British Band Of Brothers: Back In Action (Part 5)

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4:05We captured that edge roll without losses, but as the infantry began to occupy its ditch, the enemy mortars rained down. Our chaps were forced to withdraw, but we stayed. One fellow was hit right in front of us. He lay prone, with whists of smoke rising from his back from shell fragments. On the right was a thickly wooded area, a farmhouse close to hand. In front, open ground for 200 yards, then dense wood. On the left was a edgerow, but some of our infantry were behind it. I concentrated my fire on the area in front. An enemy machine gun replied. More bursts from the browning, and the enemy ceased fire.

4:44We had been told to leave the farmhouse to a Churchill flamethrower tank. It duly appeared, forced itself through the edge and lined up facing the stone building. Suddenly, a burst of flame shot across the hundred yards to the target. The upper story was soon ablaze. The Churchill continued the process in one second bursts. First the front, then the left side and finally the side nearest to us. There was a movement through the trees. To my aura, I saw a large horse tethered to the farmhouse. A burst of fire hit the animal front on. Enveloped in flames, the poor creature struggled to slip its tether.

5:21Then it fell dead. The entire incident was sickening to watch. And that was Arthur Reddish of A Squadron, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. Well, welcome everyone to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, for episode five of our British Band of Brothers series. this is hotto and rest this episode and jim there ventriloquizing arthur and the the horror of um frontline combat in uh normandy i mean yeah the thing i was struck by jim in that is he goes from this quite matter of fact way of talking about it you know an enemy machine gun reply more bursts from the browning and the enemy ceased fire yeah well the enemy ceased fire because you'd killed like it's not that someone went ceasefire that is not what happened this is this is a slugfest this is a slugfest and it's and it's a man for man slugfest where you know everyone's everyone's doing their damnedest to to kill one another and then you get this thing of the the crocodile churchill crocodile coming up isn't it remarkable isn't it that that it's the horse on fire that's the thing that's horrifying him well it's a helpless innocent isn't it i mean you know it's just it's also it's just i was looking for that that quote because i was haunted by that scene i you know i remembered it vividly when i was first working on this you know whatever it was sort of you know four years ago five years ago and it's just sort of stuck with me and um arthur reddish is a very sort of genial fellow he's he's one of those he's a classic category c and for those of you don't know what we're talking about here category a b is that you can divide british soldiers or any soldiers frankly into a b and c and a's are those who are completely gung-ho love it it's sort of scouting with guns yeah there's b are the sort of platoon sergeants the backbones you don't want to be there but we'll go the extra yard yeah the c's are the absolute majority don't want to be there want to keep their head down do everything to avoid a scrap but we'll do it they won't run away but but they're reluctant and then the d's are very small in number and and they're the people you just can't go over it till they run away yeah uh and he is your classic category c yeah and we we i mean when you say this is episode five it is but it's also episode new series part two isn't it really i suppose that's the way of looking at it but anyway we left the sherwood rangers after four episodes um on the raw ray ridge and for those who listen to that you may remember that a squadron led by major john semkin had had this fantastic night attack up the ridge where they'd knocked out 13 german panzers for no loss of their own including four tigers and and you know a handful of panthers and so on and they're all pretty exhausted and where we are now is is basically the day after the 27th of june 1944 is where we pick up the story and i did just think it might be just worth reminding people because there's so much sort of technical stuff in here and how it all operates and if you don't if you're not familiar with how these things are you know what is a red what is an armored regiment how does it work what is a troop what is a squadron is it worth just doing a very very hurried recap do you think well i think so um uh without getting without getting bogged down because very often a blizzard of numbers for some people can can make them go i don't know what's going on but essentially we want to be brief and pithy a regiment is a you know the coherent fighting unit isn't it for armor yeah an armored regiment an armored regiment is a coherent a coherent fighting unit that operates within itself yes it's sent to do stuff attached to brigades or or it can operate as as a division you know with alongside others yeah but in principle this is the we've often talked about infantry battalions and they're nearly but not quite but the idea of coherence with one commanding officer everyone sort of knowing everyone else that's what we have here and there's roughly 700 blokes but it varies but let's not worry about that in itself but less than half of these people are actually in the in the armored fighting vehicles or in the tanks 48 48 is the number that stalks britain around 48 52 it just comes up time and time again doesn't it following the curse numbers anyway and these these 48 are divided into three saber squadrons so saber literally what it means it's the language left of cavalry this is the sharp end literally and you have three saber squadrons a b and c and each of those squadrons is divided into five troops and each troop at this point has three tanks in it.

10:06And there are four more tanks in the squadron headquarters. So immediately you see that things are broken down into their unitary pieces. There are 95 men in each squadron and 15 men in each troop because there's five lads in every tank because that's the way the Sherman works out crew-wise. This means the squadron has 158 men in total. When you add on the echelons. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say, those of you who can do mental maths know immediately, hang on a minute, if there's 15 men in each troop, how come there's under 58 men? Well, or 95 men per squadron. Well, it's because you've got people in the admin effort to make everything work.

