大象传媒

Martin Heywood in Conversation with his Uncle Stanley Arthur Coo, March 14th 1999

Driving for the Brigadier, Chapter 2

MH: You say he was typing a lot every night, writing up his reports in his tent?

SC: Oh yeah, another time there was a farmhouse occupied by the Luftwaffe ground crew. They were supposed to be dead keen fighters this Luftwaffe ground crew. It was a radio station to do with the German air force. Anyway we come up with these boys of ours, we was trying to take this farmhouse. We stuck with them to the end, then we went in and the old Brigadier, the first thing he sees was a typewriter. Stuck it under this arm. He said, "We'll have that!" Anyway he took the typewriter out, put it in the jeep and walked back down to the front of the farm again and we're all standing there, all of a sudden a bloke pointed down the alleyway that ran down the side of this farm and there's two Germans coming down the road with their hands up, one walking in front of the other. All our boys stood there waiting for them, when all of a sudden the front one bent down and the bloke behind had a machine gun on this other blokes back. They opened up; he killed four of our blokes straight away just like that. He didn't last ten seconds after that because the rest of 'em just annihilated them. But he killed four of our blokes..... that's how fanatical they were. He knew he'd get killed but he was quite prepared to do it.

MH: It must have been terrible.

SC: But its hard luck for the poor buggers that got shot, that what annoys me, they thought it was all over, just standing there watching.

MH: Did you used to drive from one end of the front line to the other?
How long would that take, a couple of days or a day?

SC: No hours, a matter of hours. We were the first to get through to the Yanks. The Yanks were a bit further up the coast than us. After we had been to these where..... the thing I was telling you about, (The bombing of the concrete gun emplacements where we started our conversation. MH) we went a bit further through a wood, and we met a Yankee patrol. Of course we all got shaking hands and they all piled in the jeep, about six of them as well as us two and we went across to the Yanks. Utah beach I think it was, and that was the first contact that was made on shore.

MH: Oh Right! What between the two different parties? You were on Gold, was it?

SC: There was two lots of Yanks first, on the west, and then there's British and Canadians and so on. But it was the first time these two had met each other, for although they'd landed not far away, but they'd just hadn't met.

MH: There would have been Germans between you then.

SC: Yes, that's when I found a lovely BMW motorbike and sidecar in this wood. We got out and looked at it. He (The Brigadier. MH.) Said, "Don't touch it!" and I said "Don't worry I'm not!" It was a beauty. Sidecar drive, it was really a first class job it was. They was booby-trapping everything, you see. Never touch anything. Me being a motorcyclist at the time I was rather keen to have a look at it. Anyway we went to see the officers and come back again and when we came back we came a different route, which went into Bayeux, and when we go there we came to a damn great tree blocking the road. Someone had chopped a tree down blocking the road completely. All our troops were on the far side of it and hadn't got any further because they couldn't shift this tree. They'd cut the tree down and dropped it across the road, on the grass verge between the hedge and the thing they'd put a great big dustbin mine. You could tell the thing, ordinary mine is only about this size (Stan shows me the size of an ordinary mine with his hands. MH.), but this thing was what you called a dustbin lid mine about 3 feet across and they bury it and covered it with grass sods again but you could see the bleeding circle! The Brig said, "Can you get over that, Coo?" I said, " I think so." Edging the jeep over this damn great mine, the wheels were just missing it, and that's how we got back.

MH: I think I would have turned round and gone the other way!

SC: There wasn't another way!
No it's all right as long as you don't run over them.

MH: A lot of times you've got to drive off the road haven't you?

SC: You don't know if you're going over where the mines are.
Their greatest thing was the ratchet mine. They used to use these up the desert. Where they can see there's a track through the desert, a lot of vehicles have been using it, they put these ratchet mines in the wheel marks. People looking for mines would not know anything about it, would send a vehicle through. Nothing happened. Send another one through nothing happened, OK. Let them all go and about the 10th wagon blew it sky high. They had a ratchet on the mine itself, as each vehicle went down, it went down a notch. Next vehicle, down another notch. I don't know how many notches on them but they go eventually. Dead clever they were.

MH: How long were you before you broke through, or did you not break through the lines while you were there? Was the Brigadier killed before you broke through?

