It seemed fitting to Steve Wilkins that there should be a strong sou’wester blowing as the 131st Brigade embarked for France. They’d been delayed for more than twelve hours because of heavy seas, and despite the wait, conditions hadn’t improved. It was as cold as November, the sea was slate-grey and extremely rough, the sky bruised by rain clouds, blue-black, oppressive and threatening. Tough weather for tough work.
Now that the moment had come, his emotions were sharpened to such a pitch that he was totally calm, as if the invasion were happening to someone else and he was merely a spectator. He was aware that he was experiencing powerful feelings – the edgy excitement he always felt before a scrap, pride at being part of such an army, the strongest sense of the enormity and importance of what they were going to do, and fear too at what lay ahead, anxiety about how he would behave under fire, regret at leaving Barbara behind after such a short time together, but everything was distanced, as if he’d been anaesthetised.
The Channel was an impressive sight that afternoon. There were ships as far as he could see, some, like theirs, heading out of harbour and rolling heavily, some returning, their prows carving white parabolas of foam, warships, sleek and grey and bristling with guns, landing craft like enormous square-mouthed barges, LCT’s and Liberty ships, even rusty old colliers, filthy dirty but riding the waves like ducks. He’d never seen such a fleet, let alone imagined he’d be a part of one. And once they were out in mid Channel, he’d never seen such a vast army either, deck after deck packed with khaki vehicles and loaded with men in full kit, their helmets catching the light as they bobbed and shifted like a great harvest of steel flowers. In his odd, detached state of mind, they made him think of Jason’s mythical warriors raised from the teeth of dragons, teeming from the earth in their thousands, fully armed and primed for war. He felt exalted to be one of their number.
But exalted or not there was nothing for him to do while they were in transit, except wait and feel queasy as the great rollers mounded towards the ship one after the other, and his innards lifted and fell, lifted and fell, and were squeezed with every heave.
It took a very long time before they reached the French coast and by then most of them were feeling so ill they simply wanted to get back onto dry land, no matter how dangerous it might be. They could see it, clear in a sudden beam of sunlight and less than a mile away, a long sandy beach, full of men and vehicles and edged by dark landing craft from which lines of troops straggled ashore. Further up the beach were the sand-dunes they’d been told to expect, long and buff under the rain, spiked with clumps of coarse grass and topped by a row of holiday homes.
But before they could step ashore they had to be transferred from the Liberty ship to an LCT, which was an extremely difficult manoeuvre in such heavy seas. The landing craft came alongside easily enough but it rose six feet with every wave and yawed away just when they were ready to climb down. Steve and Dusty jumped when their moment came and were surprised to land on deck instead of falling into the water. Then, as they headed inshore, the battleships opened fire.
The noise of their bombardment was so shattering that it made Steve’s belly shake, especially when he looked up and realised that he could see the shells streaming inland over his head. There were thousands of them. What firepower! he thought. I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of that. But even as the thought was in his mind, there was a sudden sharp explosion to his right and turning, he saw that one of the landing craft had been hit or struck a mine. Christ! That could have been us. Chunks of debris were being thrown into the air and he could see men in the water, some struggling, some hideously still. Not mythical warriors after all, poor sods, but ordinary men, wounded and dying. Dying! Oh dear God! Dying! Before they’ve even set foot on shore. Now what? Are we going to turn back and pull them out?
But no. They’d already arrived on the beach and were being ordered to wade ashore. And they obeyed automatically, holding their rifles above their heads the way they’d been trained and weighed down to a snail’s pace by all the equipment they were carrying – gas masks, grenades, bandoliers of rifle ammunition, rations, water bottles. If the buggers are still here and they fire at us, Steve thought, they’ll pick us off one by one. There’s nowhere to run, even if we could.
