大象传媒

Early in 1944 I gained a lance-corporal's single stripe on my sleeve and almost immediately learned that I had been picked for secondment to the Ministry of Supply's Fighting Vehicle Proving Establishment (now Armoured Vehicle Research Establishment) based at Virginia Water, Surrey, as a test driver. Another lucky break from regimental routine which lasted for three months, during which I drove just about every type of armoured vehicle then in production and some prototypes which never went into service.

The billets were civilian style and offered a level of luxury undreamt-of in service life - even down to sheets and pillowcases ! Research included endurance tests both on roads and cross country and the A30 down to Basingstoke became very familiar territory. Chobham Common was used for cross country trials, including a most unpleasant "basin" of thick liquid mud and gravel through which tanks were driven slowly to test durability of things like bearings and oil seals. I recall driving a Valentine (Infantry Mark III tank, 17 tons) with a sharply raked-back front armour plate through this hazard, and watching apprehensively the evil smelling gunge lapping closer and closer to the open port in front of my face before the tank hauled itself out onto firm ground again.

Of all the trials the real bone-shaker was the one designed to test the efficiency of the Christie suspension used on the faster cruiser weight tanks; this involved driving a tank, with the engine governor modified to allow it to reach higher speeds, at full tilt over a ramp so that it was airborne for a second or two and then crashed down onto solid ground. Even though the driver's compartment was well padded the jarring shock to the human frame was not a pleasant experience. There were plenty of compensations, however, especially the five day week which meant that week-ends were free for trips to London where Barbara (then my girlfriend, later my wife) lived with her parents, and to Bristol to visit my parents.

The contrast between the cushy life I had led at the FVPE and regimental duties was brought home to me upon my return to the "Skins" who were then under canvas near Kirkby Stephen and undergoing intensive gunnery training on Warcop Fell, alternately windswept or shrouded in mist. Just before my arrival back with A Squadron there had been a downpour which had flooded the field where the bell tents were pitched and a mass of die-spirited "squaddies" were trudging around on inadequate duckboards trying to retrieve kit and bedding from the effects of the inundation - it needed someone with Kipling's descriptive powers to do justice to the squalor of the scene.

Once again good fortune came to my rescue (1 was fast acquiring a reputation for being a "jammy bugger") and in the Spring of 1944 I found myself once more detached from the Regiment as one of a small party manning tanks on the gunnery range at Kirkcudbright, being used for Brigade training. It was worth being deafened daily by the 75 mm gun being fired continuously just to avoid endless parades and guard duty - in fact 1 became so accustomed to the racket and the shock of recoil which rocked the tank on its tracks that 1 used to sit in the driver's compartment, with the hatches and ports closed down and the extractor fan working (to clear some of the cordite fumes which wafted through from the gun turret), and read a book between changes of position on the ranges, by the light of a small lamp and such daylight as filtered in through the two driving periscopes.

I was still stationed at Kirkcudbright when D-Day came, and with it realisation of the need for the feverish training programme undergone over the preceding months. Shortly afterwards I rejoined the Skins at an assembly area near Bury St. Edmunds and, although the Regiment's role had not then been made clear, when we were all granted a last-minute 48 hr. leave pass we guessed that something was in store for us. I spent my leave in London bidding adieu to Barbara (who then joined the WRNS) and my parents in an atmosphere highly charged with emotion and unspoken fears, all concerned displaying lots of British stiff-upperlippedness. Back at camp there was a nerve-wracking period of waiting whilst, for security reasons, confined in concentration camp-like isolation, as bad news of the strong resistance being met by advance units of the 21st. Army Group in the Normandy bridgehead started to filter through.

THE REAL THING
The Regiment was detached from the 9th. Armoured Division (which was shortly disbanded) and, under a new CO, Lt. Col. Teddy Swetenham, was entrained without vehicles at Bury St. Edmunds on 15 July, 1944, bound for Portsmouth. After an overnight stay at a transit camp we marched to the seafront at Southsea and, from temporary jetties thrown out over the sea, embarked in infantry landing ships for a calm and peaceful overnight crossing to the Normandy coast, landing in daylight on the beach near Arromanches. For some reason, keyed up as we were, most of us expected to come immediately under fire but, in the event, on that bright summer day, we marched inland through the Normandy cornfields to a reception area with only the damage wreaked by aerial and naval bombardment prior to and during the actual invasion to remind us that we were now in a "theatre of war".