10:46You know, again, these are tip of the spear. The shaft of the spear is the other people that make it happen and make sure everything's running on time. So every squadron, remember, there's three Sabre squadrons and every squadron has an armoured recovery vehicle, which tends to be an adapted lee chassis or a sherman chassis or a cromwell chassis and the arvs all all kind of different depends what you get and that's the thing with a winch tow chain tow bar other equipment spare wheels all that sort of thing you have a scout wheeled armored car you have 1500 weight trucks two 12 three-ton trucks and one solitary universal carrier tracked vehicle and that's what each squadron has right there are three squadrons remember yeah right then there's regimental headquarters has four tanks so this is where you know the where the decisions are being made where the comms are and if the shit hits the fan where fighting can have to happen yeah and in in the case of the sherwood rangers the co's tank is called robin hood the second commands is called made marion and the other one is friar tuck like i don't know what the fourth one's called probably little john or something little john it has to be surely it's not a sheriff of nottingham has to be has to be has to be yeah and then there's the headquarters squadron which has no tanks but has four four-wheel drive cars um again eight trucks two three-ton lorries one carrier and three motorcycles and this means this is because headquarters needs to be able to be in touch with the regiment itself but also whoever else it needs to be able to talk to so you need motorcyclists to zip about yeah you need a carrier to move stuff about you know bringing batteries up for radios and stuff like that it's things like that all that kind of stuff all that kind of stuff and you have clerks cooks drivers what we've forgotten is the we've forgotten we've we've also forgotten the the recce recce troop yes there's a recce troop which if i remember right he has 11 stewart tanks which are small but perfectly formed stewart tanks they're bait i mean you don't want to get into a gunfight with anyone in the stewart but what they're good at is having a snoop having a look about beetling about having a peering about looking at the lay of the land looking really cool and they are cool they are fantastic stewart and there's that amazing footage of them um isn't it in mook beak beak beak it's beak not it's beak beak is near mook isn't it right we're in beak yes the beak is near mook uh where they're in beak the taller side of the hill and they're and they're toddling around and the stewarts the stewarts look super cool because they're sort of um they've been adapted and they're covered in pretty stuff and they've got their numbers chalked on was really cool but but basically yeah this supporting ancillary stuff is very rarely up the front but they're they're they're working they're working every hour god sends to keep the sharp end going yes and interestingly that the fellow who commands the echelon which is major rod in the case of the show at ranger yomiri the echelons major roger sutton nelfort he actually leads the most men in the regiment after the commanding officer because he's got so many blokes running about keeping it all going that he's actually in command of more people than anyone else apart from the actual commanding officer of the regiment which is interesting isn't it yeah and then you've got a echelon who deliver urgent supplies they're closer to the action and b echelon are further away so they're doing tents and clothing rather than full food fuel ammunition and interestingly a echelon takes care of your personal possessions so if you don't come back if you're in a tank crew yeah if you're in a tank crew if they don't come back they give you know they'll give the box to the padre when he sends your stuff home exactly and it's also i mean this is the thing this is this you know these organisms you just think of the fucking paperwork right yes not to put a minor find a point on it these organisms are incredibly complex um each regiment has a light aid attachment which is fit as electrician so you've got and at this point in the army there's the blossoming of the remi so the remi is formed in i think 1942 isn't it the royal electrical mechanical engineers and so as a specific mechanical part of the army because the army is so mechanized now but you've also got people who train as mechanics within regiments so there's a sort of melding of the of the two um and there's 20 to 25 men in these a mobile workshop mobile winch tools stands to do the field repairs so the process is if a tank's knocked out during the day it'll be recovered by night worked by the lod and then when it's ready it'll be it'll be maybe the next day it'll be back into action so you know it's not just knocked out tanks it's if you if you've cracked a bogey or if you've stripped your gearbox chucking it in reverse too fast when things have got sticky it's all that stuff if you've got a gun elevation mechanism that's gone wrong that's their job yeah yeah even a knocked out tank they'll strip it for parts because because anything not broken can go into the go into the pot of spares can't it so there you are really yeah and this is the allied this is the allied way of war that repair and maintenance is a is a huge part of the logistical churn that's closer to the front than the sort of yeah rear echelon people yeah another phrase is make do amend yeah exactly exactly although the allies have material abundance they're still taking care of this stuff anyway aren't they that's the that's the thing is you're not you're not you're not going to let anything go to waste no they have an incredibly pragmatic approach to this i mean no question about it yeah i mean you you know it's it's it's everyone knows and i think part of this is because they don't want to be wasting lots of money but part of it is because they know that everything they bring has to be delivered by ship it's complicated it's not easy thing to do and so you need to look after it you need to get the absolute maximum amount of all your your kit as much as you possibly can yeah and that's that's another that's sort of just hardwired in you know we've got to get across the sea so yeah therefore make everything that once we've got it across the sea let's let's make it work for us in the best possible way in fact we're sort of butchering it for others for spares once it's been knocked out then then so be it yeah yeah exactly yeah there's so be it anyway so that's the sherwood rangers organization and this is how they operate and they are one of three regiments in the eighth independent armoured brigade and again it's just worth very very briefly just just reiterating this point so you have armoured divisions which are designed to be super mobile they're the exploitative um division so the infantry divisions make the breakthrough and then once the once the hole has been pierced the armoured divisions pour through and exploit that's the idea but to get that breakthrough the infantry needs fire support and that's where the independent armoured regiments and armoured brigades come in.

