大象传媒

Memories of 105574 Major R F 鈥楬enry鈥� Hall MC, The Dorset Regiment,
on His and Her Majesty鈥檚 Service

Part 3

There was no psychology as such taught at Inverailort, but everything was done with such confidence and such expertise and devil-may-care atmosphere, all the instructors were wonderful chaps, you came away from everything feeling that you knew the lot and you were better than anybody else and that the other chap was dead before you even saw him. Anyone who showed any sign of weakness was sent back to his unit immediately.
We were monitored and assessed all the time and anybody who showed any lack of confidence, lack of trying to do something, any idleness or anything of that sort, was straight off the course and back to his unit.
We were wet, tired, hungry; being shot at all the time, exhausted and it was really a test of endurance and absorbing the knowledge that was given to us.
We were not taught any battle drills as such at Inverailort. The emphasis was on initiative and acting according to the situation. We were taught battle drills later on, after Montgomery had taken over XII Corps, set drills for attacking, by shouting out by numbers and so forth, which was very effective for training men en masse.
There were Divisional Battle Schools which taught anybody who had not been in action before, the basic skills of infantry work and the experience of being fired on, the experience of advancing under a live artillery barrage so that when the attack on Normandy came, anybody who had not already been under fire, had been so at a Divisional Battle School before they actually landed. I was an instructor at our Divisional Battle School later on.
I think the great advantage of the advanced assault course at Inverailort was that it gave you so much confidence. You knew so many more tricks of the trade and methods of attack, demolition and causing havoc and destruction that you became super confident.
Whatever you did, you did it automatically, subconsciously. The answer to whatever attack you were up against would be an instinctive reaction. You didn鈥檛 have to think about things, you just took it as something as natural as drinking a cup of tea or making a sandwich 鈥� you would do it instinctively, just like driving a car. As regards your emotions when you stick a knife into a chap, you just don鈥檛 have any because, as I say, it鈥檚 just like driving a car or making a cup of tea.
When Sergeant Davidson and I returned to Canterbury I was made Battalion Bombing Officer. In World War 1 any Officer who conducted trench raids was given that title, I was told I was to command a Battalion Battle Patrol. Our Commanding Officer, Harold Matthews, had selected three experienced Corporals and thirty men for the patrol.
Our first task was to train and teach them all we had learnt at Inverailort to the Commanding Officer鈥檚 satisfaction. After training was completed he tested us by doing all our demolitions and dirty tricks himself!
We had each been issued with a bicycle and a mass produced blackened Fairbairn Sykes Fighting Knife. Sergeant Davidson and I had been issued with an escape compass. My blackened knife and compass are in the British Resistance Organisation Museum in Suffolk. My No 1 knife was taken by the RAMC when I was wounded!
We also had gun cotton, 808, primers, detonators, safety fuse, cortex, time pencils and all types of switches. We were administered as an ordinary infantry platoon and part of a rifle company, but I was in command, not the Company Commander.
Our first task was to get to know Kent by heart 鈥� we went off for days on end exploring every nook and cranny, living off the land. I was then given our operational tasks which were:
1. A secret one 鈥� to go to ground if the enemy invaded and then, on my own initiative, cause as much havoc against troops and communications and dumps as possible, our true role. We never had any holes in the ground like the Resistance Organisation had 鈥� simply because I鈥檇 never heard of them because they were so secret.
2. Our second task was to act as the enemy on Battalion or Brigade exercises, to test the security of Headquarters and dumps and to test the vulnerability of communications in the Brigade area.
3. A propaganda role. We practised on a mock Landing Craft on the beach near Deal for a raid on Dieppe and were encouraged to talk about our 鈥榬aid鈥� in pubs and public places.
We had a wonderful time swanning about Kent doing just what I wanted us to do, improving our training and perfecting our techniques for these tasks. We gave demonstrations of our skills to Battalions in our Brigade and to various training schools.
