The sound of the shellfire could be heard much more clearly now,
Harry glanced up as he stirred the tea into the billycan, “see I told you it was getting closer didn’t I?” He said, but before I had time to answer, Fishy decided to have his usual two penneth.
“Never mind closer, what are we going to do about it bomb? We’re stuck out here like blinking spares at a wedding?”
“What can we do,” I replied, “you know the orders as well as I do, hold this position until we’re told otherwise and I haven’t heard anyone say otherwise have you?”
Fishy was right though, me and the rest of my crew were dug in on the edge of a wood just to the side of a small cross-roads, about a half mile outside of the village of Fleurus to the south of Brussels, the other gun under the command of Jock Scott was across on the other side of the road from us and was equally well hidden.
“Can’t you go and ask him?” said Fishy, who was by now starting to get on my nerves.
“Ask who what?” I snapped. “Bleeding Lieutenant Daffy flipping Davies, that’s who and ask him if we should be thinking about packing it up, that’s what,” he grumbled.
Lieutenant Davies, and the other two guns from our gun troop were about a mile away from the village about half a mile further down the road from us.
They were also hidden from view but in their case inside a small copse just off the road. In fact all of us were pretty well hidden and well camouflaged which was comforting as several German spotter planes had droned slowly overhead, circling our positions just like the lazy bees that had earlier buzzed about us before the rain had started.
Presumably the planes had not seen anything as we’d had no other visits.
Our gun which was a two pounder anti tank gun was trained on a spot on the road about 500 yards away and Jock’s was trained about 25 yards forward of that. The idea being that when the German tanks that we were expecting came down the road and passed our marker, a sign post giving the distance and direction to Fleurus, we would let off a shot and if we missed then Jock would fire his gun while we reloaded and had a go at the next one. We had been chosen for this dubious honour because our two crews had always scored highest on the practice ranges back at Larkhill and I wondered now out here, away from the rest of the troop, whether we should have tried less hard.
Harry bought a mug of tea across to where I was standing next to the gun. I took it from him and lit a fag blowing the smoke out, and in something close to a sigh looking over to where Fishy was sitting I said to him. “Alright then, if you’re so worried that we might have missed something, you can get on the radio and do a coms check but don’t stay on all flipping day chatting.”
He was off to the truck in a flash; we had all done some radio training but Fishy was the crew’s official operator and was never happier than when he was playing with his set.
Our crew was a crew of five, one more than was needed for this type of gun but that was because we were actually a trained 25 pounder crew transferred twelve weeks ago at short notice to this anti-tank battery. The army in its wisdom had decided to keep us together, presumably with thoughts of returning us to field guns some time later on. The other two members of the troop Jack Hampton our driver and our gun layer ‘Ronny’ Regis whose real name was Peter but had been christened Ronny by Fishy on the day we were formed into a gun crew had been on guard all night and were now asleep beneath some low bushes which along with their groundsheets kept them more or less protected from the fine drizzle that was falling on the rest of us.
I continued drinking my tea whilst looking down the road towards Fleurus, I was watching an elderly woman using a stick that looked as old as she was, to half heartedly tap the hind quarters of one of several cows she was herding slowly down the road in front of her, their progress impaired by the cows desire to stop and sample the grass at the side of the road whenever possible.
The group had passed us by about ten minutes earlier without a second glance from either the woman or the cows so it would seem our efforts at camouflage had either passed the test or this particular Belgian and her cows weren’t really that interested anyway.
Fishy came over to the gun and sat next to Harry on the carriage, “talk is we are moving out.” he said in a relieved voice as he placed a Player’s in his mouth and put a match to it.
“Is that right?” I said, “Any idea in which direction?” Before he had chance to answer we heard the sound of a motorcycle and glancing back up the road I saw Lieutenant Davies riding towards us. He stopped at the side of the road and pulled the BSA onto its stand and walked over to our position.
I lifted the camouflage net and he entered our little hideaway, no one sprang to attention, he had told us weeks earlier that when he was on his own he did not want us jumping about saluting all over the place.
We all liked the Lieutenant despite Fishy’s Daffy nickname; he had been over in Spain fighting in the Civil War and was one of a select few of the younger officers who actually seemed to know what he was doing.
“How are things Bombardier?” he asked, as he too watched the old woman’s progress. “Pretty quiet sir.” I replied, I threw the last of my tea onto the ground and went over for a refill “fancy a cup Sir? Henshaw’s only just brewed?”
“Not now Bombardier, thank you I’ve come to give you your marching orders, we’re moving out I’m afraid, withdrawing.”
He said the last word almost as an apology.