17:32And so 8th Armoured Brigade is an independent armoured brigade operating to support an infantry division. And obviously a brigade is a smaller size unit in the British Army to a division. So this is one of the problems that the Sherwood Rangers are constantly facing, that they're always outranked because how it works is that you've got a brigadier supporting a major general of a division. you've then got a regiment supporting an infantry brigade in that division and then you've got a squadron supporting a battalion so at every stage they're always outranked so it's it's you know major general to brigadier um brigadier to lieutenant colonel lieutenant colonel to to to major and that causes some problems but for the most part it works pretty well i would say But that indicates the concept, isn't it, that in the instance of the actions they're expected to fight, that they're supporting the infantry, really?

18:30Yes. That reflects that. That's how the attack, you know, it's like a troop of sappers attached to a, you know, an infantry battalion. It's got that relationship that what you're trying to do is get the infantry forward and the armour, in theory, are there to help. Though actually, the armour can't do anything without the infantry. The infantry can't do anything with the armour. Exactly that. You know, to have that kind of distinction is possibly unbrilliant, but there we are. Yeah, probably unbrilliant, but, you know, it kind of works. One of the ways they get round this discrepancy in rank is that the armoured brigade is in support of the infantry division rather than under command of.

19:10Yes. And it is a really, really important distinction. So on D-Day, on the morning of D-Day, they were under command of the 50th Division. That quickly reverted to in support of. Yeah. And the phraseology is really, really important. So it does mean that you're outranked, but you do have some recourse. Yeah. If you violently disagree with something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, let's get back to the Sherwood Range. We left them on the evening of the 26th of June. on the 28th of june you may remember for those of you listen to the first episode there is a charming character in um b squadron called bill wharton he's a captain and he is he's a very junior fellow he's been promoted from the ranks in north africa in 1942 and his wife back home is pregnant with their first child they managed to sort of um get it on for one another phrase uh during the leave after their return from north africa and before they started the kind of proper training for normandy jim we're gonna have to we're gonna have to do a warning of sauciness at the start of this episode it's a trigger warning for anyone well we will do we will do yeah yeah well yeah um uh anyway he writes to his wife marian on the 28th of june uh it's obviously only been two days since samtican's triumph against the tiger and the uh the 13 nil attack on the roy ridge and he He says, yesterday was the most miserable time since we landed.

20:37Which begs the question, what happened? Well, Semkin's men, of course, have pulled back on the Monday evening to rearm and refuel because at night you don't leave your tanks right at the coalface because that leaves you open to being attacked by an infantry patrol at night. You can come up on you on stealth, climb on the back of your tank and drop a grenade in. And also, you have to rearm and refuel. and do your checks and all the rest of it so you might pull back a mile or two or half a mile or whatever but you're well out of the way and obviously it had been c squadron had attacks at nicholas's farm then it'd been a squadron in the afternoon so it's a kind of sort of you fight in rotation now it's b squadron's turn to continue and finish off raw rate so they've always got the village on the evening of the 26th achievement not quite so their job first thing in the morning is B Squadron is to push on through the village.

21:28Yeah. And they are led by John Hanson Lawson, who is a commander of B Squadron. Yeah. And they roll into the village with, he sends two troops forward with foot patrols to have a snoop in Roray. This just shows how the wind can change as the Shermans roll through the village. All seems quiet. All seems calm. The Germans open fire with them, Anti-tank gun, an anti-tank gun. And this, you know, everyone remember, it's very rarely tank on tank. Anti-tank gun opens fire. All three tanks in the troop are hit and all three are knocked out. Six men are killed instantly in this encounter and all of the survivors are injured.

22:11So that's an entire troop gone. Just like that. This is what's hanging over you as you, you know, emboss and go forward. Is that possibility? but the squadron has to push on it takes the entire morning to clear the village out yeah and Rory is not a big village no no no it's not it's a it's a one horse town I mean yeah yeah very much is well I mean I remember the probably the first time we drove through it you said this is Rory and we basically were out the other side of it by the time you you'd pointed it pointed it out when you're looking up at Rory from the from the you know the balaclava charge that Semkin's A squadron does you can see a sort of row of houses and it looks like a row yeah and then you actually get into and the road moves to the left of it and obviously it turns off along those houses but but the main bulk of the village curves around to the right and then to the left and the anti-tank gun was positioned around the corner so when they turn the corner yeah boom boom boom yeah which is what you do of course because i mean the other thing about those villages having been there is that they they strike they struck me as very defensible there's lots of high walls you can canalize people there's the orchards where you can where you can hide out and there's there's these corners where which you've got which if you're going forward you've got to go around haven't you so you know you sit sit a well a well-concealed anti-tank down back from that and you can fix anyone coming around the corner and this cuts both ways of course but on this occasion it's it's bad news for b squadron yeah it's really bad news and and and and john hansen lawson's tank is is also the target of an open fire by um an open fire shot by a panzer four which is sort of lurking behind it because the Germans are pulling back they're retreating they're pulling back towards the next village yeah so so what happens is you bug out of the village and you go behind your hedgerow and and you kind of you wait for your enemy in this case the British to move on and kind of come out of the village and then you're a sitting duck again and this is this is a problem with tanks moving forward you've always got someone on point someone's got to be in the firing line Anyway, Hanson Lawson's tank gets hit.