Then one day I was ordered to do an exercise umpired by our Brigade. We landed at dusk on a remote beach near Herne Bay and had to rendezvous with an 鈥榓gent鈥� at a map reference (in an allotment hut near Ashford) with a Battalion in our way to stop us. We were given orders by the 鈥榓gent鈥� to attack a farm below Charing Hill at dawn, lay up during the day and get back the next night, again through a Battalion, back to the beach where we had landed.
All went well. After a few days I was told by Harold Matthews that I had won the Brigade Battle Patrol competition! Up to that time I had no idea there were any others anywhere! I still don鈥檛 know how many others there were, I never met nor had anything to do with any! Nor heard of any! But each Battalion must have had one.
I carried on learning more about Kent, giving demonstrations, testing security etc and one day I was told to meet an Officer at a map reference (Norman Field, I learnt just a few years ago) who told me he commanded the XII Corps Observation Unit and we were to lay on a demonstration for 130 Brigade, which we did near a gravel pit (which I used for grenade work) near Canterbury. He then asked me to help him train his men in dirty tricks, I would meet unknown men at map references at night for several months.
So things went on very happily for me and we achieved a high standard of efficiency. I had introduced the use of a bird call which I used in Kent instead of a whistle and in action to identify ourselves when returning through our own lines, also a Totem 鈥� a six foot holly pole with a brass jug which we had pinched from a pub in Sandwich and my whole patrol had scratched their names on it. On top of the pole was the skull of a cow!
I had learnt the Haka when umpiring a Maori Battalion on Salisbury Plain so I modified it into a Dorset/Maori War Cry and used it as our War Cry 鈥� it went, 鈥淭e na ta tong ata cora cora comity comity Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!鈥�
We used it in Kent and in action as a normal War Cry, when the enemy looked up to see what was going on you could shoot him, as a hoax War Cry to keep them on their toes, very useful at night. Just a few men, or small groups spread over a wide area, to disturb the enemy鈥檚 rest.
On 4th August 1943 we moved to Bexhill where training increased for what we later found out was going to be D Day. I reverted to a normal Infantry Company Platoon. Sergeant Davidson disappeared, as far as I know he was taken into the SAS as were many members of the Resistance Organisation to form the 鈥楯edburgh鈥� groups and I was given a new Platoon Sergeant.
I trained with the Company as an ordinary Infantry Platoon. We then moved to Southampton with the rest of the Normandy invasion force. 43 Division landed with the second wave. 4th Dorsets landed at Le Hamel, the same place as 1st Battalion, The Dorset Regiment had landed. The landing was quite amusing, there was a heavy swell running and to get into the landing craft from the mother ships we jumped into the boats off nets when the boat was at its highest, so we jumped in small groups into our landing craft.
We moved off towards the beach and the silly Royal Naval chap who was running my assault boat got himself stuck on a sandbank about 150 yards or so off the waterline and he couldn鈥檛 get himself off. So I thought, there鈥檚 only one thing to do, and I said, 鈥淟et down the ramp!鈥� and I stuck my leg over the edge to try to feel the bottom to see how deep it was and I just couldn鈥檛 touch the bottom.
I said, 鈥淣ever mind chaps, it鈥檚 my mother-in-law鈥檚 birthday, off we go!鈥� I jumped in, only to go down about two inches which really brought the house down. Laughing and joking we all jumped in and waded ashore.
By that time the beachhead was quite secure. One Company of each Battalion in the second wave was issued with Bicycles. Mine was one of such Companies. We collected them at the head of the beach. Some Staff Officer must have thought that by this time the Germans would be running so fast we would need bicycles to keep up with them! We dragged them as far as Cheux 鈥� and then 鈥榣ost鈥� them in the mud!
We moved inland, a few skirmishes here and there but nothing really to speak of. We didn鈥檛 really get much sense of what was going on, it was fairly quiet and just a little bit of resistance which we easily overcame until our first decent battle which was on 10th July.
There is a small hill called Hill 112 which overlooked Caen. Both the Germans and ourselves reckoned that, 鈥楬e who holds Hill 112 holds Normandy.鈥� Unfortunately the Germans had got there before us. So it was our job to push them off 112 in order that the attack on Caen could commence.
