by Ken Tout
Meanwhile, the routine continued with large-scale schemes, further training courses and visits to firing ranges – the latter with a rota as varied as peacetime camps: Linney Head, Dunwich, Titchwell, Lulworth, Warcop. The first heavier tanks, such as old Matildas, Valentines and Crusaders, gave way to bigger, faster and more reliable Cromwells (2NY) and Shermans (1NY). Gunners and loaders were assured that all that was British (or American lease-loaned) was best; and were not yet fully aware of the thicker armament on the front of Panthers and Tigers, or the better guns on even the smaller German Mk IV. Nor had they yet looked inside a burned-out Sherman tank. Higher authorities were only too aware of British deficiencies but, as the posters admonished the public, the military generals also ‘kept mum’.
D-Day 1944 was approaching, although not yet known to troopers by that code word. In May 1944 the author, with nineteen other gunners, was loaded on to a 3-ton lorry and taken away to a ‘secret destination’ under strict orders of silence. The vehicle travelled from near Bury St Edmunds to the Brancaster/Titchwell area on the Norfolk coast. The driver was directed up a dirt road to a belt of trees on a hill top, a place of Druid aura, dark and mysterious. Rounding a corner they discovered a Sherman tank hidden in the trees, but it was a Sherman with a difference. This was the Firefly with a greatly extended, larger gun, pointing at the moment out to sea towards a sunken ship about 2,500 yards away, far beyond normal tank gun range. The gunners were informed that, because of shortage of ammunition and concern about wearing out the gun barrel, each man would load only one round and then, with someone else loading, fire only one round at the sunken ship. They thus became gunners qualified to fire a 17-pounder, which would prove to be a better gun than those carried by Panthers and Tigers: a veritable secret weapon.
Perhaps the author might be permitted to include a glimpse upwards from a gunner’s seat to describe a trooper’s view of a fairly typical yeomanry regiment ready for D-Day. The 1NY’s Lieutenant Colonel Doug Forster, a surname not unknown in the racing world, was a quiet, unobtrusive regular cavalryman, recently retired in 1939 but recalled to command. He rarely raised his voice and was content to let his squadron leaders command in their own distinctive ways. Perhaps surprisingly, from a trooper’s viewpoint, he was known to his cavalry peers as ‘a hard rider to hounds’.
Of the four majors only one was a regular officer: C Squadron leader, Territorial, or ‘War Substantive’ Maj. David ‘Hank’ Bevan had passed through the famous playing fields of Eton, and was a tall, young, charismatic figure, usually remote from the troopers but when required to talk face to face was pleasant and just. He had enlisted and been commissioned early and so was senior to his second-in-command, who was several years older. The second-in-command, Captain Bill Fox, was a total contrast, able to decorate the English language with variations previously unheard, and was a bareback rider reputed to have been a cavalry trooper and American cowboy. His wrinkled, mobile face, quick to show displeasure but slow to display rancour, revealed unexpected signs of bereavement when casualties occurred. The second captain, Michael ‘Ratters’ Rathbone, carried his school nickname for he had taught several rankers at a Brackley school and still maintained a schoolmasterly attitude to command.
There were five lieutenants, two of them younger than most of the troopers, Bobby McColl and Tony Faulkner. Although inexperienced, they both proved excellent commanders, the former a taciturn Scot, the latter an extrovert ‘good chap’. The subalterns were generally given due respect, except for one who assumed a supercilious attitude and put more people on charges than the other four combined. Soldiers were quick to resent an officer who showed pretensions which might be described as ‘above his station’.
The sergeant and corporals, who were the tank commanders and administrators, were almost all original Territorials. Having now worn uniform full time for five years, they could be counted as professional soldiers. The author’s then troop sergeant, Dick Bates, an elderly, florid-faced jovial man, had been a nobleman’s chauffeur in peacetime and was more of an uncle to the 19- and 20-year-olds than a commander. The troop corporal, however, seemed to resent the lack of high-visibility discipline around him and compensated by becoming the strictest martinet among the daily contacts. The vast majority of the inside crews were about 20 years of age and had been through a rigid and adequate technical training for their tasks. Many of them had been selected for tank crew training as a result of IQ and aptitude testing which were still quite novel at the time.