Now we were told that our role was to replace the 4th. County of London Yeomanry (which had suffered such heavy casualties on the battlegrounds around Caen that it was no longer operational) in the 7th. Armoured Division - the Desert Rats - joining the 1st and 5th RTR as the main armoured units in the 22nd. Armoured Brigade, with the 8th. Hussars as the division's reconnaisance unit, and the 11th. Hussars - the Cherry Pickers, with their unique cherry red berets - as forward reconnaisance equipped with Daimler armoured cars. The only vehicles the Skins had brought from England were some 3 ton trucks loaded with kit and stores, and we collected mainly new Cromwell tanks from a huge equipment compound near Bayeux and set about preparing them for battle. Two sources of amazement to newcomers to the beachhead were the fabulous amount of vehicles and stores which had already been shipped over through the Mulberry Harbour and the casual way in which they had been dumped in fields without camouflage - cocking a snook at the Luftwaffe which, by then, had been overstretched and depleted by heavy losses so as not to pose much of a threat.

Nevertheless, our first encounter with enemy action was a night raid by fighter-bombers dropping small 50 lb. bombs and anti-personnel bombs on our "laager" (a term borrowed from S. Africa meaning a camp defended by wagons), one of which landed on the hull of our tank, with a tremendous detonation but causing no damage. Unluckily,our gunner (the only crew member who had not experienced civilian bombing raids) was completely unnerved by this epi.ode, which made us all feel a bit jittery, and he was immediately replaced the next morning in the interests of crew morale.

Ironically, the Regiment's first casualties were not as a result of German shots fired in anger: while we were waiting to be re-equipped a bathing party to the coast was organised and some swimmers were caught out by the strong undertow; rescue attempts resulted in the loss of the Padre, one other officer and a trooper and I shall never forget the sight of their heads bobbing on the waves as they drifted out to sea, eventually to disappear. Although we fired our revolvers in the air we were unable to attract the attention of a passing fishing boat and all we could do was to stand and watch helplessly. Another pointless tragedy occurred when our new tanks were being commissioned for action, loaded with ammunition and filled with petrol: a turret-mounted machine gun was accidently fired and a trooper standing on the hull of the next tank was shot dead; this accidental firing was not an uncommon occurrence since the trigger mechanism of both the main gun and the machinegun was foot-pedal operated and all it needed was a steel-tipped ammo boot to slip on the steel turret floor when the safety catch had been carelessly left disengaged and br-r-p or bang, as the case may be - fortunately accidental firing of the big gun was less common since it was seldom loaded until enemy action was imminent. When it did happen, however, it was quite likely to take parts of the crew commander or wireless op./gun loader with it on the unexpected recoil within the very confided space of the turret.

And so, at long last, Lance-corporal King A.C. went into action as driver to Lt. Martin Fitzgerald, officer i/c 3rd. Troop, A squadron, with Cockney Jimmy Hewitt
as wireless operator/loader, Ginger Hutchinson (a tough Geordie whose real forename I never knew) as replacement gunner and Wally Gent, a quiet type from somewhere in the Midlands, as co-driver and front machinegunner, in a Cromwell hung about with loose track plates (to help deflect 88 mm armour piercing shells fired from German Tigers and Panthers, which our standard armour plating then was no match for, and which had a faster muzzle velocity and longer range than our 75 mm - very confidence inspiring !) ration boxes and bedding rolls, for which there was no room inside the tank or in the inadequate external storage bins fixed to the hull.