SC: We broke through about two days after he got killed. At Falaise.

MH: How big an area was you in before you broke through then, was it only a small part of France.

SC: We broke through in two places, we got down on the left, the Yanks got down on the Bay of Biscay coast, and they cut these Jerries off at Falaise. The whole bleeding army. (German. MH.) Surrounded them and then they started shelling them, it was absolute murder. Very few of them got away. Some of them making breakouts but not many.

MH: What happened to you after the Brigadier was killed. Were you assigned to someone else?

SC: Oh they sent me back to my unit. I took the Brigadier back....I took the jeep back and told them what had happened. They seemed to let it go at that. Then the next day a Colonel sent for me, Colonel Black, and he asked me what happened and I told him. Next thing I knew, officer came up in a jeep "Come on, you're going home." I said "Home?" "Well back to your unit." They came over on D-Day as well, my company. Next thing I knew I was the LC's driver of my unit. He was looking for a driver and grabbed the Brigadiers driver immediately! I couldn't get away from bloody officers, that's what upset me!

MH: You still stayed over there then, you didn't come back?

SC: No, carried on, just usual. Started the big chase across France and Germany then. Back among me old mates.

MH: So, you got Mentioned in Despatches for driving the Brigadier back.

SC: For more or less general work.

MH: For everything you did out there.

SC: There was a Sergeant of the R.A.S.C. in charge of the vehicles, and he was an old mate of mine. I remembered when he was a driver when we first got called up. He had risen to Sergeant, called Tommy Loftus, and he was in charge of my vehicle as well as all the others at HQ as regards the mechanical part of it. The mechanical Sergeant. And I met him about a year later down a country lane. "Hello Tom!" "Hello Stan! Did you get it?" I said, "Get what?" He said "Your MM." I said, "I don't get an MM, why?" He said "Well we put you in for it." I said, "Who did?" He said, "I went to see the Colonel after you'd gone." I said, "No, I never got nothing." I hadn't been Mentioned in Despatches then so I knew nothing about it whatsoever. Anyway they must have decided it wasn't worth an MM

MH: What鈥檚 an MM?

SC: Military Medal, so they gave me a Mentioned in Despatches instead. I didn't know they'd put me in for anything until this Sergeant told me.

MH: I suppose when you think about it you were in the thick of it all the time.

SC: Yes, the trouble is to get a medal you got to be vouched for by an officer. The only officer who could vouch for me was dead. So it made no difference, you couldn't get one.

MH: Did you enjoy your time in France? Despite it being war and everything?

SC: Yes quite good. Been an anticlimax ever since.

MH: It's hard for our generation to comprehend really.

SC: Yes

SC: I was always a military minded bloke. I went to join the Navy when I was 17 but they wouldn't have me. Colour blind. That upset me that did. Took me in the army quick enough, but I did want to join the Navy.

MH: Can you remember the part of France where the Brigadier was killed? Was it near any particular town? Were there any villages nearby?

SC: Well it was no place really; you can't give a name to a field. I know where it was near to, just over the top of Mount Pinson. (I'm unsure of the correct spelling MH.) A big mountain, used to be in front of us and we finally worked our way over it and down the other side and that's the first time we went over Mount Pinson. Came up the back, down into the valley and it all opened out dead flat and that's where he got killed, somewhere in there, but there's no particular place.

MH: Did he go out at night or was it just a day job.

SC: He did go out at night once, on his own. He said, "I didn't want to wake you up." Where he went I don't know.

MH: What did you do in the evening then? I suppose he went off with the officers and left you on your own.

SC: Not a lot to do in the evening. Nice light evenings but you couldn't go into town or anything like that. Play cards mostly.

MH: You had a tent at HQ, is that where you were sleeping?

SC: Yes under a tree.

MH: In a tent or under a tree?

SC: Only the top ranking officers had anywhere to sleep. The General had a caravan.

MH: So you just slept under the tree in your clothes?

SC: Yeah, used to have half a bivouac they gave you. 6' x 4' and you had to make up with someone, join the two halves together to make yourself a tent. That鈥檚 how we kept out the rain.

MH: Can you tell us that story again about how you were under machine gun fire and he (The Brigadier. MH) ducked down behind you?