But there was no gunfire from onshore and presently they strode out of the water and stumbled onto sand, their legs aching with the effort they’d been making. Now they were walking through the wreckage of the D-Day landing and they could see what a furious battle it had been. The houses that had looked so attractive offshore were either pitted with holes or were roofless ruins and the dunes were criss-crossed with tyre marks and littered with debris, bloody rags, empty shell cases, smashed tin hats, discarded vehicles, broken equipment of every kind. They were marched through it so quickly that none of them had time to gather more than an impression nor to look back at the dead and injured they’d left behind in the water. But they were all terribly aware of what was going on and they were all afraid, putting one foot after the other automatically, their throats dry and their hearts pounding.
The beach head was swarming with men and machines, for it wasn’t just troops that were being brought ashore. There were Vehicle Landing Craft all along the water’s edge too. One was unloading Sherman tanks, which came rumbling down the ramp one after the other to crunch off across the sand, looking massive in that restricted space. Higher up the beach one had broken down and a mobile repair unit was refitting it with a new track which lay beside it in a huge sand-spattered coil. And weaving through the new arrivals, the mine-detectors were at work, moving cautiously, the long sticks of their detectors swinging backwards and forwards before them like pendulums.
The brigade trudged through the dunes, following the column, and pressed on through the gaps between the houses until they reached open country where they found a signpost like a pollarded tree with too many branches, newly erected and covered with unit signs and initials, among them the familiar pink Desert Rat of the 7th Armoured Division. Now it was simply a matter of following the signs, which led them to an earth track, which had once been a country lane but was now churned into muddy ridges by its unaccustomed traffic. A convoy of heavy vehicles roared past, heading inland and spraying them with mud, and as they marched on, they could see the erupting plumes of distant explosions from the bombardment.
Although they still hadn’t come under fire there were signs of recent battle wherever they looked – earth pitted with shell holes, trees shattered, a concrete pill-box smashed open as if it had been hit by a giant fist. From time to time they passed a group of newly dug mounds, and realised with a frisson of fear that this was the temporary burial of the dead, German and British side by side with a rifle and helmet stuck at the head of each grave. Nobody spoke but they were all thinking the same thing, knowing that this was how they could end up and praying that they could avoid it, somehow or other. A hundred yards on, they came upon one of the most dreaded German guns, an 88-millimetre, still in its emplacement, but with its muzzle shattered, like one of Groucho Marx’s exploding cigars. The sight of it brought a cheer and a warming sense of triumph. But even so, fear brooded with them all the way to their first camp.
That night, after a solid meal, they wrote their first letters home and settled to sleep in the open air. Steve spent the first two hours of the night on sentry-go, marching about their improvised settlement with a tommy-gun in his hands and nothing but his thoughts for company. He was surprised by how still it was, even though there were guns rumbling like thunder somewhere inland. Far away on the plain he could see fires burning, the flames flaring and dying and rekindling to flare again, now orange and yellow, now lurid red with a blue core. He watched with fascination, off and on, for over an hour, wondering what it would be like close to. But when his relief took over, he simply reported that it was all quiet.
He took off his boots, rolled his tunic into a rough pillow and lay down in his bedroll. But although he was dog-tired he was too keyed up and fearful to sleep. Tomorrow they would be in action. Tomorrow he could be killed, blown into the air like those poor sods in the LCT or left to die on his own while the army moved on. Wakefulness made him face up to it although he would rather have slept and forgotten. After an hour fear was gnawing at his stomach and his mouth was full of bile. He felt the need to pray but he couldn’t remember a single prayer, just a few odd words from something he’d learned at school. So he said that. ‘O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now the sense of reckoning … Not today, Oh Lord. Oh not today.’
The next thing he was aware of was the sound of the wind whistling through the wheels of the nearest TCV. His hair was damp with dew and when he sat up he could see that the eastern sky was pale green. It was dawn.
Daylight brought a return of common sense and a great deal to do in a very short time. Orders came through as soon as they’d been fed. They were to advance to a place called Ellon where they would join three regiments of tanks to spearhead the next advance to a road centre called Villers Bocage. And by now, with food in their bellies and the night behind them, they felt cocky enough to joke.