Probably the two most important people in the regiment were the RSM and one’s own SSM. In 1NY the RSM was now the redoubtable George Jelley, who had the advantage of having been a boy soldier in the previous war. He therefore thoroughly comprehended the problems and attitudes of his young charges. A big man both in physique and voice, he had the further advantage of being an enthusiastic football referee and the sight of his muscular knees on the football field made it easier to realise that he was a human being, a term not always applied by rankers to RSMs. He could shout at a range of a hundred yards if required, but could also personally thank troopers for their excellent turn out after a brigadier’s inspection.
SSM Sid Turton, aged 30, was a physical contrast to George, smaller, unbelievably neat at all times in all conditions, a whippet of a man, alternatively snapping at people’s heels and then indulging in sardonic humour. He had spent time in a tuberculosis sanatorium as a sickly child but fought his way to fitness, joining the cavalry and becoming a staff sergeant before transfer to the 1NY as one of only two regular soldiers in the squadron of about 150 men. He perfected that strange relationship with rankers which distinguish his type, as Stan Hicken vividly remembered:
Our Squadron Sergeant Major had a fantastic sense of humour. I must tell you more about Sid Turton. One day Bill Rawlins and I were walking from our Nissen huts across the park to the tank aprons when, coming in the opposite direction we met Sid. As we approached he snapped ‘Come on there! Smarten yourselves up! Try and look like soldiers!’ So we swung our arms and straightened our shoulders a bit. After about ten yards he stopped behind us, turned round and said. ‘I know what you are thinking. But you are wrong. I knew both my mother and father. And they WERE married. And take those bloody grins off your faces!’ But he could not stand fools or slackness.
May 1944 arrived and destiny began to call, preceded by those military harbingers of real action, the censoring of letters home and a forty-seven-hour leave pass. When gunners tested their newly arrived 17-pounder Firefly variants, one to each three 75mm Shermans in a troop, they quickly discovered a fault with the cocking mechanism. A despatch rider was called, loaded with a case full of cocking mechanisms and ordered to speed on his motorbike from Bury St Edmunds to a factory in South Wales to have the items checked and altered. On return the despatch rider would find the regiment moved to an Aldershot staging point and lodged in Guards accommodation in Mons Lines. The 2NY also began the move towards the docks and ‘hards’ of the south coast.
Stan Hicken was the unwilling participant in the next hurried and obnoxious task, waterproofing newly delivered Duplex-Drive (DD) tanks which were designed to traverse through the open sea:
There was a top panic to get all our tanks waterproofed. This involved fitting big metal exhaust chutes at the back, fitting Macintosh (canvas) surrounds around the gun ports and any other holes, like the fuel cap; and all cracks and joins in the structure had to be sealed with funny black sticky plastic stuff (Bostik) which stuck to hands, overalls and boots and had to be painfully scraped off. The canvas Macintosh over the gun port was resting on a cradle of cortex and a fuse, so as soon as we got out of the sea we could fire the cortex fuse and blow the Macintosh off ready for action. We had then to take the tank to a lake and dip it in to test it. Any leaks? Put on more Bostik! All for inspection parade at nine next morning, working in daylight and dark.
Finally, out of the goodness of his heart, the resident Guards RSM, he of the thousand-decibel voice, decided to enter
tain the Yeomen by arranging a special drill parade a la Grenadiers, shouted by himself from distances almost as far as a 17-pounder’s range, on the vast Mons parade ground. The Yeomen, who had been doing final maintenance and waterproofing tanks with Bostick, had lately been spared such drill exercises. Now they went through the entire routine of parading, ordering arms, advancing and retreating, quick march and slow march, until eventually they were required, in long line abreast, to march off in the general direction of the North Pole. Each trooper, terrified by the immense bulk and roaring voice of the RSM, sweated as they marched on and on with no reversing word of command, each fearful that, with the clatter of hundreds of boots, they might have failed to hear the Grenadier’s final faint ‘Halt!’ Later the RSM smiled and paid the Yeomen the ultimate seal of approval, ‘Not bad, seeing they are not Guardsmen’.