24:16The tank starts to burn. The driver and the co-driver, who were at the front, and they've got their own hatch each, they managed to escape. But Hanson Lawson and his sergeant Bill Crook struggle to free themselves. And Bill Wharton sees this, jumps down from his own tank, runs through the rain, it's now absolutely pouring down, lashing down to rescue them and manages to drag them clear to safety. Both men are badly burned on their heads and hands and in a right state. but but bill watson saved their lives yeah got them out of there in time and you know that's a super brave thing to do because that whole tank could blow up any minute just go yeah i mean fortunately they've already expended quite a lot of ammo so it's not quite as potent as it might have been but um the entire crew is brought back to rhq in the fontenay farmhouse and you may remember for those of you who were listening to the early series that when john semkin met the met the tiger on the rue masseuse in fontenay stanley christopherson have been standing just behind him at the crossroads by the farmhouse which is still there and stanley recalled that sergeant crooks was in a bad condition but when i spoke to him he smiled and told me that he suffered no pain but i guess the thing is if you get burned it burns the nerve ends doesn't it so maybe you don't but he does die he does die soon after well or he's trying to say to christopherson don't worry about me so i'm all right sir i'm okay you know which is that which is that yeah like that monty python sketch where they're in meaning of life where they've lost you know lost limbs don't worry about me it's awful that's itches a bit it's a bit itchy a bit itchy yeah this is why it's a bad day this is why bill wharton's writing home saying it's a bad day and uh crooks was christopherson's first troop farrier when he joined a regiment in 1939 so when they were on horseback and uh two of the other men who died were also wharton's close friends so i mean that in his letter he goes on doesn't he jim he says my spirits reach zero when i contemplate the loss of such splendid men it seems so unfair that the best have to go and this is a thing because wharton is a he's come up through the ranks so these guys he's got loads of mates who are ncos and you know and still in the ranks and also there isn't the great big divide between officer and trooper that there are in other you know in other ranks that there are in other other units because you're all in it together you know and you're in a tank together literally if you're in a tank together the five of you you know you all know each other by the smell of your farts don't you i mean it's a it's a this is uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this is the the bond they have and rore is finally taken by midday um and what's interesting about this is is this village was max funscher's headquarters and it's also the site of the the panzer maintenance department that the germ's been running so so that's interesting isn't it that they've that it's a it's basically a garage and the sry sherman regis yomri take these abandoned panzers that they find and requisition them yes they do are there any photographs of these panzers with the red fox on yellow over their black crosses i can do better than that there's there's footage of stanley cross's office and moving it that surely is a modeling project for the term the sry logo over on a panzer i mean come on surely surely modeling nerds out there heed my call um yes but by the way for those who don't know max muncher is the brigada furo of 11th panzer um of the um yeah hitler-jugend division ss hitler-jugend division and he is the one who's been coordinating that attack the night before and suddenly been given all these different disparate units of you know the 101st heavy panzer company and um panzer fours and all the rest of it so he's quite a big player in the 11th ss yeah but by the end of the evening this means there's only two officers still going in the squadron yeah um including bill and only seven of their 19 tanks still running and this just shows how quickly it can change i mean that's wipe out isn't it yeah yeah essentially yeah yeah yeah yeah uh yet again they pull back to liga for the night of course um and and that's where wharton finishes his letter to marion he goes wet through to the skin i soon remedied that state of affairs by stripping and washing having a good stiff tot of rum and then placing my bed under tarpaulin i laid me down to rest and dream of you oh and i think one of the things that i just gets me every time about the Sherwood Rangers is these guys are properly ordinary people.

28:49They're just human, decent folk with all the kind of anxieties, longings, yearnings that anyone would have. And it just makes them so identifiable, I think. I think, you know, he's such a nice guy, Bill Wharton. It's impossible to dislike him. But there's a whole host of other characters as well, and not least Harry Heenan, who's one of the youngsters who's joined only comparatively recently. And he writes a load of letters. He's a Catholic, actually. He's only 20 years old. He only joins the regiment in June. So he's over that month. So he's a complete newbie. He's in A Squadron. He's been attached to A Squadron under John Semkin.

29:30And he writes fantastic letters. I must say that good old Catholic is rather in the background just now. The only france i've seen lately is a muddy blown up france with dead germans and dead cows lying all over the place i mean that that's certainly the photographs you'll see of france at that point um and he's interesting isn't he's from yorkshire well oh so he's oh but he goes to school in berkshire so that gets me off the hook for his accent no no no he's posh yeah he began working at the westminster bank in london after sixth form he wants to be a writer and he as you said he's a he's a devout catholic which is partly informs his view of the war he sees his a moral a moral necessity volunteers to join the Royal Armoured Corps, then gets his commission.

30:09And I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Replacements are arriving straight away. We're hot on the heels of the invasion and the replacements are coming through right away. And we can see why. You know, if you get a day like that in Rory, you need people to be coming up and coming through and adapting straight into the regiment. Because, you know, he's sent to a squadron because you've lost John Bethel Fox and Dennis Elmore. Well, Dennis Elmore is wounded. that Stuart Hills is great mate. It's the revolving door though, isn't it? For some people. But what you've got though, is that this might be the sort of process going on, but the fighting's carrying on.