‘Villers Bocage!’ Dusty whispered to Steve and Taffy. ‘They got some names round here! What d’you reckon that is when it’s at home?’
‘Good defensive territory,’ they were warned, ‘so keep your eyes skinned for snipers and pockets of German infantry. They’re well camouflaged and some of them are armed with faust patronen or panzerfaust. It’s like the American bazooka, which you know about, a hollow charge projectile on a rocket tube with a range of about seventy-five yards. Extremely effective against tanks.’
So we hit them before they hit us, Steve understood.
They were warned about a new German mine too. ‘The Yanks call it the 50-50. It’s like the “S” mine, which you know about, but, instead of ball-bearings, this one hits you with a sharp steel rod. If you hit with your right foot, the rod flies up past your right side. If you hit with the left, you’ll be singing tenor.’
‘Lovely!’ Taffy joked as he lit a new cigarette from the butt of the dying one. ‘I’ve always fancied singing tenor.’ But his eyes were strained despite his grin.
And that was that. By 5.45 they were in their TCV’s and on the move. Soon they’d left the open plain behind and were driving cautiously down a sunken road between very high hedges, discovering with every yard that this terrain was more difficult than anything they’d tackled in training and more fearsome than anything they could have imagined. For the bocage turned out to be perfect cover for snipers. It was a maze of small, high-banked fields and orchards, surrounded by pollarded trees and hedges that were more than twelve foot high and so thick that it was impossible to see through them. And to make matters worse the roads weren’t simply narrow and overhung with foliage, they snaked and curved so that visibility was never more than fifty yards. They could be picked off at any time and from any direction for German infantry could be anywhere.
And things got worse when they’d made their rendezvous with the tanks, for now, although they were heavily camouflaged, they were on foot and advancing into enemy territory, sometimes across fields and through dense woodland, sometimes along roads that were little more than footpaths, treacherous, narrow, overhung by foliage – and mined, probably with the new 50-50’s. Steve had never experienced such fear. His heart was beating so fast it pained him, his throat was full and his mouth so dry it was difficult to swallow, and sweat was pouring from him, running down his back and his sides and streaming down his forehead so copiously that he had to shake it away like a dog freeing his coat of water.
When the first attack began it was almost, a relief. Suddenly there were voices shouting, ‘Take cover!’, a rattle of machine-gun fire, the red trace of a sniper’s bullet, somebody screaming close behind him.
Fear coalesced into anger, he remembered his training, obeyed orders although his fingers were stiff, sprayed their hidden enemy with machine-gun fire, hoping his aim was accurate. A tank crashed through the hedges just ahead of them, sending branches spinning to left and right, and roared across the pathway to smash down the opposite hedge and head out into the fields. Two seconds later it was followed by a Sexton, and Steve just had time to realise that they must have run into German tanks and called in the artillery, before he glimpsed a Tiger through the new gap in the hedge and watched it ricochet as it fired. Then he was running past the gap, head down, scrabbling for cover in the ditch as another volley of fire raked the hedges.
There was a reek of petrol, a stink of cordite, an explosion that made the hedges shake, billows of black smoke and long tongues of flame, and he knew that a tank had brewed up and hoped it was the Tiger.
And then it was over, as suddenly as it had begun, and he leant against the hedge and was sick.
The pathway was littered with cartridge cases and strewn with bodies, some blown to pieces, some wounded and groaning, one trying to crawl away. And among them was Taffy, lying on his back, hideously spread-eagled in a long pool of blood. Oh Christ! Taffy!
Get to him quick! What was it they said? Shock was the worst killer. Must keep him warm. How the hell do I do that? Where’s the field dressing? Chest wound. Chest wound. What did they tell us about chest wounds? Staunch the blood. ‘Taff! You’re all right mate! I’ve got you.’ Struggling to undo the buttons on a tunic slippery with blood.
