Yeomen of England

by Ken Tout

  For forty years veterans of the NY considered themselves to be something of a forgotten or poorly publicised regiment compared with other high-visibility units like the Household Cavalry or the paras. Then in the early 1980s a German research group found the bodies of Major Michael Wittmann and his Tiger crew on the site of the 8 August 1944 battle. This renewed interest in the German tank ace and his nemesis, the humble Yeomen and their Canadian counterparts. The story was first written up for the consumption of the general public in Britain by a freelance writer, once NY trooper, ‘Spud’ Taylor. A modest spotlight of fame had been turned on the NY.

  It was during the late 1970s and early ’80s that Second World War veterans of the NY, as with other county and higher formation units, began to think in terms of visiting, as organised groups, their old battlefields and the sacredly maintained cemeteries. These had so far been within the reach of a relatively few individuals and no formal NY Association overseas tour had yet been mooted. At one noisy annual dinner in the echoing main hall of the Northampton Drill Hall several members agreed that the time had come to do something about this, and nominated the author to ‘do a recce’.

  The traditionally uniformed guidon party, Messrs Warren, Hornsey and Turner, march to drumhead service, Althorp bicentenary. (NYA)

  Both in 1944 and latterly, NY veterans had problems in pronouncing Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, causing some to say, ‘Why didn’t we liberate Bray or Ifs?’ Now the author and his wife, Jai, located the village and were given a delighted welcome by the deputy mayor and an especially rapturous welcome by his wife, Monique Bellenger. Monique asked, ‘Why have your veterans never returned before? When will they come to see us?’ She then produced a tiny barrel, a miniature of the familiar wooden beer barrel, and told their story of gratitude to their unknown liberators.

  The entire population of fortified villages had been evacuated in July 1944 and the Bellengers had returned to Saint-Aignan three weeks after the battle. They found houses destroyed, apple orchards devastated, crops burned to ash, burned-out tanks standing on all sides, occasional German bodies still lying in hedgerows and some of their unknown liberators lying in temporary graves around Le Petit Ravin. Monique went out into the orchards, gathered some apples from under the shattered trees and then made a special brew of the fortified Calvados of the region. This she stored in the tiny barrel vowing that the tap would never be opened until their liberators could return to drink a liberation toast. The barrel had waited for forty years, its alcoholic strength gradually increasing.

  Although an unexpected number of sixty veterans indicated their desire to return to ‘Saint-A’ on the 40th anniversary of the battle, the community of about a thousand replied in effect ‘bring them all’, with an offer to accommodate, feed and fete all veterans who could attend an August 1984 event. And join in the celebratory opening of Monique’s barrel of panzer-force Calvados. Thus on 8 August some sixty Yeomen, led by the 1944 navigator captain, Tom Boardman, stood on the old battlefield, sharing memories and locating tank positions and other remarkable sites. Such was the success of the visit that there was an immediate demand to return to Holland, to Sint-Michielsgestel, Sint-Oedenrode (‘Why didn’t we liberate Bray?’), Raamsdonk, the Rhine Crossing and, of course, the Ardennes. Over the next twenty-five years touring parties visited every liberated community from 1944/45 and stood at every NY grave in three countries. Delegations of overseas friends came to Northampton events. Some of those friends will again attend what may be a climactic event in August 2012 when Charles Spencer, 9th Earl, following in the family tradition, welcomes veterans and overseas friends to a special parade and dinner at the home of the original 1794 Troop, Althorp House.

  The return visits to Saint-Aignan and elsewhere have had three unanticipated outcomes over the years: a series of memorials dedicated to the regiment; a system of continental remembrance of the regiment’s fallen; and a continuing programme of youth education about the realities of war and peace.

  Remembrance – the author speaks during the open-air service at NY memorial in Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, 8 August 2004. (NYA)

  Until 1984 there was no mark anywhere of the progress of the regiment from the D-Day beaches to the German border, that is to say, except for the enduring scorched and polluted marks of a Sherman tank’s conflagration here and there; the lumps of shrapnel ploughed up by M. Dan and M. Le Baron each year; and the odd Mk IV mudguard, mess tin or Tiger tank jack discovered by more recent enthusiasts with metal detectors. Now local people began to mark significant sites. A battle pointer was installed outside Saint-Aignan and a museum developed. When the pointer was desecrated by neo-Fascists of the twenty-first century, the local mayor replaced it by commissioning a fine sculpture of a partially destroyed wall.

  Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil memorial to NY erected 2009 after the previous memorial was desecrated by neo-Fascists. (NYA)

  A similar wall, honouring the NY and Black Watch, was placed on the battle site at Sint-Michielsgestel. Outside the Lambertus church in Raamsdonk, local researchers identified the precise spot where Lieutenant McColl was killed and erected an impressive slab monument to the young Scot. In the elegant town hall of Vught, where the concentration camp was liberated, a stained glass window carries the NY badge and also a tribute to the 51st Highland Division as a whole. At La Roche-en-Ardenne, a vital town in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, the council placed a 1944 tank on the main road high above the town to remember the regiment and the second liberation of the town. At Helden-Panningen in Limburg the local war memorial also includes a permanent photographic record of the liberation designed around a portrait of an NY trooper.

  Remembrance of another kind issued from a return visit to Zwolle where NY soldiers had joined the rejoicing local inhabitants in the rapturous celebrations of VE Day. After VE day, and again the following year on the anniversary of VE Day, NY athletes had competed against local athletes in celebration games, cross-country runs, field events, football, hockey and even chess tournaments. On the first return visit of veterans in the 1980s, the Dutch second- and third-placed runners of the 1946 cross-country race appeared, armed with newspaper cuttings of the time, and were delighted to greet the 1946 winner, Trooper Cliff Cuthbertson. Out of this encounter an idea emerged: that this happy sporting relationship ought to be perpetuated as a remembrance event. Again the author was deputed to work out a scheme.

  This developed into a standing contact between the NY Association and AVpec 1910, the Zwolle athletic association. A large NY memorial shield, with twenty-five small name shields attached, would be held by AVpec for annual presentation to an outstanding youth athlete of the year, together with an illuminated explanatory scroll. The annual presentation would be a civic occasion to remember the fallen soldiers, both of the regiment and of the Canadians who first entered Zwolle. Such a scheme could extend into posterity.

  Continuing until the most recent in 2009, further tours of the veterans awarded similar Youth Remembrance Shields to communities in the three countries. Whilst the Zwolle connection focused logically on athletics, in another town the local mayor and advisors set and judged an annual sixth form essay related to war and peace. In yet another community the award would be for an outstanding youth act or service to the community, and the winner recently was a 7-year-old boy who found his grandmother dead. Using ideas culled from television hospital programmes, he successfully resuscitated the elderly woman and kept her alive until paramedics, called by him, duly arrived. At the presentation it was suggested that, even in eighty years’ time, the boy might still be telling his descendants how he won the shield and what the shield was all about: a programme of remembrance unending!

  NY Youth Remembrance Shield, won by outstanding young swimmer Amy van Lier of Kaatsheuvel, Netherlands, 2011. (VOGW, Waalwijk/NYA)

  A voluntary group in the area where the boy lived had already undertaken the care of Allied war graves, especially those many who are not interred in the well-regulated official cemeterie
s. During one of the NY visits the group had the idea of researching the history of a 19-year-old NY soldier killed locally, Trooper Delwyn Price, two of whose crew members (themselves wounded and taken prisoner) accompanied NY tours. The group, VOGW (i.e. War Grave volunteers), led by Marius Heideveld, created a portable display featuring Delwyn to carry to local schools whilst teaching about the liberation and why it was so important. Similarly, elsewhere in Holland a schoolmaster, now retired but always most active, Louis Kleijne developed a remembrance programme in local schools, and this is repeated elsewhere. The veterans had involuntarily become a reservoir of information and inspiration for continental organisations concerned to continue remembrance of the fallen and to stimulate the awareness of future generations about issues of war and peace.

  Histories of the Second World War, when referring to combat stress, tend to highlight the fact that psychiatric services immediately behind the front line were much more accessible and better equipped than in previous wars. There is also an assumption that the impact of First World War artillery barrages was greater than in the second conflict and therefore caused more shellshock. It is forgotten that some of the 1944/45 barrages, which had to be endured on both sides, were of even greater intensity than in the earlier war and exacerbated by accurate air bombing. And that for those very many of us who did not need immediate psychiatric treatment during the actual battle, but who suffered long-term traumas with which civilian doctors could not cope, there was often no psychiatric provision; checking each 1940s soldier at the busy demob centres would have been an impossible task.

  For many veterans the moment of what is now termed ‘closure’ came with a return to a battlefield site or to the grave of a comrade. On NY tours, as no doubt on many such unit tours to old battlefields, 80-year-old men, toughened by hard-working lives, were not ashamed to break down in tears as the undiagnosed and untreated horrors and nightmares of a lifetime were released and soothed at the foot of a grave. For there lay someone who had shared our travail and then paid a far greater price than we had done.