30:45And the Germans, I mean, over the 29th and 30th of June, the Germans are beginning to really wobble. They're looking weak. The business of crumbling, which is what Monty calls it, isn't it? Where you grip the enemy close to and you bash him hard. And then you bash him hard the next day and you bash him hard the day after. and you tempt him into counterattacking and all this sort of stuff is having its effect. The Germans can't put all the fires out all at once. Which I think one of the things we talked about in an earlier episode in this series that, you know, if you're the Germans, it's not there's Operation Epsom happening and then the next operation, the big arrow on the map that we would look at from an Allied point of view.

31:22It's like, Jesus Christ, there's a load of pressure over here. We're being stonked over here in this village. There's armour coming up over that hillside. You're not thinking, ah, it must be the beginning of Operation Epsom and this is what they're planning to do, you think, Jesus Christ, the Allies are everywhere in vast number. Yeah. Help me out here. Yeah. I'm firefighting. Exactly. Exactly. And what the Allies are doing is they're using the German determination to counterattack. Their absolute red hot, one number one strategic policy is to counterattack. It's completely baked into the Germans.

31:56So they're getting them to do that. And also what they're trying to do is make sure they never suffer another major reversal on a battlefield. Exactly. And operations like Epsom and Martlett, by the 1st of July, basically what the Allies have succeeded in doing is fixing the Germans to them and reducing their strategic opportunities. Yes, and blunting these new panzer divisions as they're arriving into the battlefield. They're having to throw it because a division doesn't arrive on situ as 16 ,000 men. It comes in its little component units and dribs and drabs. and as they're arriving they're being flung into the epson and martlett battlefield and they are then being attrited and so your opportunity for from a german point of view to use these in a coordinated counter-attack while they're still fresh is being blunted completely so epson you have to say although it doesn't have a complete breakthrough is hugely successful and ditto martlett because martlett is adjacent to it on the on the western side of epson yeah and on on the 30th of June, A Squadron are now back at St.

33:00Nicholas Farm, which had been captured by C Squadron in the early part of the afternoon before A Squadron does its balaclava charge up towards the Rory Ridge. And St. Nicholas Farm is still there. And they're there as the RAF bomber commander carrying out an assault on Villa Boccage. The attack where, you know, this is the place where what is it, 13 tanks were knocked out of the 7th Armaid Division on the 13th of June by Whitman et al. anyway they're now going to flatten this place because it's a nodal point it's a key crossroads for reinforcements coming up from the south to support the panzer divisions now coalescing around the southern side of Caen and 256 heavy bombers are sent out to bomb this small town and David Render who is a troop commander in A squadron watches in awe and he says the large number of lumbering aircraft came in low above our heads with their bomb bay doors open and we could clearly see the bomb slung inside their fuselage and after this attack barely a single house is left standing i mean if you look at the footage of it it's it's absolutely incredible photographs of it under fire then there's photographs of it afterwards and even from there and and villabar cottage is some miles where it must be a dozen miles from where they are they're covered in thick dust as a result of this yeah yeah i mean it's kind of handy having that amount of firepower on you imagine seeing that though imagine having your eyes on that clapping your eyes on that spectacle the drone the weight of it yeah but being the german seeing that coming at you i mean god god knows what that would be like run away run away yeah exactly yeah with bomber command looming in the sky large and the dust settling around us um we're gonna we're gonna take a very quick break um uh and jim we're gonna you're gonna offer some light relief i hope because it's been pretty yeah a little bit of light relief a little bit of light relief pretty full on yeah they've got a few days off after this okay we'll see you in a tick what are you doing on the 4th of september oh you're still free why haven't you heard that me and me are all going to be at the south bank center we have full weekend live shows for you all from your favorite gold hangar podcasts.

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36:39Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, and James Holland for episode 2.1 or episode 5, depending on your point of view, depending on how you're digesting this uh series about the sherwood rangers yeomanry and jim we dangled people the prospect of some light relief because it you know the way the pendulum swings in normandy i think is really quite is really quite shocking isn't it yeah you can have a day where you run rampant and the next day the next day it's all it's all terrible completely it's that constant merry-go-round of terror boredom success failure yeah you know it's just absolutely incredible but they're still in this area that you know because although the epson battle has really come to an end and martlet as well on the first of july they're still kind of mopping up shoring up this area they know that some rest is coming because they've been in the firing line pretty much since D-Day, to be perfect.

37:34They had 13th, 14th, 15th of June off. That's basically been it. So they're absolutely exhausted. They've got all these replacements. They've had this incredibly intense fighting since the 25th of June. So where are we at now? You know, that's a week by the time of the 2nd of July. They're still up there. They haven't been stood down yet. But on the evening of the 2nd of July, Christopherson, Stanley Christopherson, his commander, spots a black rabbit while he's walking to check on peter soleri and sea squadron because larry is the acting um uh sea squadron uh commander at the moment yeah and peter slary for those of you may remember he's a wine merchant before the war oh yeah and he's from italian descent and he's incredibly pompous um but charming but but extremely pompous talk sort of you know like sort of combination of cecil beaton and nil howard um he's definitely got you know putting the end back into mitford as rob rinder famously said um And he's a larger-than-life character.