Released from the Grenadier RSM’s clutches into the rather more genial care of George Jelley and the SSMs, the squadrons then paraded afresh, one by one, officers and men, in ranks six deep and mounted up in tiers on chairs and table tops. This was to be for the military equivalent of the condemned man’s last meal: the squadron photograph.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1 NY archives – to which ‘Sandy’ Saunders contributed much research in later years.
2 Leary, F., A Trooper of World War II, NYA. (Wooton Hall – now the record office where much of the NY information is archived.)
3 Museums and records of various regiments, here and later.
4 Close, The View from the Turret.
5 Macksey, K., Invasion – 1940.
6 Leary, op. cit.
7 As a result Stan became driver of ‘3 Baker’ with the author as gunner. Stan’s self-published story, as others quoted, in NYA. And also these and various similar memoirs are in the Second World War Experience Centre (SWWEC).
CHAPTER NINE
ARMOURED STEEDS HUNT TIGERS
(1944–1946)
‘There cannot be a more various organisation than that of the British Yeomanry Corps,’ stated a publication of 1844.1 This was never more strikingly illustrated than in the line-up of Yeomanry regiments in queues across much of southern England, waiting to load on to landing ships in June just 100 years later.
Even the two Northants lines had diverged in their role and equipment: the First manned Sherman tanks in the independent 33rd Armoured Brigade (three tank regiments available to work with infantry as required); the Second had the rather lighter, faster Cromwells as the reconnaissance unit for the 11th Armoured Division, the ‘Charging Bull’. Whilst these tanks could wade ashore in a depth of water up to the hulls, the Staffordshire and the East Riding Yeomanry had special Duplex-Drive (DD) tanks which could swim in deep water.
Other Yeomanry regiments were even more diversified. Some were now mobile artillery using varied types of guns: the Ayrshires and several others were Field Regiments, RA; the Duke of Lancasters had medium guns; and the Northumberlands worked as anti-tank. In the specialist 79th Armoured Division, with its so-called ‘Funnies’, were the 1st Lothian and Border and 2nd County of London on minesweeping ‘Crabs’ with their front chains flailing the ground; the 1st Fife and Forfar used fearsome flame-throwing tanks, the ‘Crocodiles’; the Inns of Court had armoured cars at Corps HQ; and the Cheshires formed Lines of Communications signals. Moving into the air, the Worcesters were now the 53rd Air Landing Light Regiment whilst the North Somersets served as Air Formation Signals. In times of need the army obviously turned to the Yeomanry for versatility.
The D-Day plan was to capture the pivotal large city of Caen on the first day, 6 June. The Staffordshire Yeomanry led the charge, swimming ashore and advancing in good time in spite of casualties. However, the enemy around Caen remained defiant for a whole month until a major RAF raid destroyed the defences of the city. Also on D-Day, one battery of the Worcesters took part in the successful parachute and glider landing attacks, which seized a vital bridge across the river north of Caen.
The build-up of troops continued across the beaches for weeks. The entire 1NY regiment crossed as a unit, although two squadrons of 2NY preceded the remainder of that regiment. From the moment of landing everyone was under fire in those first weeks after D-Day, and casualties were suffered. C Squadron, 1NY’s Lieutenant Haskard and his tank had been requisitioned by the corps commander as his personal ‘eyes and ears’. Rounding a random corner just off the beaches, the Sherman found itself face to face with a much more powerful German Panther. There was not time even for a token shot as the Panther gunner had been waiting for the Sherman. John Haskard, age 20, and his gunner, Bill Shellam, age 21, became the first NY men to die in Normandy. The 2NY experience was even more brutal.
Reg Spittles was now troop corporal of 2 Troop, A Squadron, under Major Bobby Peel, and his orders were to go forward and survey bridges over the River Odon. Early on 26 June they pushed forward into Cheux which had been heavily bombed. The water tower had been destroyed and the streets were a chaos of floods, thick mud and mounded rubble, enough to break the track of an unwary tank. As they clawed and slewed their way through Cheux the news came over the air that Captain Wyvill Raynsford, their second-in-command, had been killed by a sniper. ‘Our first casualty, this was a great shock as he was a very popular officer and had been with the regiment since 1939.’ Reg was to see and hear worse news still:
Being held in reserve I was able to observe no 3 Troop going up a cornfield at about 35mph, exactly like an exercise in England as though there was no enemy. At such speed no commander would have chance to observe forward. I looked away. In a few moments I looked back. They had reached the top of the hill but two of their three Cromwell tanks had already been destroyed and were burning like two haystacks on fire, thick black smoke billowing out. You can imagine the shock to my nervous system. So that was what happened to tanks? But no time to waste because Bobby Peel came on the radio and said ‘Hullo 2 (that’s us), get up there and see what’s happened’. My troop leader, Lt Hobson on my radio just said ‘2 Baker (that’s me) – lead!’
