by Jon E. Lewis
We spent the night in the ditch, which was between a sort of double hedge. In front of us was a chateau with German soldiers, and we spent the night trying to keep an eye on them. The following morning we attempted to make our way back to our own lines, and were promptly strafed by a British fighter plane who thought we were Germans. Having survived that we split up, three of us going one way, two the other; we thought a bunch of five of us was too obvious. We stopped at a farmhouse, tiptoed in and there was a German truck full of potatoes in the yard. So we thought we might have a look and see if there was anybody in it, and there was a big fat Jerry in the cab, so we tiptoed away again.
We went on a bit further, came to a village, I’m not sure which one, where we were strafed by a Spitfire – you have to bear in mind we were wearing tight round tank helmets and grey overalls, so we looked like the Germans. I dived one side of the street into a ditch, the two other lads went the other. I landed on two German Teller mines and immediately bounced back out of the ditch. It was only afterwards that I realized that somebody had taken them up, and they weren’t buried but had been lifted. I didn’t think about that at the time, I just bounced out.
We met a fellow walking up the road and somebody said, ‘Go and ask him, Pete, where the Germans are.’ I said that I didn’t think my schoolboy French was adequate. Anyway I went up to him and asked if he spoke English. He said, ‘Yes I do. Are you English?’ I said we were, and that he spoke very good English. He said, ‘I kept a shop in Hastings for nine years.’ So we had picked the right fellow to ask. He informed us that they were on the other side of the village, not here. He took us into his house and gave us a glass of red wine. In the heat of June, and after having no food or water during the night, the red wine got to us a little bit. I felt a bit woozy, so did the others, and we thought we’d better get on.
We did eventually get back, clinging on to the back of a half-track we met, and got to where the squadron was harboured for the night in the middle of a field. Somebody gave me a blanket, but before I went to sleep the Adjutant came across and said, ‘It’s nice to see you back. I’ll talk to you in the morning’, and gave me a drink out of his hip flask. I crawled under a tank and went to sleep. I was woken on the morning of the ninth by a friend who had been my Number 2 gunner for years before but had moved back on to reserves. He had got a mug of tea in his hand and I hadn’t realized that the tank I was under had gone, had pulled off me earlier. He kicked me and said, ‘You’re not dead, you’re still alive, get up!’ Apparently the message he had received when he landed was that the five of us who had previously been his crew were dead and had been knocked out. But we weren’t, and we all survived. We were very lucky.
…
We had a nasty time at a tiny little hamlet of a dozen places called Galmanches (it doesn’t seem to be on modern maps). We were mortared all day by German infantry, and shelled by artillery, and we had to hold it without infantry. We fought there for five hours. It was said afterwards that we were lucky we weren’t annihilated, that B Squadron had taken the brunt of the battle. We lost a lot of commanders dead or wounded. I think it was eleven out of the nineteen in the one day.
…
The Germans had greater firepower. We were outgunned on a number of occasions. Their tanks were better than ours, their guns were better than ours – I don’t think their crews were better than ours. I have to say that, but I believe it was true. We were faster, we could manoeuvre better – we could survive better.
…
It was mostly the 21st Panzer division in front of us. We had fewer tanks than they had, but to kid them we had a lot more we used to stick the barrel through the hedge, stay there for ten minutes, quarter of an hour on watch, pull back and run down the hedge and stick it through somewhere else and kid the Germans there were tanks all along the hedge. Whereas there might have been only two or three.
Donald S. Vaughan, 79th Armoured Division
It was pretty hot and dusty on the roads, and a Churchill tank took all the dust in. And when it was hot weather, the heat inside was terrific. You had a big engine in the back, it’s a steel cage and you’ve got six men inside as well.
Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division
My company was under the control of Battlegroup von Luck. We made two attacks, one on the seventh of June and one on the ninth, and had a lot of losses – of our seventeen tanks, only one survived. The rest were destroyed. That had a big effect on us, and we sat around afterwards very crushed in spirits. It was now clear to us that we weren’t going to do it, we weren’t going to push the Allies back. The Allied attacks were too strong, particularly because of their air superiority. There was hardly any chance of avoiding a bad ending. But when an order came to attack we still did it – it must have been the same on your [the Allied] side – because if a commander says, ‘Attack!’ or ‘Tanks, advance!’ no one could say, ‘I’m not doing it.’
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I have one terrible memory. On 9 June we had attacked Escoville, an attack which only lasted a few minutes. There were infantry behind us, under covers, who were wounded and we had to reverse. The driver can only see in front of him and did not know they were there … we reversed over them, over our own infantry. Because they were wounded they couldn’t move out of the way. One saw some terrible things.
Anonymous British Tank Officer
We all thought that our tanks were deficient, and I believe that this had a highly adverse effect on morale. In the end we all became ‘canny’, and would obey orders only to the extent that there appeared a reasonable expectation of successfully carrying them out. Thus there was a sort of creeping paralysis in the armoured units; because of the pervading fear of 88s, Panthers, Tigers and Panzerfausts, initiative was lost and squadron commanders tended to go to ground at the first sign of any serious opposition and call up an artillery ‘stonk’. With any luck, as the day wore on, the battle died down and that was at least another day got through.
