大象传媒

Message 1 - Recce Troop 1st RTR

Posted on: 16 October 2005 by Trooper_KB

It was June 1944,a very hot summers day in Normandy.I was 19 years old,in a Stuart light reconnaisance tank which had a crew of four. Our mission was to find out the enemies strength and to capture a prisoner.We pulled into a small copse of trees for cover. Across the open field was another small clump of trees and we noticed movement there. The wireless operator and the driver stayed by the tank while the tank commander and me {the lap gunner} set off on foot crouching double alongside the hedge around the field to get closer to the German position. We had gone about 100 yards when bullets whistled around our ears and a shell exploded behind us.We looked back towards our tank and saw the other two crew members lying on the ground. Under intense mortar and machine gun fire we helped them into the tank and I drove it back to base where they were treated for shrapnel wounds and sent to field hospital. A few days afterwards we had two replacement crew members, and this time I was acting as wireless operator. The following day we were sent to Villers Bocage region. The tank took cover behind a row of trees on the crest of a ridge with views across the valley to the enemy positions on the ridge opposite. I was told to stay in wireless contact with HQ.The tank commander, the driver and the lap gunner, set out on foot to assess the German defences. They had covered about 50 yards along the edge of the field when I heard the scream of a high calibre shell and a cloud of earth and dust enveloped my crew. I took off the headphones and ran towards them as high explosive shells were bursting all around us.The tank commander came crawling very slowly towards me out of the dust and smoke and I helped him back to the tank and propped him up against the tank track then ran back for the other two. Sadly, they were lifeless with jagged shrapnel holes into their chests and heads. I ran back to the commander,his tank suit was full of holes and he was in great pain, so I gave him a cpsule hypodermic of morphine which we carried in our first aid kit. A sergeant major from another squandron came to help and took him back to HQ. Sadly the officer died soon after from his wounds. I was ordered to stay with the tank and see to the burial of the other two crew members. I took the shovel off the tank and as I began digging their graves the Germans shelled us again and I had to wait until dark to bury them and then drive the tank back to base.Again I was fortunate to survive. A few days later three more crew replacements arrived to bring the tank into operation again and I was back as lap gunner. We were assigned a "seek,find,and capture" mission and probed the German lines, but without success, so we went back to rejoin our troop. As the tank pulled up it was hit by an armour-piercing high-explosive shell and I blacked out. When I came to,I looked about me and saw a gaping hole in the side of the tank where the wireless operator had been sitting.All that was left of him was one arm laying on the ammunition boxes behind my head.I was amazed how white the bone was.The tank commander's legs were dangling behind my seat and his body had been blown onto my hatch and so I had to climb out through the turret opening. The driver was slumped over his steering sticks and was very still and his head was bleeding . I got to the ground still concussed and in a confused state from the effects of the blast in such a confined space as a tank.Enemy shells were exploding all around and with the remainder of our tanks roaring across the field the noise was deafening. Happily the driver climbed out as he had also suvived the explosion, and we both returned to active service after a couple of days rest. Again I had been in the right position in the tank. With no replacement tank available, I saw the war out in a two man Daimler scout car with Cpl.Nuttal, a desert rat from Clitheroe,Lancs.