Reg started off more cautiously at about 15mph but was told by his lieutenant, ‘Get a bloody move on!’ He passed through the smoke between the two burning tanks to get some cover. Looking down from the hill he saw a convoy of enemy tanks crossing the valley, led by Panther tanks, followed by about twenty of the lighter Mk IVs (but still more powerful than the Cromwells) plus half-track carriers full of infantry and all going at speed. Reg’s crew had some consolation as they hit and halted four of the Mk IVs but the enemy convoy sped on and out of sight (to meet a larger British attack which took place elsewhere). Reg then turned about and started picking up the wounded from 3 Troop. Radio messages confirmed that the 4 Troop tanks of Lieutenant Alex Stock (later renowned in the football world) and Sergeant Reg King (of the USA Sherman design team) had completed the bridge survey. They were all ordered to return to Cheux, where they found a burial party interring Captain Raynsford in a temporary grave with one of the quartermaster sergeant’s wooden crosses at the head. By a strange coincidence, Raynsford’s permanent grave in the St Manvieu War Cemetery is at almost the same spot as his temporary burial place.
The 2NY’s baptism of fire took place across open cornfields. The 1NY’s first attack took them through the notorious Bocage, a region of tiny fields, each one hedged about like a ready-made fortress, with hedges so high and thick that no tank commander could see over them or through them. They were set on banks 2ft or 3ft high, causing the tank to climb up and show its thinly plated underbelly to any marksmen beyond the hedge. The Germans frequently used the Panzerfaust, a hand-held, one-shot, throw-away bomb projector fired by a single infantryman and, at 50 yards, quite powerful enough to disable the tank. Some of the fields were not much larger than a tennis court and few were large enough for a full-scale football match. These fields could be death traps even for tanks and infantry working together in close liaison. Armoured brigade regiments like 1NY, 144 RAC and 148 RAC were farmed out to infantry f
ormations as needed in Normandy. So the tank crews of C Squadron, 1NY had never met the Green Howards of the 50th Infantry Division, with whom they were to work on 30 June, as they aimed to secure a dozen or so of the tiny fields and reach the farm of La Taille.
Lieutenant Tony Faulkner encountered the first problem on the start line of the planned attack, finding only a few infantrymen waiting there. They had been in constant action over the D-Day beaches, where their CSM Stan Hollis gained the Victoria Cross, and through the Bocage without respite in some of the worst close combat fighting of the war; the men were exhausted. One encounter had been earned. It was obvious that this would be an unsupported tank probe. Jock Troup was one of the subsequent casualties:
We crashed through the first hedge, I was firing machine-gun bursts up and down the hedgerows. Then the tank stopped. Not a word from anyone. I hadn’t seen a gun flash but I fired off an H.E. shot anyway. Had we been hit? There was a smell of acrid smoke and red hot metal. We had been told we had only seven seconds to get out if the tank went up. My power traverse wasn’t working. I made a scramble for the turret exit – where was Frank Hickson, my commander? I rolled over the side of the tank. My clothes were burnt. I waved to some stretcher bearers carrying someone away. They waved back. Then I saw they were going in the opposite direction: Germans! Face, hands, feet now very sore. Then I saw Frank lying on his back. I shouted ‘Frank are you OK?’ I got beside him. His eyes were closed and his life gurgled away. How did he get there? What hit him? My theory is we took two 88 armour-piercing shots. And the shock stopped me thinking/feeling. The first shot must have hit the front and killed the drivers. The second into the turret. Then a darkened face popped out of a hole and said ‘who goes there?’ I could only say ‘Tank’. The infantryman crawled out of his hole and began putting a first aid dressing on my hands.