I cannot honestly say that I recall anything of our first engagement with the enemy in those first few confused days of my real war but some of the things most firmly imprinted upon my memory in the breakout from the bridgehead, the Falaise Gap, and the "swan" up towards the Belgian border by the end of August are: watching in horror a tank from another troop "brew up鈥� instantly after a direct hit from an 88 and the frantic efforts of the crew to escape the inferno - the gunner, sitting down in the turret always the last to leave, did not make it (thin side armour to the hull, hundreds of gallons of high octane petrol in slab tanks either side of the engine and a mixture of fuel and oil sloshing around the sealed bottom plates often below the turret floor made an incendiary combination); helping to pull out of his compartment a co-driver of a tank which had gone over a mine - the impact had broken both of his legs and the only way to get him out through the narrow hatch was to haul on his webbing shoulder straps, after injecting an ampoule of morphia and crushing between his teeth a chloroform ampoule wrapped in gauze, both standard issue in the crew's first aid kits; gasping in astonishment at the degree and subsequent artillery barrages to little towns like Villers Bocage where Army bulldozers were trying to shift the enormous mounds of rubble;listening in awe to the sheer volume of sound from a dawn barrage by 25 pounder artillery behind our position, the shells howling over our heads to soften-up the enemy positions before our main attack and, later, watching the bewildered German troops, some only boys, emerge from foxholes and ditches with hands raised in surrender to our infantry support;snatching quick meals of tinned "meat and veg.", heated in billy-cans on our petrol-fueled pressure stoves, or balancing sardines on hardtack biscuits as an even quicker energy-restorer, with the everlasting brews of thick, sweet tea and - a special treat whilst in Normandy - the occasional binge with a ripe Camembert (spooned from its container) and a bottle of Calvados; puzzling over the luke-warm welcome we received from the people of Normandy, for whom we thought we should be welcome liberators, forgetting at the time that German occupation there was not too rigorous and that the suffering caused by the US Air Force and other Allied operations in the area was severe; in the main only the ladies of the night in places like Bayeux and Caen extended the welcome mat every evening, at nightfall, going through a routine no matter how exhausted the day's action had left us: replenishing ammo., petrol and rations from the trucks of "A鈥� and "B" echelons whenever conditions were suitable for these "soft" vehicles to reach us, carrying out basic maintenance such as re-tensioning tracks, checking oil and water levels, digging out a shallow depression beside the tank then erecting the lean-to tarpaulin bivouac over it, with guy ropes tied to the tank's hull and, eventually, the whole crew of five, including "Fitz" the Troop leader, crawling in with their bedding rolls generally to flake out immediately- only to be woken at first light a few hours later (or even before for those on the rota for guard duty) for a quick swill in cold water (hot water for shaving only) and a bacon and egg breakfast - the best and most leisurely meal of the day - cooked by the first crew member to tumble out of the bivvy; smelling the decaying human and horse flesh after the massacre of the Falaise Gap, with what seemed like mile after mile of dead bodies and abandoned equipment, and being surprised that the Wehrmacht still had
to rely so heavily upon horsedrawn supply wagons and gun limbers; on one occasion we fired HE shells from a concealed position upon a German supply column, scoring direct hits on two ammunition wagons which disintegrated in balls of fire, then driving over to examine the result _ by an odd quirk of human nature we were more saddened by the dead and dying horses than by the mangled human corpses we found there;
chain smoking, from a tin of 50 free-issue Senior Service beside me in the driver's compartment, on the fortunately rare occasions when we were the leading tank of the leading Troop of the leading squadron of the leading Regiment in the Brigade in the fast-moving advance after Falaise, wondering whether, round the next corner, an 88 mm anti-tank gun had its muzzle trained to take out the first vehicle to show its nose 鈥� needless to say it never happened to us or I would not be writing this account!

Wondering at the grandeur of the enormous Basilica at Lisieux, stark white with ornate towers and embellishments, which seemed tohave escaped without a blemish despite the scenes of devastation elsewhere in the town; German snipers had scored some successes from its rooftop and, normally, shelling would have been ordered, but someone in command must have had an aesthetic outlook and the snipers were flushed out by pretty fearsome warriors from the 5lst Highland Division, to whom the squadron was giving support in that action, and who were not renowned for showing clemency to the foe;
in open country between Amiens and Abbeville, standing over the body of a dead German sniper - like me a young man of around 20 - who had been unwise enough to break cover from the copse where he had been firing and make himself an easy target for me, standing on the turret of the tank concealed in another wood and armed with a German rifle equipped with a
telescopic sight which the crew had "acquired" along the way, and thinking, with deep sorrow, what a stupid, futile business warfare was; somehow the killing I had seen and contributed to seemed impersonal when caused by shells or machinegun bullets, but this was different - the one to one confrontation, and I had difficulty in holding back the tears as I searched his pockets for identification, in order to report back his name, number and position for burial.

Not long after that, in fact on the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of war, I nearly met my own Waterloo. In this stage of the campaign, with things moving so quickly, enemy positions were not always clear and, in their headlong flight from Falaise, the Wehrmacht had left behind a number of small fighting units, usually led by crack SS troops, to form pockets of resistance. Early in the morning of September 3rd. one such pocket, armed with a 105 mm artillery piece and guided by a concealed observer, caught us with our pants down, or rather just a little later when the crew was dismounted awaiting a mouth-watering breakfast, with the bacon and eggs sizzling in the pan on the stove. Lt. Fitzgerald had been called to squadron HQ for the day's briefing, but we had been joined by Lt. Sedgewick from another Troop and were all standing round the stove chatting when the first of several
shells landed behind me, less than 10 yards away - good shooting even with an OP. I was blown off my feet and when I picked myself up a scene of chaos lay before me.

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