  Although a firm base of amalgamated Yeomanry continues to serve on an area basis, for Northamptonshire and other counties there is no ongoing corpus of active Yeomanry soldiers to carry on traditions. An appeal in the NY magazine by the editor for ‘Children of the Regiment’ to rally to their fathers’ aid brought a response from Melvyn Marchant. His father had been badly burned on 8 August 1944 and promptly discharged from the army with the rather callous judgement ‘no longer fulfils the physical requirements for active service’. Melvyn, with wife Maggie, offered to organise a Children of the Regiment group to support Association events. The present Children’s chairman, Brian Bower, undertakes the annual task of placing 170 named poppies at the Westminster Remembrance plot each November; Suzanne and Mick Batchelor have become main fundraisers; Caryl Billingham, former Mayor of Brackley, is Hon. Secretary of the Children in their continuing tasks; and the England family produce the magazine.

  As the veterans, for whom such associations were formed, pass on, there will be fewer calls on charitable funds. So the double question is raised: is there some useful way in which remaining funds of the association can be utilised (an echo of 1828), and how can we ensure that past sacrifices are not forgotten?

  With a successful, perpetual remembrance programme based on youth trophies on the Continent, the NY Association now turned to awarding annual trophies to local groups mainly in the youth sector. However, one variation in this age focus is an award related to a horticultural scheme at the psychiatric hospital for which NY surplus funds purchased the ground in 1828, enabling St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton, to be built. Another trophy reflects the riding and hunting origins of the Yeomanry, in a cup for young disabled riders, and a point-to-point horse race should afford considerable opportunities for media references to the origins of the regiment and the purpose of the trophy programme. The military interests of the association also inevitably lead to several annual awards for proficiency in local cadet branches of the armed forces. Nevertheless, the most poignant if remote places of remembrance are at the ‘White Horse’ engraved gravestones of the fallen of two world wars.

  If at some time or other in the distant past a Yeomanry sword was raised in anger against an unarmed civilian protester, surely any necessary restitution has now been made. The two world wars have seen extreme heroism and considerable sacrifice by Yeomanry soldiers, and that tradition continues. The continuing remembrance of our war dead is not a stagnant, redundant gesture but a contribution to the awareness and security of future generations as they face very different perils.

  NOTE

  This chapter is based on author’s records and personal experience.

  GLOSSARY

  AP

  armour-piercing shot

  BEF

  British Expeditionary Force

  Brig

  brigadier

  Bde

  brigade, usually three battalions

  Broadsword

  (Yeo.) straight sword

  Buffalo

  armoured amphibious carrier

  Capt

  captain

  Carbine

  predecessor of the rifle

  CO

  commanding officer

  Cockade

  rosette badge

  collar dog

  badge worn on lapel/collar

  Cornet

  the most junior officer (cavalry)

  Cpl

  corporal

  DCM

  Distinguished Conduct Medal

  D-Day

  start day of any battle

  DD tank

  ‘swimming tank’, waterproofed

  Div.

  division, usually three brigades

  Dragoon

  cavalryman trained to fight dismounted

  DSO

  Distinguished Service Order

  Epaulet

  shoulder protection – (Yeo) of chain mail

  Facings

  strips of varied colour material

  FANY

  First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

  Firefly

  Sherman tank with larger gun

  ‘Funnies’

  tanks adapted for various purposes

  Gen.

  general

  Girth

  belly band for saddle

  Guidon

  small cavalry flag

  half-track

  vehicle partly wheeled, partly tracked

  hands

  measurement of horses’ height

  HE

  high-explosive shell

  Helmet

  rounded protective headgear, often with plumes

  Home Guard

  part-time defence force

  HQ

  headquarters

  hussar

  cavalryman normally wielding sword

  lancer

  cavalryman with lance as main weapon

  L/Cpl

  lance corporal, lowest NCO rank

  LDV

  Local Defence Volunteers (Home Guard)

  Lt

  lieutenant

  Lt Col

  lieutenant colonel

  Maj.

  major

  MC

  Military Cross

  MM

  Military Medal

  NCO

  non-commissioned officer

  NY

  in this book – Northamptonshire Yeomanry (with apologies to other ‘N’ Yeomanries)

  NYA

  NY Association/archives

  ORs

  other ranks, not officers

  Pte

  private – lowest military rank

  QM

  quartermaster

  Regt

  Regiment – cavalry battalion of several squadrons

  REME

  Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers

  RFC

  Royal Flying Corps

  RSM

&
nbsp; regimental sergeant major

  RTC

  Royal Tank Corps

  sabre

  slightly curved sword

  shako

  tall military hat distinct from helmet

  SQMS

  squadron quartermaster sergeant

  sqn

  squadron composed of several troops

  SSM

  squadron sergeant major

  Territorial

  originally part-time soldier serving only in Britain

  Tpr

  trooper, lowest cavalry rank (but private also used in cavalry to 1918)