“Get packed up and move your crew down to join the rest of us, I’ll go across and speak to Sergeant Scott, don’t wait for them though, come down to us as soon as you’re packed up, we are very vulnerable if those spot planes see us.” With that he moved off in the direction of the other gun whilst I told Fishy and Harry to get started and went to wake up the rest of the crew.
In less than an hour the troop was complete again and we were under way heading for Soignies.
Mickey Moore, our Don R was out in front of the column of vehicles closely followed by the Lieutenant in his 8cwt Morris truck who was then followed by our four 15cwt Morris’s each towing a 2 pounder.
Bringing up the rear, was a fifth 15cwt truck loaded with all the supplies we were meant to carry and quite a few we were not.
I sat in the front passenger seat of our truck next to ‘Ronnie’ Regis as he kept the regulation distance from the truck in front. The drizzle had stopped and it had turned into a fine late spring day, warm and sunny, the bees and butterflies were once again out in force.
I kept my eyes looking up into the sky as no doubt did most of the others; we all wanted to see the spotter planes before they saw us.
Lieutenant Davies kept us going with no stops for a brew and by early evening having been directed by the MP’s to a railway goods yard just outside Soignes. We found ourselves again in the company of the rest of our battery.
Looking around it seemed as though we had all reached the rendezvous unscathed, as all three troops were parked up and looking none the worse for wear. One of the HQ Bedford 30cwt trucks had been draped with a couple of tarpaulins and was serving as a mobile canteen. Men were walking back to their trucks with steaming mess tins; one or two blokes were shouting greetings to mates from other troops whom they hadn’t seen for a week or so. The rain had stopped and it was a warm evening, a happy atmosphere of comradeship fell around us.
I told the crew to stay with the truck and in the company of the other three NCOs made our way to Lieutenant Davies’s truck, “what are the orders sir?” Said Jock Scott who, as the only Sergeant amongst us was the senior NCO,
Davies looked up from the map case he was studying and replied to the question.
“We’re here for the night, so get your men fed and watered and then get them bedded down, best to sleep under the trucks I think – you never know, there’s enough of us here to present a nice target to any passing Stuka’s and its an early start tomorrow. We’re off to Douai at about 04.00 hrs. and it should take us most of the day to get there. So tell the lads not to go burning the midnight oil with their mates from other troops. No need to post any guards, the MP’s will be keeping an eye out for us, so see you in the morning chaps.”
Dismissed, we made our way back to our crews and then en-masse went over to the canteen. The steaming food I had seen earlier turned out to be some sort of stew which I suspected contained a fair bit of corned beef, but it was hot and tasty and we were hungry. The stew was accompanied by a greyish sort of duff with what I guessed was fruit in it covered in lumpy custard. To wash it down, a big mug of strong tea, our troop were last in so it had probably been brewing for quite a while, but it was still very welcome. As we left the canteen a Lance Bombardier from HQ handed us all two tins of Player’s each, to replenish stocks we had used up while we’d been away. Whist we ate I explained to the lads what the Lieutenant had said. They were pleased that we had no guard duties but less pleased about being on the road again at 04.00 hrs. “That’s life.” I said to them as we walked across to where a big Dixie of hot water had been set up so that we could wash our mess tins. A field latrine had also been set up in a corner of the yard and lots of us took the opportunity to go and get a good wash down. A shower had been set up but the day was rapidly cooling down and there were few takers to sample the buckets of cold water that sprayed over you when you pulled on the string. Afterwards we managed another mug of tea and a few fags whilst milling about chatting to mates from other troops until around 21.00 hours when we started to get settled down. Most of us opted to sleep under the vehicle as the Lieutenant had suggested one or two preferring the warmth and comfort of the back of the trucks to the dew and safety of the underneath.
I slept well, we had been living like this for about six weeks now since our arrival in France and youth quickly adapts to most things.
I woke about 01.00 hours to the sound of engines I thought briefly of Stuka’s? But they were Bedford engines that I could hear, the cook house and battery HQ trucks were leaving the yard, our advance party out in front to give us a warm welcome when we arrived at wherever we were going to next.
I went back off to sleep again and woke some time later. With the field canteen gone, breakfast was down to ourselves and I got the lads up just before three a.m. so that we could at least have a brew before we got started. Harry got our portable stove lit, it was one that I’d designed and paid in fags, for one of the Reme lads to knock up. It was far better than the army version; it had two burners and a warming plate at the back that took its heat from the burners.
We were waiting for the water to boil when ‘Ronny’ Regis came up to the stove carrying a large paper bag.
“What’s that you’ve got?” said Fishy.