38:34Christopherson sees it and grabs this rabbit and emerges outside the other side of a hedge, basically right in front of a squaddie from the DLI, who sees this lieutenant colonel from an armoured regiment appearing at the base of his hedgerow into his foxhole. He's a bit alarmed by this. But anyway, he manages to get a hold of this rabbit. And so he grabs it and sees Solari at his leaguer sleeping in the in the squadron scout car so christophson slides open the kind of the roof and he says obviously he was dog tired and fascinated i listened to the usual whistling which emanates from the mouth of a deep sleeper and vaguely wondered what he was dreaming about and he thinks i know i'll have a little bit of a lark here so he places the very much alive rabbit on salari's chest and it just sits there twitching its nose and salari stirs and wakes up just ah yeah rubs his eyes in disbelief and then lunges forward and the rabbit hops off the end of the car and then he notices christopherson laughing tries to get up and salute at the same time and splutters and apologizes but christopherson obviously gently pushes him back down to sleep and says in 15 seconds he was once again unconscious it's brilliant but i mean you can imagine carly they must be so dog tired these guys yeah yeah yeah i mean it's just relentless.

39:54You know, sleeping by the tank, sound of guns, fear of death, all the rest of it. And then at last, they're given some rest. And what, you can sleep through? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, finally, they are sent back to Tuane, which is south of Bayeux, and it is a beautiful, beautiful village, Tuane. It is one of the loveliest villages in Normandy. And again, for those of you who listened to the first part of the series, you may remember there was that period where they first go back to rest on the 13th of June and John Semkin sleeps for 14 hours, even though the medium guns, the 5.5-inch, are shooting from an orchard in Chewane.

40:29It's the same place. Anyway, there you go. I mean, obviously, they're all completely exhausted, aren't they? Yeah. And not just because they're doing two hours a night, but the days are totally adrenaline. They're adrenaline-adrenalised, aren't they? Yeah. You're spending all day living on your nerves, adrenalised, stood up in a tank. if you're if you're in the turret generally you know if you're a commander you stood up all day in your tank it must i mean yeah how exhausting this must have been beggars belief doesn't it well i just i don't know what i'm like when i'm not asleep i you know i've got my i've got stingy eyes i'm irritable i can't focus properly you get snappy all those sort of things you just feel tired yeah and just want to go to sleep and everything's an effort i mean yeah oh Oh, God, horrendous.

41:20Yeah, yeah. So they're all very happy at the news that they're going to Shoeing. Yeah. Half a reddish notes. The relief was enormous. We were virtually sleepwalking through our duties and there's Bill Wharton as well, writing to Marion. Yeah. I think we can chop and change to Bill Wharton. Yesterday, we pulled out for the rest we so much require and look forward to after nine days at the front. The time is now 11.30 the following morning and we've had just put in our first appearance of the day at the mess, having had a beautiful 10 hours sleep. Yes. I'm feeling for him. That's what's great about these letters, isn't it?

41:52It's very vivid. And they have a cinema. They've cricket to play. They've football. You know, it's all good stuff. And Bill Wharton walks along the cliffs that just only a couple of weeks previously, only a few weeks ago, were the Atlantic Wall. Isn't that amazing? Yes, because Chewane is where most of them are. But a few of them get sent to a proper rest camp. and Bill Wharton is one of the ones that gets sent to this rest camp, which is right next to Aramorch. Amazing. Yeah, and he says, I just wish I was walking on this summer's day with you, is what he writes to Marion. It's very sweet, isn't it?

42:30Oh. However, if you're at headquarters level, you don't get quite so much rest because you've got so much to do. So Stanley Christopherson and Stephen Mitchell, for instance, they've got to write. Obviously, they've got condolence letters to write. they've also got yep the replacement officers to bring in to welcome to brief to get ready to to decide where they're going um they've got battle reports to write up and you know it's not just a war diary there will they'll be getting stuff through going how is your 75 millimeter gun working out for you yeah can you let us know what problems you're having with with the sherman you know are they running hot in the current circumstances all of all of that which engines better the radio or the you know yeah yeah the whole lot but you know if we got the proportion of armor piercing to high explosive right in the in in our ammunition stuff and conferences you know about tactics and how to proceed and you know what the broader picture might be i mean what they're going to do next yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and there's a renewed effort to capture con because coal and we're not going to get bogged down in the con controversy No, we're not going there.

43:37You know what, Jim? I'm not going to get bogged down in the controversy, but I don't know. Let's say you do take Caen on day one. How different actually is the Normandy battle after that? You've still got to fix the Germans to you. You've still got to draw the armour in to the eastern end of the lodgment, to the allied left flank. You've still got to hold them there to get that to sort of become combustible so that the Americans can break out the other end, which after all is the grand strategy. i don't really see what difference it would make to the way the battle in normandy would have played out i don't see it as unlocking anything actually and people were people do disagree but i just sort of think we'd be talking about the same stuff just a few miles further east maybe well they might have got con but they're not going to get they're not going to get much more than con are they exactly that's my point it's just that's my point that's my point will they be on the burgebob's ridge probably not um anyway the plan is to thrust further beyond the odol and to recapture hill 112 which is important high ground yeah to prize away from the enemy all high ground is important until the next bit of high ground which is then important until they get some more high ground which is the next bit of high ground which is important yeah yeah the next ridge i mean that that's the amazing thing is it i mean you you you know we've stood on those ridges and you get there and you try to go oh god i got to the top oh look there's another ridge there's another one and one and it's just it's just sort of relentless and it's a bit like that in italy you know you get to top one mountain there's another one and they're all roughly spaced within the range of what the gunnery is capable of as well that's the other thing isn't it that the way yes the way they sort of sink to the uncanny it's uncanny yeah right but at this time of rest and you you absolutely have to have the rest because everyone's exhausted but also as you say so that you can bring in new people or bring back some old hands who've been around and mickey gold was an absolute legend of the uh of the sherwood rangers he's a well-to-do chap dark-haired charismatic incorrigible bit of a rogue but in the nicest possible way utterly utterly charming and as i say just one of the great characters of the of the regiment impossible to dislike and he's been away for a bit because after he'd been after the sherwood rangers come back from north africa he was then transferred to the 23rd Hizars.

