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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Sami Qasem from ´óÏó´«Ã½ London, on behalf of F.Gaterell and has been added to this site with his/her permission. F.Gaterell fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

This incident happened in North Italy sometime in late 1944. I was a tank driver in the Royal Wilts Yeomanry regiment, HQ Troop, B Squadron.

The sergeant major was our tank commander. The Italians had stopped fighting but not the Germans.

Track vehicles could not move around as we did in North Africa, we had to use mainly tracks and roads. This day we were advancing in line, we were the third tank back. We had a considerable gap between us, travelling along a track cut in the side of a hill. About 40 feet below the track was a road, similar to our B roads, and a single line railway track followed it. Excited talk came over the radio, the tanks behind had gone over the edge, somersaulted, and landed on its tracks on the railway line. We were told to go and assist. We had 4 crew, a gunner, a radio op, a driver and commander. The radio op stayed behind as we scrambled down to the bank. An anti-tank gun opened fire and we laid down in the ditch near the railway track. After a while the firing stopped, we heard tracks coming from the enemy side, it was an unusual vehicle, motor cycle front with tracks at the back. Two men were in it. The driver stalled the engine, I think they were shocked at seeing our damaged tank.

Our personal arms were pistols, I was the only one with a gun. The sergeant asked for it and he stood up and took the two Germans prisoner. We eventually handed them to the infantry we were supporting and we carried on at the end of the day, we had arms cleaning etc. I opened my pistol and found it was not loaded. I never did tell the sergeant about this, he may have got some commendation if this was known — pointing an empty gun at the enemy.

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