“Our Continental breakfast, I acquired it last night” he said smiling, “now give me room to work.” Ronny opened the bag, took out a long French loaf and told Harry to cut it up. He then pulled out a pate of butter, some of which went into a small Billy. He then brought out a second bag containing eggs and proceeded to break two of them into a mug, whisk them up with a fork, poured them into the by now sizzling butter, whisked them around some more and had produced a very passable looking omelette a couple of minutes later. An eager Jack Hampton was more than happy to be the first to try one, ten minutes later we had all sampled the delights of Ronny’s culinary skills.
“So where did you get all that stuff then?” Fishy asked
“Oh it’s not so difficult if you know where to look and who to ask.” Ronny replied affecting his best public school accent.
“You can’t ask anyone bleeding anything in this country, they don’t speak flipping English” said Fishy, using a piece of bread to clean his plate of any remaining egg.
“Oh well that’s where education comes in you see, thanks to Pa’s foresight in sending me to a proper school, I can speak to the natives in their own tongue. While you were learning to gut fish or whatever it is you do, I was being educated.”
“Yeh and a fat lot of good it’s done you. If you were that clever you’d be a flippin’ officer, not stuck out here with us lot eh?”
Ronny smiled “My dear fishcake, has it never occurred to you that I may not wish to be a flipping officer? has it never entered your tiny brain, affected by fish oil as it probably is, that I may see my place in the world as nothing more than the driver of one of Mr Morris’s superb 15cwt velocipedes as we while our way around this Cooke’s Tour of Europe’s low countries, in an effort to stave off the little corporals and his chums eh?”
“You’re a bleeding nutter is what you are” said Fishy “I’m going to get packed up.”
And still laughing at the exchange, that’s what we all did, with ten minutes to spare we were all onboard the truck with gun hitched waiting for the order to move out.
It started to get lighter around 05.30 hours but as we were travelling west we didn’t see the dawn breaking behind us only the change in the light.
I lit two fags up handed one to Ronny who was driving and said, “Come on then how come you haven’t gone off to officer’s training school, you’ve obviously got the education for it?”
Ronny took a long draw on his cigarette and seemed to think for quite a while before answering, then he looked at me and spoke, using my first name.
“Well Alan, I’ll tell you, providing it stays here, I like the rest of the lads well enough but I don’t know that I want what I’m going to tell you made public ok?” He spoke in a quiet voice with no trace of the public school accent that I was by now convinced he only used to get Fishy going.
“Ok sure!” I said; “don’t tell me if it’s personal.”
He took another long drag from his cigarette and then glancing from the road over to me for long enough for me to see he was in earnest, he began to talk.
“Have you ever heard the expression getting a bowler hat? No? I didn’t think you would have. Well it’s one they use in the RAF to describe someone who has failed flight training and is sacked which is just what happened to me.”
He threw his cigarette out of the window, changed down through the gears as we slowed for a check point, then went back up through the box as the column speeded up again.”
I left school a year ago at seventeen and a half and the only thing I wanted to do was fly a fighter. I had done a bit of flying in the air cadets at school, my father used to take me with him to his flying club when I was at home on holiday, so I’d had a few flights and was confident I’d soon be an Ace.
I applied to the RAF and eventually got an interview at the Air Ministry in Whitehall. I passed the selection tests and was sent off to flight training school at a place called Desford in Leicestershire. Here we learnt to fly properly in Tiger Moths; it was so far so good.
Later I was moved to another station Little Rissington in the Cotswolds where we transferred to American Harvard, trainers, they had a reputation as being unforgiving little aeroplanes but I got on with it well from the start. I flew solo without any real problems. Navigation was ok, scored well on all my cross country flying. I was doing just fine and then we moved on to night flying.”
He paused for several minutes staring out the window in front of him, I didn’t speak not wanting to disturb his thoughts he was obviously back there in his mind, simply driving automatically, eventually he continued.
“At first the night flying was ok, the Harvard is a two seater and we had our instructors with us and they were up there telling us what to do. Then it was our time to go solo, I did my first solo flight ok but the following night a chap who I had become close friends with and who was regarded as the star pupil took off and that was the last we saw of him. They found him in his burnt out wreck later that night, he’d hit some pylons that were much lower than the height he was meant to be flying at. It was assumed he’d done what so many do, lost faith in his instruments and thought he knew better.
Well the next night I’m up there again, except that now I can’t stop thinking about his crash. My confidence started to fail me and I’m all over the show, I am having difficulty breathing and I go lower so that I can pull off the oxygen mask and open the canopy. While I’m doing all of this, I stall the aeroplane and without knowing what I’m doing I’m belly landing in a field about a mile away from the airfield.
