大象传媒

Chapter 14

Seine Bridgehead

The countryside around the villages of Jerusalem and St. Leger was the scene of some very fierce fighting. We were supporting our old friends, the 1st. Worcesters, at the time, and were with their forward platoon at their farm H.Q. After studying his map carefully for some time the platoon officer indicated a certain spot on it and asked us if we could get up there and see if there were any Germans in the area. The place he indicated was a high feature at the edge of a thick wood some distance away.
The whole area was thickly wooded and interspersed with narrow roads that led off in different directions. We had to traverse several of these before reaching our destination, where we remained for about an hour, scanning the countryside section by section for any sign of enemy activity, but to no avail. If there were any Germans in that area they were well hidden.
We returned to the farm and reported our failure. The platoon officer studied his map carefully again, pointed to another place and asked us to go there. As we halted at a "T" junction and looked long and hard at the dead straight road between the two thick woods in front of us vanishing towards the distant horizon like the lines of perspective we used to draw in mensuration class at school, Captain Woodward lowered his binoculars, turned to me and asked with a grin: "Care to commit suicide, Burdon?"
"No, sir. I do not," was my emphatic reply.
"Neither do I. So we're not going up there. Those bloody woods could be full of Germans."
We returned to the farm again and reported, truthfully enough, that we had seen no sign of any Germans, and were immediately sent out a third time, but to an area that was not so thickly wooded. Instead, we found an undulating expanse of scrubland, mostly gorse and heather, which stretched away to the arcuated horizon like an enormous rucked-up rug. A machine-gunner of the Middlesex Regiment was squatting behind his Vickers machine gun blathering away at the landscape apparently empty but which could easily be concealing hundreds of troops. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself while his mate , bringing two buckets of water to cool the gun, was walking right along the crest of the hill in full view of any enemy troops who might be hidden in the area.
We had had no luck in our morning's efforts and we had none on this occasion. If there were any Germans in the area they were taking good care to stay out of sight. We returned to the farm a third time. It was about a hundred yards from a main road and was reached by the usual rough stone track. Constant use by many farm vehicles over a period of many years had worn two smooth parallel ruts in the track, leaving a small, grass-covered ridge between them. The metal tracks of our carrier just fitted into them. We had driven along that track eight times during the course of the morning and nothing untoward had happened to us; when one of our tanks arrived to investigate the activity at the farm, it got blown up on a mine
Not long after our third unsuccessful attempt to locate Jerry, Captain Woodward and I were standing beside Roger Dog at the side of the main road when a 15 cwt. truck came speeding round a nearby bend. It was one of our own regimental trucks, and standing up in the front passenger seat with his head and shoulders through the aperture in the top of the cab was the R.S.M. He grinned cheerfully and waved to us as the truck swept past, and we returned the salutation.
Talking in "D鈥� Troop Command Post afterwards the R.S.M. gave his own light-hearted account of this trivial incident. "There was I, standing up in the cab, thinking I was the most forward element in the British Second Army, and feeling like a little hero, when we went round this bend and there stood Captain Woodward and Doug. Burdon waving a ta-ta to me as I went past. Talk about deflating my bloody ego!"
The R.S.M. was an Irishman from the 'Fair City' of Cork, and as nice a person as one could wish to meet.
With the loss of Mont Pincon the Germans' strongest bastion had fallen. We pushed on and captured Le Plessis Grimault in a surprise attack that brought in many prisoners. Some of the prisoners were brought into the field where we were and stood in a line near a hedge for questioning. Most of them were probably not out of their teens. Suddenly one of them uttered a scream of terror and ran off down the field sobbing hysterically as he went. Before he had gone very far a corporal dashed across the field, grabbed him by the collar and tried to yank him back. The German immediately dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together in an attitude of abject supplication, his frightened, upturned face streaming rivulets of tears.
"All right. It's all right," the corporal shouted in exasperation. 鈥淵ou're not going to be shot."
But the German did not understand him and remained firmly on his knees gibbering away incoherently every time the corporal tried to jerk him to his feet. After watching the sickening scene with an expression of utter disgust a sergeant-major turned to the line of prisoners standing quietly by the hedge and asked: "Any of you understand English?"
One of them nodded and raised a hand in confirmation. The sergeant- major walked up to him. "Run after your friend and tell him he has nothing to worry about. We are not going to shoot you." Adding very slowly and very distinctly: "Tell him the British do not shoot prisoners, no matter what you may have been told."
The young German nodded and walked quickly down the field to where his terrified friend was still on his knees in front of the corporal. He talked quietly to him and helped him to his feet. The man stopped crying and wiped his tear-stained face with his handkerchief and allowed himself reluctantly to be escorted back to his friends, looking extremely sheepish.
Our advance continued and we reached the River Noireau, a tributary of the River Orne, on the 8th. August. The 1st Worcesters and the 7th Somersets made the crossing under heavy fire. The crossing was a diversionary attack designed to deceive Jerry into thinking it was the main attack, which in fact was being made across the Orne, but Jerry was not fooled and gave us a rough handling at both places.
We in Roger Dog crossed the river at a shallow spot, and as I sat at my radio in the back of the carrier as it ground its way slowly across the rough bed of the river I wondered vaguely what might happen to us if someone decided to blow up the railway viaduct that towered high above us only a short distance away; but fortunately no one did.
Shells and mortar bombs fell around us as we reached the opposite bank. So heavy was the barrage that we were forced to shelter behind the solid stone walls of some farm buildings before venturing forward again. As we moved slowly along an exposed stretch of rough track that snaked across the side of a grassy slope, shells and mortar bombs erupted earth all round us as we forced our way towards the thick woods ahead. One of the Worcesters crouched beside the carrier as we went along but he was on the side the firing was coming from and in great danger of being hit. I told him in no uncertain terms what he was and advised him to take cover on the more sheltered side. He needed no second bidding!
The Worcesters gained the top of the thickly-wooded slopes on the far side before the Germans reacted strongly in front of Berjou, where the Worcesters and the D.C.L.I. fought a hard battle before the latter outflanked the Berjou defences and the Germans retired from the town. It was then that the whole German front collapsed, leading to the slaughter in the Falaise Pocket and the beginning of the end of an army.
Bill Ingram was killed on 16th. August.

continued in 14b . . .

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