Dusty was crouching beside another casualty – Johnnie Taylor wasn’t it? – holding a cigarette for him. ‘Bloody awful mate! Don’t move. They’ve called for the stretchers. Don’t wanna disappoint ’em.’
It was totally incongruous. One man joking, the next man unconscious. ‘Taffy! Open your eyes mate! Taff! Come on!’
The stretcher bearers were standing beside him. He was aware of their boots, their khaki legs, the smell of their sweat. Almost as strong as the sickly smell of blood.
‘He can’t hear you, mate,’ a voice was saying. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone? He can’t be. He was talking to me a minute ago.’ But they were already moving off to attend to Taylor and the Corporal was rounding up the survivors, shouting orders.
‘Get up! Leave them! You can’t do any more! We’re moving!’ Steve obeyed, although his legs were leaden with grief and his brain stuck with a single thought. Alive one minute, dead the next. But there wasn’t time for pity. Ten minutes later, a private from A company came hurtling down the road towards them, white faced, waving his arms in warning and shouting that the road ahead was occupied by hundreds of Germans and to get the hell out of it.
Then they found the strength to run and legged it across the field into a thick wood, where they waited, fear returning. It was silent among the trees and they didn’t come under fire, although they could hear a tank battle raging below and to the east of them.
Presently the order came through that they were to head through the woods to a line of slit trenches and regroup. And it began to rain.
And so the day continued. They were fired on so often they lost count. Time itself was an irrelevance. There was only action and reaction, deferred grief and that awful, ever-present terror. When the dusk finally arrived and they leaguered for the night, they were so tired they slept where they dropped. It was ten, o’clock and they’d been in the front line for seventeen hours.
The night gave them little rest. There were still sentry duties. The hedges had to be patrolled. A watch had to be kept. So they slept when they could, and at first light, just after their supply column arrived, the battle began again.
For days they slogged it out in the damp prison of the bocage, as the rain filled their slit trenches with mud, the tankies grew more and more irritated to be cooped up in such terrain and the Germans harassed them day and night with shell and mortar fire. They were well supplied and usually well fed, but their casualty rate was alarmingly high and progress demoralisingly slow. And there was never time to digest what was happening to them. And never time to grieve.
They were simply relieved when the order came that they were to make a temporary withdrawal from Villers and its hated bocage because the RAF were going to bomb the place. ‘And about bloody time too!’
They took up their positions on the reverse slope of a hill north of another shattered village called Livry and watched. It was a massive raid delivered by heavy bombers and it seemed to go on for a very long time.
‘There won’t be a stone left standing,’ Steve said as the noise went on. ‘I pity the poor buggers who live there.’ And he suddenly thought of the red tiles of his honeymoon cottage and that peaceful musty bed and their first picnic out in the rough grass of that peaceful garden. ‘I ought to write home,’ he said.
‘Do it now,’ Dusty advised. ‘You won’t get the chance once the bombers have gone.’
But when he’d found pencil and paper, and had written ‘My darling,’ he couldn’t think what to say. He couldn’t tell her where he was or what was happening because the censor wouldn’t let it through, he couldn’t tell her about Taffy – he couldn’t even bear to think about Taffy – and he certainly couldn’t let her know what he was feeling, although the words leapt into his head, straight and simple and honest. Dear Barbara, I’m frightened. I want to come home. The very idea of writing such things shamed him to blushing. She would think him a booby if he went on like that. In the end he had to settle for platitudes, like everyone else in the brigade.
We have been in the front line since we arrived but are having a spot of rest at the moment. The rain is incessant. We keep as dry as we can with ground sheets and gas-capes. We are all very dirty but the grub is good, tell Mum. I can’t say much because of the censor. Give my love to everyone. I haven’t had any letters yet but they will catch up with us eventually so keep them coming. At least we’ve got the consolation of knowing that we are keeping the Germans so busy here they won’t have any planes left over for bombing London.
Love to you all.
Steve