I suppose I should be grateful, most chaps die doing that manoeuvre.
Anyway the next day I’m in front of the Station Commander. I explain what had happened and ask if I could do another flight with my instructor to get my confidence back. I’m told to wait outside whilst he and the instructors discuss it.
After about half an hour I go back in but it’s no use I’m told I can either go home, or be commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant in the stores. In other words I had got my ‘bowler hat’.
Well I don’t know about you Alan but my idea of getting back at Hitler for what he’s done so far and what we know he’s going to do if he gets the chance, does not include handing out gas masks and chittie’s so I went home and a week later joined the artillery as an ordinary soldier, the rest you know.” With that he fell silent.
Around about midday we stopped for a break outside a town called Denain, here for the first time we saw some bomb damage, there were craters in the road some burnt out cars and half of the town’s buildings seemed to have sustained some damage.
Ronny spoke to the locals and it seemed that earlier in the day several bands of marauding Stuka’s had, had their fun bombing the buildings and shooting up the villagers a lot had been injured and more than twenty had been killed.
What sort of people are we fighting? I wondered as I tucked into a bully beefy and pickle sandwich which had been provided for us along with the ubiquitous mug of tea but this time with the addition of a slice of sponge cake, my but the army looked after us.
Lieutenant Davies came over to see us accompanied by a Captain who he introduced to us as Captain Roberts. He was to be the battery’s new Adjutant. It seemed that our previous adjutant, Captain Harrington had been recalled to Battalion HQ but not in Mons where it was currently situated, but back home in England, in Aldershot.
Captain Roberts gave us the usual pep talk about what he expected; he was a man in his early 40’s and seemed a bit out of his depth. His uniform was well cut but seemed fairly new and after a few minutes I could see the lads starting to lose interest, Fishy coughing to disguise a yawn. Fortunately they moved on to the next crew before anyone actually nodded off. “Bleeding hell, another blooming plumy sod.” said Fishy, as we watched them walk away.
We started away again just after two o’clock and were making good progress on the journey until just outside the village of Bouchain. Everything seemed to go suddenly very wrong. We had changed over drivers after the break, I was still in the passenger seat but now Fishy was driving with Ronny, Harry and Jack all in the back, no doubt playing cards.
Our column was 17 vehicles long and we were seven from the front. The first we knew that something was wrong was when a khaki tailgate flew across our line of vision, followed in rapid succession by a blinding flash, a terrific bang and a hail of debris as the truck in front of us exploded into pieces!
“Shit!” shouted Fishy. “Do it later!” I shouted, grabbing my rifle, “Pull over now.” Fishy didn’t need telling twice; he dropped down a gear and gunned the truck towards the side of the road, heading for a clump of trees about fifteen yards away. We stopped with a jerk as the bumper struck the bottom of one of the trees and the truck stalled.
“Everybody out,” I shouted, “follow me.” I glanced behind and was relieved to see all four of my crew running behind me for the cover of the trees and better still training had done it’s job they had all brought their rifles.
There was a drainage ditch about four feet deep in front of us I jumped down into it, and was followed seconds later by the rest of the crew. We all aimed our rifles out of the ditch and now for the first time felt safe enough to try and see what was happening. The entire column had stopped in various attitudes up and down the road; it looked as if all of them, other than the truck in front of us, were unscathed. There was however little left of the damaged truck. It was burning and it was sickeningly obvious that there was no one left alive inside. In fact there wasn’t an inside, just black smoke and flames licking around the chassis.
“What should we do Bomb?” said Jack Hampton who was the youngest of our crew and probably had the whitest of the five faces peering out over the ditch, although without a mirror I couldn’t see my own.
“Just stay quiet a bit Jack eh, let’s waits to see what we’re up against here?”
To be honest I couldn’t understand what had happened. There were no planes about and surely if the truck had been hit by artillery then there would have been more shells to follow? I looked all around; there were no enemy infantry about.
Slowly the realisation dawned upon me the truck had hit a land mine. Five other trucks had passed the spot with impunity, but fate had decided that Bombardier Willis’s and his crew should be the one to fall foul. So this is what war must really be like, I thought it’s not very fair.
“Stay here.” I said easing myself out of the ditch. Remembering the training sessions back at Aldershot, I did the Indian crawl across to the cover of our truck where from underneath I was able to look up and down the road where nothing stirred? About twenty yards away in the bushes I could see Jock Scott and his crew tucked down behind some bushes. It struck me that if anyone did want to attack us no one was looking behind. All of Jock’s crew seemed to have their rifles and as I didn’t fancy getting shot by any of them I gave a whistle. Eventually one of the crew saw me and waved, I crawled and shuffled across to them.
