大象传媒

continued from 17b

If you stand and watch a gun fire, you do not see the shell leave the gun. You see the muzzle flash, you see the gun recoil and you hear the loud report, but the instant the gun fires, you blink; and in that blink the shell has gone on its way; but if you happen to glance towards the gun a moment after it has fired you can, just for one brief instant, see the dark grey blurred shape, looking rather like an outsize woodlouse, a few feet from the muzzle; then it is gone.
I was standing beside the carrier, using the radio, and Nobby was rewinding the remote control cable on to the drum for greater security when, for no reason at all except perhaps that instinctive premonition of impending danger, I happened to glance casually upwards and to the left. There, suspended just above us, or so it seemed, was a bunch of several woodlice. I only had time to yell "Down, Nobby: " when the mortar bombs landed.
I still do not know what happened next. At such a moment there is no time to think what to do next; no time for heroism or cowardice; you act like an automaton, at the dictates of sheer impulse. In that infinitesimal fraction of time between my warning yell and the bursting of the mortar bombs Nobby had dived under the front end of the carrier and I had gone over the side and lay curled up in the bottom of the passenger compartment. The moment between my seeing the woodlice and finding myself lying inside the carrier is a complete blank. I must have arched my body over the side in a manner impossible to do with conscious deliberation; and I was still sending my message!
Miraculously, neither we nor the carrier were hit, the bombs bursting all round us. The only 'casualty' was a small apple tree close to the carrier that was shattered near the base of the trunk.
Some time later, with the barrage continuing with unabated fury, and as we bumped slowly and laboriously across the escarpment, carefully avoiding the many shell craters, we were surprised to hear a cheerful voice shout "Wotto, Roger Dog", and there only a few yards away to our right, was "C" Troop O.P. crew in Roger Charlie. They waved and shouted dubious pleasantries to us above the noise and we replied in like manner. We had not seen them since the battle for the Reichswald Forest began and it was good to see them looking so happy and cheerful.
After a brief conversation they were about to drive away on their appointed mission when, just as Roger Charlie was skirting a big crater, a shell landed right behind it and enlarged the crater. For a second or so the carrier seemed to hover indecisively on the edge of the crater, then it slid slowly backwards into it. Bill Chandler revved up and tried to charge his way out, sending a plume of brown earth curving upwards behind the carrier like spray from a speeding powerboat, but the more he revved the more Roger Charlie dug its tracks into the soft earth.
It seemed Roger Charlie was going to be stuck there indefinitely, but assistance came in the shape of a Sherman tank moving forward with its squadron and which passed close to the bogged-down carrier. Bill semaphored frantically as the tank commander glanced curiously down at them. "Hey, Sarge, can you pull us out?" he yelled.
"Got your own tow-rope?" the sergeant yelled back.
"驰别蝉.鈥�
"O.K., but be quick about it."
Bill leapt out of his driving seat, followed almost immediately by Charlie Clayton. They unwound the tow-rope from its brackets quicker than they had ever done before and hooked it on to a U-bolt on the back of the tank.
"O.K., Sarge," they shouted, simultaneously, and Bill leapt back into his driving seat while Charlie remained behind the tank ready to unhook the tow-rope the moment the carrier was free. The Sherman eased slowly forward again, the towrope tautened and R.C. was free in a matter of seconds.
"Thanks, sarge," our grateful pals yelled, as Charlie unhooked the towrope and started to rewind it on to its brackets. The sergeant raised a hand in acknowledgment. The tank lumbered on its menacing way.
With final cheery grins our mates bumped away on their interrupted mission and were soon out of sight. We continued our way through the barrage until Captain Gibb decided it best to seek shelter of some sort from the continuous shelling. "Quick, Lean, get behind that tank," he ordered, and Bill wrenched the steering wheel over and drove into the protection of the nearest Sherman tank. Safe behind its solid bulk we followed it as it rattled and clanked along, until it veered suddenly away from us and left us exposed to a hail of machine-gun fire .
"Get alongside it," Captain Gibb ordered, and Bill wrenched the wheel over again and drove alongside the tank.