On 10th July 4th Dorsets attacked a little village called Etterville on the slopes of Hill 112. The regimental bugler sounded the charge, my platoon shouted our Haka and off we went. Typhoons were supposed to drop anti personnel bombs on the village just before we entered but they were late!
We took our objective at 0630 hours as planned and planted our totem. Before we had a chance to dig in the Typhoons arrived. My only casualty was Sergeant Fowler, my new Platoon Sergeant who was killed. The reason why was because he made the mistake of not watching the bombs coming down and dodging them and staying standing up (thus exposing only the legs to splinters 鈥� also a good defence against Nebelwerfers which you can hear coming if you are caught in the open) but he lay flat on the ground and therefore was killed.
We dug in and we were relieved by the Cameronians at midday and then we attacked another village called Maltot at 1600 hours. The Cameronians took over from us at midday before we attacked Maltot. We took our objective by 1645 and planted our totem.
The other Companies suffered heavily. Then we were surrounded by Tiger tanks and one silly one came to about fifty yards of our totem and blew it to pieces. I gave no order but my chaps rushed in and the tank and its crew were dead in about three minutes.
We hung on there, under considerable fire, surrounded by tanks and our Battalion (or what remained of it) was ordered to withdraw at 2030 because we had suffered severe casualties so, just for fun, we killed two more Tigers on the way out and fortunately only suffered three or four casualties. But at the end of the day there were only five Officers and about eighty other ranks (mostly mine) remaining of 4th Dorsets.
We managed to kill the first of the Tigers by stuffing a very heavy angle iron into the tracks and stopping it and then smothering it, the other silly one stopped of its own accord and so we just smothered that one as well.
My general impression of the day was of horrendous noise, a lot of dirt and muck flying about, terrible sights of bodies here and there, German and our own, some of them whole (but dead of course) others in bits, bits of bodies lying around. There wasn鈥檛 much smell except of high explosives, but a lot of dirt and muck and horrendous noise all the time from enemy fire and from our own fire going over. It was quite a sobering experience but my lads stood up very well and having come back from Maltot we dug in and held a position at the bottom of the hill for the night.
The reason why I brought more men out of it than others was because my men were better battle trained than the rest of the Battalion, just that simple fact. The motto of the SAS is, 鈥淲ho Dares Wins,鈥� but Jock Lapraik who trained the SAS in the Far East and John Woodhouse who trained them in England and the Near East changed the motto from, 鈥淲ho Dares Wins,鈥� to 鈥淲ho Trains Wins.鈥� Who trains does win. The more you are trained, particularly under live battle conditions, the more chance you have of staying alive.
We received massive reinforcements from the Essex Regiment (including Jimmy Grafton who later thought I saved his life and so gave me the freedom of his pub where I met the Goons).
We stayed on the hill for about two weeks until the enemy was beaten off. It was there that I realised the full horrors of war, how stupid, bloody, futile, pointless it all is. Clausewitz said that, 鈥淲ar is an extension of politics and politics is an extension of war.鈥� Politics is bad enough but war is absolutely ridiculous.
It was a slogging match between both sides. During those two weeks we suffered seven thousand casualties. The smells, the noise, the dust and the dirt were something that stuck in your nose and permeated everything. The stench of dead bodies - very often one would jump into a slit trench or something like that and land on a rotting corpse.
Sometimes we had to take trousers off dead men to give people who had done such a thing clean trousers. The noise was horrendous, artillery, mortars and so on going over from both sides. We had a Battery Commander who always insisted on firing the last round and so the night (when things did tend to quieten down a little) had odd shells whipping over all the time.
The smell was indescribable. Unless you鈥檝e actually trodden on a dead animal, something big like a cow, and smelt the stench of the entrails oozing out, you just cannot imagine what it is like.
However we did manage to brighten things up a little bit in several ways, by stupid remarks, jokes and generally fooling about to keep up morale. We had a wonderful Battery Commander called Peter Steele-Perkins who, when he could, let me control a 4.5 inch gun to snipe dug in or stationery tanks or SP guns and I fortunately managed to get quite a few.

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