“What d’ye reckon Alan?” Jock asked as I arrived next to him. “I think maybe they hit a landmine, what do you think?”
“Aye I’m thinking the same my sen, I think we need to be making contact with the other crews though d’ye reckon it’s safe ta stand up?”
I thought for a moment before I replied “I think who ever planted that mine is long gone but whether it’s safe to stand up depends on if any of our own are so keyed up that they want to shoot at anything that moves.”
“You lot stay here and just keep ye heeds down, Alan ye can come with me but for God’s sake stay low!” Jock adopted a crouching run and I followed suit. We ran towards the road and jumped down into another drainage ditch at the side of the road and although only a couple of feet deep we were able to gain some cover. The big advantage of the ditch though was that we were able to follow it along the side of the road and we were soon in contact with various other crews As we looked around, heads began to pop up all about us. Lieutenant Davies appeared with his pistol drawn with the new Adjutant at his side. He looked across at us and shouted to us. “Blue troop over here!” we doubled across to him “What’s happened Sergeant Scott?”
“Well Sir, Bombardier Willis’s truck has been blown up, I’m afraid there’s nay survivors, it looks as though they’ve struck a mine.”“Bloody shit “Lieutenant Davies said his face reflecting genuine pain.”
“Any other damage Sergeant?” said the Adjutant looking around him. “Not that we can see sir.” Jock replied.
“OK then I propose to go down and have a look sir,” said Lieutenant Davies, addressing the Captain, “if you want to get the men grouped together, we’ll report back when we’ve had a good look around. Sergeant Scott, Bombardier Hibert you two come with me.”
“Yes excellent carry on Lieutenant.” mumbled the Adjutant as we walked slowly away.
We walked cautiously towards the burning truck, four charred bodies frozen in deaths tableau. The driver slumped over the wheel, a figure, where the passenger seat should have been, leaning out of the door, the two in the back thrown together by the explosion, to the corner of the truck bed.
As we moved closer to the site, the air smelled of petrol, cordite and a sickly sweet smell that I was later to learn was the smell of roasting flesh.
In front of the truck was a crater about four or five feet across and two to three feet deep. The truck had obviously been lifted and thrown backwards by the force of the explosion. Oddly, the gun, which was being towed by the truck had become unhitched, but looked to be unaffected by the carnage.
We followed the Lieutenant’s lead and got down into the ditch at the side of the road.
“Ok chaps, let’s have a walk down the ditch here, keep your eyes open and see if you can see any signs of any other mines on the road. We should be safe enough, there’s enough people back there watching our arses, or at least I hope they are. Stay alert; the bastards may also have planted some anti personnel devices, even down here in the ditch.”
Captain Roberts had sent down another group of three, led by Lieutenant Clarke, of Red troop, who worked in the other direction to us. It must have taken us about an hour to ascertain that there were no other mines in our immediate vicinity, during that time, either the adjutant or one of the other Lieutenants had organised for four graves to be dug and blokes from another troop who hadn’t known the dead blokes too well had been given the job of removing the charred remains from the burnt out truck, wrapping them in ground sheets and placing them next to the graves.
In addition once we had made a very thorough check around the area, another truck had pulled the wrecked truck clear of the road. One of the other troops had organised a brew and some two hours later and four men less, we drank our tea and awaited our next instructions.
The troop Commanders, having finished their discussion, got us together and the Adjutant addressed us all. He seemed more confident now, as he explained to us that the plan was to conduct a short funeral service for our dead comrades and then to move on. Explaining that we did not have the time to have the road swept for mines and that if we were to make our next rendezvous in time, as dangerous as it was, we just had to press on.
As the troop Commander of the dead crew, Lieutenant Davies made a short speech about the four blokes we’d just lost and then read a passage from the soldier’s prayer book. He gave the word and the bodies, still wrapped in the groundsheets were lowered into the ground. The graves were quickly filled in and marked, and then we all returned to our waiting vehicles.
It was just before 17.30 when the column set off again, and to give him his due, the first vehicle behind Mickey Moore was still that of the Adjutant. The remainder of the drive to Douai took just under three hours. We made no more stops and in our truck not much was spoken in that time, we were all pretty tense wondering, naturally I suppose, if we were destined to suffer the same fate as Willis and his crew.
When we reached the outskirts of the city we found that the MP’s had set up a check point. They directed us down the main road into the town to join other parts of our battalion who were in the yard of a bottling plant just off the main town square.