This manoeuvre continued for a considerable time as we changed direction with the tank or sought the protection of another. Then Bill decided he had had enough. Lugging the wheel first one way and then the other on such uneven ground was difficult enough in normal circumstances, and the additional weight of the sandbags placed on the floor of the driving compartment as protection against exploding mines made it more so, but to a man like Bill, in his forties, flabby, and not nearly as fit nor as active as we younger ones, it was just too much. Stopping the carrier, he dropped his hands to his sides, took a deep breath as if to control his exasperation, and voiced his opinion in no uncertain manner.
"I wish you'd make up your bloody mind where you want to be. This isn't a motor car I'm driving, you know."
Completely nonplussed by the unexpected outburst, Captain Gibb turned slightly red, took a quick glance at the overall scene as if to cover his embarrassment and pointed to a small brick-built building about a hundred yards away to our right. "Drive over there. That should give us some cover for a while," was all he said.
Bill drove across to the building and parked the carrier close under the small window in the front wall. We all leapt out and dashed inside. It was a very small place, no more that ten feet square and with an open space next to the window for a doorway, but it provided welcome shelter. And Bert Hawkins chose that moment to call me for report of signals.
As often as not the control operator's occasional call to an outstation for report of signals was merely a routine precaution to satisfy himself he still had good contact with it and he did not worry unduly if he did not receive an immediate reply. There could be a perfectly good reason why the outstation operator might not be able to reply at once. I watched the barrage churning up the ground nearby, listened to the bullets and the shrapnel taking bits out of the walls of our little shelter, and decided to ignore him for once.
We stayed there until we had to move on with the action and then I called Bert for report of signals. He replied immediately. "Where've you been? I've been calling you. Is everything all right?"
"Yes, all O.K. Things got a bit hectic around here and we had to go to earth a bit sharpish," I explained.
"Roger. I understand.. I'll tell Sunray you're all O.K. He was getting a bit worried when you didn't answer." We had not driven far from the building when a shell shattered the wall under the window, right where the carrier had been parked.

After eight days of heavy fighting, during which the Division took over 2,400 prisoners and advanced ten miles, we were now firmly established on the vital escarpment overlooking Goch and had laid the town wide open to attack. On the 9th February, 129 Brigade, with the 4th and 5th Wiltshires and supported by the Sherwood Rangers, made a daring midnight penetration of Cleve. The next morning, with the surprised Germans apparently attempting to reinforce the garrison, a pitched battle developed, with enemy infantry, tanks and self-propelled guns. The Brigade Headquarters was involved in the battle among the ruins of the bomb-shattered city. A platoon of the 5th Wiltshires, fighting strongly in a confused situation, forced the surrender of eight German officers and 110 men who had been trying to infiltrate their positions.
Another enemy group, consisting of an officer and 18 men, was fought, cornered and then captured by one officer and twenty gunners of the 59th Anti-Tank Regiment. The infantry met fierce resistance and desperate counter-attacks before they finally captured Eselberg Hill. The 4th Wiltshires held this feature despite a severe counter-attack that came from three directions at once.

Between the 13th and the 16th February we fought continuously day and night with the artillery giving the infantry close support. On one occasion the 94th. Field Regiment fired at only 1400 yards range with nothing between them and the Germans in Cleve Forest.
The infantry made an attack on a second hill feature east of the forest and captured it at the second attempt on the 15th. One platoon was severely counter-attacked but it held its fire until the enemy were within only forty yards and then mowed them down with automatic fire.
Six-pounder anti-tank gun crews repelled two more counter-attacks in a close-range battle with self-propelled guns, which were either destroyed or forced to withdraw in spite of their superior firepower.
In a daring move, the Division deliberately left its two flanks completely open, by-passed the strongly held Cleve Forest, and thrust hard south on a narrow two-battalion front. By mid-day of the 16th, the two other hill features west of the forest were in our hands. After its start line had had been cleared at bayonet point by a platoon of the Worcesters a new Brigade attack was launched and the German resistance broke. Within the next twenty- four hours the two Somerset battalions, the Worcesters and the D.C.L.I. together took some 1,000 prisoners. Cleve Forest had been outflanked by a 2,500 yards advance and the enemy forced to abandon it. Fighting was still very severe, though, and the capture of so many prisoners was no mass surrender.
Sitting in Roger Dog while it was temporarily halted we wondered what the sudden awful wailing sound emanating from the direction of Goch could be. We could hear it even above the noise of the fighting. Several seconds elapsed before we realised what it was. In the fields below us, walking steadily in line abreast with their rifles in the 'port arms' position, the infantry of the 51st Highland Division were advancing towards the town, led by their pipers, and I was immediately reminded of Vic and the 'Lost Chord' on the troop train in 1941. Talk about making the Germans suffer unnecessarily!
In nine days of continuous action the Division had outflanked and completely rolled up the strong German defences and opened the way for the capture of Goch the next day. The Royal Engineers, who had been up against continual bomb craters during this offensive, eased the attack on the town considerably by constructing six tank crossings over a twenty-foot deep anti-tank ditch during the night. They worked continually and silently right under the noses of the enemy.
On the 8th March the Division crowned its brilliant work by capturing Xanten, the vital hinge in the Wesl defence line, which the Germans had been ordered to hold at all costs. This attack was opened by the 5th Wiltshires, who fought their way into Luttingen against bitter opposition from paratroops. Their entry made the German hold on Xanten untenable. The 4th Somersets made a dawn attack, advanced on Xanten down the main road from the north, overcame stiff resistance on the line of an anti-tank ditch on the outskirts of the town, cleared the town itself, and by dusk had patrols on the Alter Rhine, only a short distance from the River Rhine proper.

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