45:58They needed some experienced people. But he was never really happy there. His heart was very much with the Sherwood Rangers. And he'd been pushing and pushing and pushing for a transfer. But there wasn't a place for him because he's squadron commander level. But now that John Hanson Norsen's been injured, they need a new squadron commander. And so he pushes and pushes. Christopherson asks for him and he gets him back. He's also very, very courageous, but he's also someone who is not a natural, rule observer. He's the sort of guy he would have got into all sorts of trouble at school, probably got himself expelled.

46:32Yeah. You know, he's always sort of pushing it. He's a wild character. And he's a bit older than most. He's 36. Knew Christopherson and Mitchell socially before the war when he was working in the city as a stockbroker. And as I say, you know, he comes, wherever he goes, he has a battered copy of the book, Winnie the Pooh, a Bible, and his hunting horn. So he's a sort of, he's cut from a bit of john frost cloth there yeah yeah yeah yeah and he's brought all three things with him back to uh normandy but he's a very sort of intuitive commander again he's you know i think time and again i think a lot of these these regiments do really really well because these a lot of the the key people haven't been in the army in the 1930s so all the things that the the regimental traditions and this is how we've always done it kind of attitude which sort of benights the scots dragoon guards for example who are so upset when their their horses are taken away from them for eg um they don't have that you know they're coming at it and looking at it completely fresh and sometimes that fresh set of eyes really makes a difference and these are bright smart people who want to get good at what they're doing to improve their chances of surviving and you know just just bring a kind of different perspective and there's a time in tunisia when he had a random instinct to move his troop in the middle of the night and it was incredibly unpopular decision of his men but he just had a sixth sense and yet by morning after they'd left the league was shelled and completely obliterated right and he just just recognized this was something he had to do got that right he got it right but anyway he's horrified when he returns to discover all the losses that have been away you know green digby biddle crooks um and he recalls we're all close friends a friendship proven of daily companionship danger shared difficult has ever come irreplaceable men and yet of course they have to be replaced and this is i mean extraordinarily john semkin is replaced as a squadron leader by a newcomer jeffrey makins who's a major and he's a regular who'd moved from the royal dragoons and he's experienced so john semkin is only 23 yeah and is only there because christopherson's been bumped up and keith douglas has been killed so he's like third in line but pretty hard i mean you know he you know a lot of a squadron are absolutely furious about this you know they're really cross and indignant on john semkin's i mean john semkin's quite pragmatic about i mean he's quite sort of happy to be out of the fray for a little bit yeah yeah anyway they they're then told while they're at chewayne that they are going to be praying for another battle another operation which is going to be called maori two yeah because the canadians the british are trying to take con again um and what they decided to do is one of these sort of outflanking movements to draw troops away from con and that is what maori too is and this is going to be in hotto little village um to the west of tilly sir sewell and fontenay yeah um because the germans aren't even though it's going very badly for them um they aren't they aren't going to give up you know this is one of the great of course the great no core mystery of the normandy battle although you know it's not it's not that mysterious the german command structures are in complete disarray um everyone's arguing with everyone everyone's finger pointing everyone's being everyone thinks they're about to be sacked and also that the crises are coming at them so thick and fast that they're just firefighting but but what you'd sensibly do is go back to the go back to the um back to the sane probably but they aren't going to do that because they aren't sensible i think it's the core the core the core well no hitler's not sensible hitler's not sensible well all the commanders are going let's go about the same and hitler's going no we must fight them on the beaches yeah yeah but they're not but they're not they're not they're not sensible enough to go actually we're uh get we're going to withdraw now actually boss and you can you can pick the bones out of that you know yeah put any piper smoke it yeah exactly exactly yeah interfere a piper um but um uh i mean while they're on rest harry enan manages to go to mass at a nearby church and as he leaves a service a small french boy grabs he grabs his hand this is all these letters make it all quite different don't they i was most terribly affected he recalls because everyone in the end everyone knows they're going to battle again this is it you know you could you can have your r and r but it it isn't going to stop until it's over um uh and this so this big operation involves the sry they're going to be they're going to be working with the 50th time 50th time tees division and the multi-brigade 231st multi-brigade um who they landed with on d-day so they're being put back together the old team is back yeah they all they put the gang back together um operation jupiter is the main effort to take hill 112 which in the end at the end of operation Schnepp's and the British decided to cut their losses.