Major F.D. Goode, Gloucestershire Regiment
There were some of our tanks sculling around behind our position and soon the enemy opened up with 88s and the shells were whistling overhead. I reckoned that they were coming from the farm and that the Germans had moved back there. So I called for fire on the farm. My chaps were making tea and I was enjoying a mug when I saw a naval lieutenant in battle dress coming along the ditch followed by two ratings hauling a huge wireless set. I said, ‘Good morning, who are you?’ He replied, ‘I am a Forward Officer Bombardment.’ I said, ‘I hear about you chaps at the Staff College. What do you want? Have some tea.’ Tea being provided he said that [HMS] Rodney was answering my call for fire and asked where was the target. When he saw it he said, ‘Christ, that’s close!’ I suggested calling off the fire but he said he could not, so we dug deeper. The first shells came over with a noise like an underground train and fell about 100 yards from us; the next over and the third hit the target. We had no more trouble with that 88.
Private Robert Macduff, Wiltshire Regiment
A German tank had spied the communications trench and moved its track down the trench, but we managed to pull the equipment to the bottom of the trench and the tracks missed. As it went by, the turret top lifted and a hand grenade was thrown. I was pleased that the thrower was a bad shot. He missed by yards.
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An amusing thing I saw during a small tank battle was a German Tiger tank in a field with a small British tank running around it. The Tiger tank was trying to shoot the British tank, but the turret of the Tiger tank was hand traversed and he couldn’t get it around fast enough. The small British tank was firing its gun into the Tiger tank and destroyed it. It seemed to me like the David and Goliath story.
For three days, 13–15 June, the village of Lingèvres to the west of Caen was fiercely disputed by elements of the British 7th Armoured Division and Panzer Lehr, as the Allies tried to envelop Caen.
Leutnant Ernst, Panzer Lehr
We reached Lingèvres and
straightaway joined in the counterattack. In the narrow village streets the noise of the tracks and engines of our tanks was deafening. Our tracks screeched as we turned just in front of the church, where we came across the hulk of a British signals tank that had been knocked out. Along a stony track, we headed for a small wood about 300 metres away.
‘Battle Stations! Close hatches!’ came the order from Hauptmann Ritgen. Inside ‘Zitrone’ there was tension in the air. Now that the hatches were closed, the noise of the engine and tracks was muffled. All that could be seen of the outside world through the vision ports of the cupola was a narrow strip of hedges, fields and the edge of a wood. Ahead of ‘Zitrone’ three other tanks were moving in single file up the narrow track. They turned off westwards along the edge of the wood and into a field. The wood, although very leafy, was really nothing more than a very thick copse composed of undergrowth, hedges and apple trees that had been allowed to grow wild. Tanks would only get entangled in it.
Suddenly, the gun-layers heard the tank commanders shout: ‘Take aim, enemy tank at 11 o’clock – fire!’
I shouted to my gun-layer: ‘Feuer!’ and our round grazed the top of the Cromwell’s cupola and flew past it … The enemy disappeared behind the hedge; then we came under fire from the other side. ‘To the left!’ I shouted, and the PzKpfw IV heaved round with a jolt. The shape of the enemy tank grew larger in the gunsight. The recoil jarred the tank backwards as the round flew towards the thicket. It sounded like a direct hit. Smoke rose up into the sky. Nothing further moved. Evidently they must have been as surprised as we were, and had got out of the tank on impact and thus escaped being killed …
With the help of the crew from the damaged tank we managed to fix a tow. At that very moment, a soldier with both arms torn off by a shell appeared in front of me, moaning incomprehensibly in all the din that was going on. We hauled him up on to our tank to get him away to safety and then made our first attempt at towing the other panzer away. Slowly but surely we moved a few metres while the cable tautened. The fire from the British tanks positioned in the little wood was getting more drastic by the minute; we had to get a move on. It was one of those moments when, with no hope of success, there was nothing else to do except get on with it. A young radio operator lent a hand. Shell bursts were hitting the hedge next to us. It seemed unbelievable that it did not occur to the enemy opposite to aim higher, but I expect it must all have taken place in the space of a few seconds. Inside of me a voice was saying: ‘It’s not going to work’, but I somehow managed to keep cool and was more concerned at the time with getting the tank to move exactly right – to the nearest millimetre – than with how lucky I was …
That last journey from Lingèvres is something I shall never forget … On top of the tank, sitting or crouching down, were wounded men, most of whom had been badly burned, and as we picked up speed to get away from the artillery they were crying out with pain because of the heat from our exhausts. We were sent to a field hospital which had been set up in a fine chateau and ended up in a gothic hall lit by a few flickering candles. On the wall, I remember, was a portrait of a Renaissance lady. Outside the war rumbled on but here everything was absolutely still. Most of the wounded had been given injections and were lying there quietly. The doctors and nurses talked softly but I was close enough to overhear what they were saying about the wounded man beside me: ‘I can’t inject him; his skin is completely burnt.’ They were talking about a tank man called Schmielewski who lay motionless and silent – and who died that night.
