed makers at Avonmouth and later BOCM, as a part of Unilever, sent me a parcel of Unilever products. These ranged from food to soap, and when they got mixed up, the food acquired a particularly unusual, if clean, taste. My employers were very good to me. They made up my Army pay to what it would have been if I鈥檇 still been in full time work with them and they gave me the accumulated payments of an increase in wages they made when I reached the ripe old age of 21. And when I was demobbed in 1945, they had a job for me and took me back straight away.

I joined the Tank Regiment and went training in several places, learning all the jobs of the tank crew, from driving to gunnery, finally specialising in radio communications. I鈥檝e told stories elsewhere on this website about some of my experiences, but I can鈥檛 hope to convey to the reader what it was like in those days. Sometimes we were bored, sometimes we were cold, sometimes hot, hungry, thirsty, always tired and nearly always anxious, if not downright scared. There were some good times too. But above all, we had comradeship, which, among the survivors, lasted the rest of our lives. Unless you鈥檝e been in those conditions, you cannot fully understand the bond that grows between people forced together in those conditions.

Our tanks were our homes. Many of my friends died in them. I had to leave my home several times in a hurry, when enemy fire caught us. The first time was in Egypt, when the tank caught fire. The second was in Italy, when an 88mm shell went through the hull. On the third occasion, the driver was trapped in his seat because the gun was positioned over it. He couldn鈥檛 get out of the floor hatch either, because we were on soft ground and the tank had settled and was burning. He died, but we had to recover his body and I was detailed for the job, with a medical orderly. We couldn鈥檛 pull him out because his foot was jammed under the clutch pedal. The orderly gave me a rusty bladed hacksaw and told me to cut off the driver鈥檚 foot. I couldn鈥檛 do it. Eventually his body was recovered and he was buried in a churchyard nearby.

On the last occasion, we were in Holland, some time after the D-Day invasion. We鈥檇 spent the night of 6 June 1944 out at sea because it was too rough to land our tanks. So we entered occupied territory on the next day. It was hard fighting through France and Holland. The German forces resisted strongly and there was never an easy time of it. Tank casualties were very high. Somewhere near Oosterbeek, we were in a line of sixteen British tanks moving forward in the dark. We were trying to join a column of armoured vehicles on a major road. Dick Cobb, our driver, bumped into one of the other tanks. Unfortunately, that column was German. Both sides must have realised this at the same moment, but I clearly heard the command 鈥淔euer鈥� and the skilled German gunners opened fire on the lead tank 鈥� mine 鈥� and the rear one, to trap all tanks in between. I felt the PIAT (Personnel Infantry Anti-Tank; a shoulder mounted, portable anti-tank weapon) missile pass beneath my seat. It sounded like a train going through a tunnel as the armour piercing head of the projectile flew round and round inside the hull beneath me. Ken Thomas, the co-driver, was killed.

The German tactic worked, we couldn鈥檛 go forward or back, or get off the road. As radio operator, I was in the turret and reached down to help the gunner, Cliff Staddon, to get clear. The cordite for our shells was stored in racks, in silk bags, around the inside of the turret. These started to burn fiercely and the blast of hot expanding gas from them took us up and out of the tank. Cliff was burned and I lost all my hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, but was lucky to be otherwise unhurt. The rest of our tanks were picked off and there was nothing else to do but try to get away.

I carried Cliff along a dried up river bed, and found it full of German bodies. But these were asleep. Unknown to us, they had reoccupied the village. I tapped on a door, which was opened cautiously by the vicar, who explained what had happened. We set off again, and then I heard English voices. We鈥檇 found a British light tank and a battle tank, together with supporting infantry and some German prisoners. A brave farmer and his daughter gave us what food they could, a very dangerous thing to do, and a doctor gave medical help and information about a Tiger tank, equipped with an 88 mm anti-tank gun, located nearby. This was a serious threat to our tanks. I contacted the battalion commander through our new friends鈥� tank radio, but the situation was so confused that it was impossible to send in a rescue party to pick us up.

Having had enough by this time, I decided that we鈥檇 walk back to our lines, taking with us the prisoners and some others we鈥檇 collected in our wanderings, a total of around thirty. No shots were fired as we drew near our comrades and our prisoners made no attempt to escape. They鈥檇 had enough too, and were probably glad to still be alive and wanted to stay that way. The welcome I got from the major was 鈥渨hat the bloody hell鈥檚 this lot, Derrick?鈥�, but it was softened by a promise to recommend me for a medal. He was true to his word and I was proud to receive the Military Medal.

Cliff and Dick survived the war.

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