51:38And Jupiter will go in and then Maori will follow hot on its heels. The idea being the Germans don't know which way to turn. And A squadron will support the Devons, I mean, who are in the Tyne T's division, but don't get hung up on that, everybody. B squadron to support the Hampshire's and C squadron to support the 10th DLI from the 49th Polar Bears division. So this is a big bloody effort. yeah two-divisional attack yeah and there are seven panzer divisions in normandy in various states of degradation but nevertheless that that's what there are and this is make no mistake the highest density of german armor in the whole war at this point so if people if you're of the oh it's all going a bit slowly at the british end well that's why right if if but that's also the idea is to draw the german armor to them and and there's and there's a sort of there's also restructuring going on so they now need some of their experience med to take on take on tank commands and stewart hills goes there who's a squadron says to arthur reddish who's his lap gunner in his tank says you know you could command your own tank and reddish goes not for me thanks i prefer to be a member of a good crew than having a tank of my own um and he knows perfectly well that survival chances shrink as soon as one commands the tank yeah so he's quite happy of his role as co-driving lap gunner but doug footer who's their gunner does accept the tank command job so off he goes yeah and reddish knows the awful day came and we were brief for action and this is on the 9th of july and by this point the serbite rangers have already suffered 88 casualties in normandy of which 40 are dead yeah so ha equals two fifths of the regiment's tank men in just over a month yeah yeah yeah i don't know a lot in it yeah we crunched the numbers at the start the episode yeah this feels a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic once you've gone through that kind of you know attrition doesn't it yeah you can see why you'd say no to being a tank commander and stewart hills is also given the role the liaison role for the battle so he's got to deal with the with the the infantry that they're working with yeah and the point of that by the way it's it's worth just saying that the point of that is is it's to give junior officers as wider experience getting to understand how this bigger picture of how it all works together how you work with infantry you know but hills would be sized up as someone who could you know maybe at some point come on a squadron or you know so and it's also to give them a little of rest from a battle because you don't want to lose all your young troop commanders and squadron leaders in battle no so you know you want to spread it around and then you know if anyone dies he can come back and he everyone knows him already it's a bit lob you know left out of battle yeah yeah it's idea that you always leave 10 out of battle so you've got but also i mean it's always said that you know that one of the great virtues of the way the germans do thing is you're trained to do the role above you well here's that happening here's him learning how to do the role above you Exactly.

54:38So the British are doing that. Thank you very much. Yes. So a new guy comes in to take over. He's just arrived. He's taken over temporarily as replacement for Hills. And this is Lieutenant Frank Galvin. And there is some amazing footage from the Imperialism of Galvin and his crew sort of preparing their tank for battle. and this is shot on the 9th of July before they go into the Battle of Hotho. The Arthur Reddish, of course, is, you know, everyone's different. They have different command styles and Galvin is much more verbose and chatty than Hills was and Arthur Reddish takes a slightly dim view of this.

55:19He goes, this fellow seemed to be commenting on this, that and the other most of the time. It all took some getting used to. Anyway, by this stage, Tilly Sir Sul and Hotho, which is just a couple of miles to the west, hotto liberg um are already completely smashed up used to be a sort of historic quaint untroubled for centuries and now all the fields are pot marked by shell holes the orchards have been flayed um the buildings smashed the churches smashed um there's not a single field between tilly and hotto that's untouched dead cows dead soldiers stench of death i mean it is absolutely appalling and again when you look at the uh the aerial photographs from this time it's it's absolutely extraordinary and it's amazing because you can go to hotto now and there's this wood the hammer wood which is where a lot of the fighting takes place and it's still it's the wood is still the same shape and there was obviously a big country house at some point and there's a big country estate wall and you can see where tanks have just gone straight through the wall yeah it's absolutely it's absolutely panzer mark four and sherman shaped um it's incredible and it really really is you can also see where someone's just blown out with a panzer fast or something yeah you know yeah or or whatever or a pier i mean anyway so on the morning of the 10th july the sherd rangers they they move a mile west to folio to basically to their to their forming up space early in the morning about to put in this assault and this is what i mean when you go to this part of the country this is very much how it is isn't it one village is one village is the one where you're forming up the next village which and and sometimes as we said earlier on these aren't villages in the like english country villages are they they could be they could be a cluster of houses and farmhouses not not not a thing you know village my parents live in is a mile at least a mile long you know trickles along whereas these are like clusters so you'll form up in one move and assault the next and they're they move up to folio and arthur reddish really doesn't like what he sees does he jim no he doesn't it was real bockage country and did not look the least inviting our squadron was in support of 69 brigade the objective was a hedgerow some 400 yards away but our puff was over open ground and that is where we're going to leave it for this episode so join us in our next episode as the battle of hotto begins i yet another one of these many many minor battles that are big a part of the big tumbling overlord story in the high summer of 1944 in normandy and if you want to hear that next one right now then well i'm sure you're already a patreon member but if you're not that's the way to do it go to our patreon site we have ways to make you talk become a member with all sorts of stuff as well as uh ad free listening uh audiobooks live casts um all sorts of stuff ticket offers that kind of thing and we will see you for our next episode as the sherwood rangers yeomanry push on forward into hotto thanks for listening cheerio cheerio

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