大象传媒

There were 3 tank regiments; the 13-18 Royal Hussars, 4-7 Dragoon Guards and the South Staffordshire, who had secret tanks that went 10 feet under the water. They were called Duplex Drive (DD) because they had 10 propellers on the back. There were about 240 of these tanks, a formidable force.
These secret tanks were the main thrust, with the support of the infantry, of the first 2 hours of landing on the Sword Beach near a small village called Oistraun on D-Day. Once the beach head consolidated a mile inland we turned towards the 6th airborne to give them support. The main objective was to capture the town of Caen, on our operational papers it said that it should be taken by 3.30 that afternoon but it took 7.5 weeks and we suffered very heavy losses. We had Sherman tanks and Stuart tanks, we lost 12 Stuarts in the first hour with 4 men on each. We Lost at least 5 Sherman with 8 men (40).
My first job on landing was to pull a Sherman on fire out of the way so the rest of tanks could get up main coast road.
We moved to the first place and awaited orders. Being the explosive man and the booby trap man, I had to take up several mines (personnel and anti-vehicle mines) the first time I had ever done it for real so I was a bit shaky to put it mildly!
Over the next weeks we had loads of casualties and repairs as we slowly progressed towards Caen, as this was the main town.
Our rations were in a box 6" by 4" by 2", we had a 24 hour ration pack which included 3 hard biscuits that a hungry dog would turn his nose up at, 6 boiled sweets, 2 thin bars of chocolate, 2 blocks of compressed porridge, 6 cubes of sugar with tea and milk impregnated in it and 4 sheets of toilet paper!
Finally we got some tins of soup - it was terrible food. We had 60 cigarettes for a week, we smoked them on the first day!
There were 19 in our gang, 2 went mad "bomb-happy." We used to work in teams of 3 - 5, in case an engine had to be replaced. We'd follow tanks into action in case one got hit, we would try to rescue the crew if possible and repair the tanks if necessary. This went on for every battle.

A tank battle was going on one day and all of us engineers were waiting in case we were needed, we were sheltering in the leeward side of a French building. We decided it was time to make tea, so we boiled some water in a Dixie, a small Ariel bomb landed by the stove. Our welder picked it up with his tongs threw it over the next garden and said "It nearly knocked the bl**dy tea water over!"

The sleeping arrangements; we had bivouac tents that slept 2 men. Difficult to erect so normally we put a steel tow rope between 2 Sherman tanks, pull it up tight and throw a tarpaulin sheet over it, it would sleep about 12. With 2 at a time on guard.
One of our drivers was called Fred Watson, nick-named Gabby, he was on guard with our electrician Dennis Brain. We were all lying under "tent" smoking, Gabby was one of the few men that had a rifle. After a little while, Gabby said, "Can you see him Dennis?" who replied, "No I can't see him" Gabby said "He rode up that tree on his bike, he looks like a German Paratrooper." With that we heard his rifle rattle as he loaded, we heard a shot fire and somebody shouted out "take that bl**dy gun away before he kills he somebody!" On parade the next morning we were all talking about this and our welder Bert said "I quite agree with you Gabby, I saw the tyre marks on the tree!!"

We captured Caen after 7 and half weeks. It took so long because on the main road to Caen there was a large German blockhouse with several 88 mm guns on it. Every tank that went down that road got blown apart. Eventually in the British army we had a tank called a crocodile, a Churchill tank with a trailer behind it carrying 8 tones of inflammable latex (flame throwing tanks) they could throw a flame 4 - 500 yards, could burn anything. About 20 crocodiles blew up the blockhouse and the road was finally open.

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