The view from the opposing side:
Driver R.S. Bullen, Hertfordshire Yeomanry
My regiment, the Herts Yeomanry, was a three-battery, self-propelled, 25-pounder field gun unit. Each battery consisted of eight Sextons (25-pounder gun mounted on Sherman chassis) and four Shermans with main armament removed and substituted by a dummy gun barrel, this to enable the gun turret to contain a plotting table and various other items for pin-point bombardment. In addition to these vehicles there were various Bren carriers, armoured cars and, of course, numerous trucks – the idea being that Bren carriers would go forward with the infantry and bring down artillery support where needed and the Shermans would do likewise with armoured units. In our case, our main armament was the No. 19 wireless set and, but for the insistence of the wireless operator to carry a ‘walkie talkie’, Lingèvres might have taken a little longer to eliminate.
At dusk on 13 June, our Commander, Major Kenneth Swann, gathered the crew of ‘X’ tank and told us that we were to join a squadron of 4/7 Dragoon Guards immediately. We moved off and before complete darkness fell had met up with our ‘big boy friends’ … a term used largely when units were in company with armour.
While the skipper was away at Commanders’ briefing, we prepared a cold meal. Fires were not allowed but the cans of self-heating soup were a blessing, as they proved to be on several occasions. While we ate our meal, the skipper gave us crew briefing. Although every detail was covered, it simply meant that at first light several flights of rocket-firing Typhoons would loosen up the enemy, who were holding Lingèvres. While the Typhoons were attacking the armour would advance, giving close support to the Somerset Light Infantry, to capture and hold the village.
The main road at Lingèvres was of secondary standard only, both in terms of width and surface. The village square is bisected by the main road and again by a single track road leading from Longraye to Verrières. Another, even smaller track, led off the Longraye road to Juaye Mondaye, scene of a vicious infantry engagement two or three days previously.
‘Stand to’ at first light on the 14th was no different from previous ones. It was possible to discern black from grey but not men from shrubs and trees and the tanks in ‘league’ could have been mistaken for buildings. As the sky lightened and turned to sunrise, it was apparent that the previous day’s hot and sunny weather was to continue.
Breakfast, maintenance, checking of guns, ammunition, the wireless nets and dozens of other personal and tank daily checks were done almost in silence. Probably everyone shared the same thought: ‘I wonder if …’
Around 8 o’clock we heard the RAF arrive and minutes later the familiar sound of rockets came to us. ‘Mount … start up … driver advance …’ and we were off. We went up a slight rise in the ground, through a hedge and had our first sight of Lingèvres. From the angle we were at, it appeared to be a fairly large village, complete with a church and a few outlying farms, situated about half-way up a small hill. One or two small fires were burning but it wasn’t possible to say where as we were still about 2,000 yards away. We did, however, have a good view of the Typhoons going in. My own thought was that we would only have the sweeping up to do.
We were now advancing across a large field of corn in company with eight other Shermans in a rough line abreast, with each tank well separated from the next one. As a driver I was getting many changes of direction, unnecessarily I thought, until I realized we were advancing through our own infantry who were invisible to me through my periscope. The corn was almost eye level!
About 500 yards from the village I saw a Dragoon tank hit way over to our right. Suddenly one to our left stopped and the crew baled out. That, too, was hit. Then, quite suddenly, all hell let loose. Small-arms and machine-gun fire was exchanged across the cornfield. The main armament of tanks fired at targets I couldn’t see and the wireless sets which I could hear in the background were constantly receiving and sending messages. I can remember one in particular: ‘Mike target … Mike target … Mike target …’ followed by a map reference. This was from my own Commander and seconds later a barrage of shellfire burst upon the village. It seemed to go on for an hour or more. In reality it was only a few minutes. We were now at the end of the cornfield facing a typical Norman hedge. My instructions came over the intercom: ‘Go through and turn left.’ This was unusual. We had seen tanks defeated by such rows of hedges before and, of course, the thin armour of the belly of the tank was exposed. I engaged low gea
r and went through, made a left turn and continued ahead. I can remember seeing a car, motorcycle and machine-gun crew all knocked out. We were in a very narrow road and about a hundred yards ahead was the church where some infantry chaps of ours were digging in.
As we got closer I could see more infantry setting up machine-gun positions. Then I turned into the village square and found far more destruction. The church, houses and shops had obviously been caught in the Typhoon raid. A few dead German and British soldiers were scattered about. A Sherman was positioned by the entrance to the church and, on the other side of what I call a square but was in fact just a road junction, a Firefly stood with its gun pointing up the road to Juaye Mondaye.
I was told to stop by a Sherman and wait, engine running. The Commander called a greeting and waved. In answer to a request from our skipper he pointed to the Firefly. Our Commander ran across the road, climbed on the Firefly and pointed to something out of my vision. I didn’t have a chance to wonder what he was pointing at. Our own wireless operator shouted into the intercom: ‘Driver reverse, right-hand down and go like –!’ I didn’t hear the last word – I was already going!