SC: We came along another of these narrow sunken roads, got to the infantry. Had a chat with them, and in the meantime behind us had come all the Bren carriers and machine guns chaps and infantry (German. MH) and they was nose to tail down this bloody single-track road. We couldn't get back again. So he said "We'll have to go through the fields" and that's when I pulled into this field and started going backwards along the hedge when this machine gun opened up from the far side. How the hell he missed us I don't know. A kid of 5 could have hit my jeep at that range. They've got a horrible noise them Spandaus. They're the fastest shooting machine gun in the world. Doesn't go bang bang bang like a Bren gun. It sounds like someone tearing paper. Absolutely continuous.

MH: So the Brigadier took shelter behind you?

SC: Yeah! No he wasn't behind me, it's just instinctive to duck if someone fires at you. He wasn't hiding behind me.

MH: No! But he apologised though, pretended it never happened!?

SC: I had nobody to get behind, waste of time ducking.

SC: We went right to Cherbourg one day in the Yankee zone. Well the outskirts of Cherbourg, they hadn't quite captured it. They hadn't half made a mess of the civilian places all the way up the Cherbourg peninsula, the Yanks. They'd blasted hell out of it. Nothing left of any of the villages. No wonder the French don't like us. While we was there we stood on this hill outside Cherbourg watching the battle going on below and all of sudden we heard these bloody planes. There were hundreds of them and they were coming up from the south. Instead of coming from the north where you expected them to come from they was coming up from the south and everyone thought they were Jerries. You want to see these Yanks diving in their holes! We could see them and we knew they were bloody Lancasters and we just stood there looking at them and everyone else was hiding. They'd gone round out to sea, then come in and took Cherbourg from the rear. They blasted hell out of Cherbourg our lot. We just stood there and watched them.

MH: Did you come across any French, you and the Brigadier?

SC: Very few. Took a rifle off one. About the second day, they wanted some blankets for the officers so they sent this colonel with me, he was a medical officer, Colonel of medics. Sent me down to the nearest hospital to get some blankets for our poor officers to keep warm at night. Anyway I got a load of blankets in the back of the jeep. Just started back and Froggie stepped out of the hedge with a rifle in his hand. The colonel said, "Stop!" He got out and went back to this bloke and took the rifle off him and give him a bloody good talking to. The old Froggie looked flabbergasted, he thought he was winning the war. Anyway he lost his rifle.

MH: Had most of the French locals left?

SC: There was quite a lot of them got killed. One of those things that happens in war. It can't be helped. You get a ship like the Warspite slinging in 18" shells from about 5 mile away they can land anywhere, you don't know who you're going to hit. They say they can shoot accurately but I don't believe it myself.

We were going down a road one day we come across two of our little Honey tanks. Quite small they were. Stewarts they were, we used to call them Honeys. They were American Stewarts and there was two of them down this lane and when we approached them from the rear, we was on foot at the time, we could see they were both knocked out. There was a hole through the front of the first one, it had come out the back and gone through the second one. And we went a bit further up the road and there was a Tiger tank there with its turret blown off. He'd put an 88mm through these two little ones and then somebody hit him. Nobody had ever seen a Tiger with its turret blown clean off, it was lying in a field along side it. Bloody great thing it was. While we were looking at this tank up came half a dozen artillery officers. Brigadier says "What, come for your prize?" "Yeah, we heard about this. We hit it with a 6-inch shell." Real chuffed they were. Its not often you can knock a Tiger tank out. It must have got just under where the turret joins and blew it clean off. It was the two poor little ones that tickled me. I don't suppose anyone would survive them with a shell right through it. Solid shot they used to fire. It would drill a hole through four inch armour as though it had been done by a boring tool. Smooth as that.

MH: That didn't explode on first impact then?

SC: They don't explode at all, they're just completely solid. Simply knock a bloody hole through it and if they get inside the tank they go round (SC gesticulates in a circle. MH), and that's your lot.

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This marks the end of our conversation. It is only 40 minutes worth of Stan's recollections, totally unprepared! Nevertheless, it gives us a valuable insight into Army life during the Normandy invasion.

My thanks to Stan.

Martin Heywood

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