For some time after D Day all the wounded were evacuated to England as soon as possible; even the slightest of wounds meant "Blighty. " One afternoon I spoke to an Airborne corporal and a Commando, both slightly wounded, who were waiting to board a Red Cross Dakota bound for England. They were from the canal bank at Caen, the scene of a most gallant stand by a few against terrific odds. They told me that nearly every man "relief-prayed" at dawnlight when the first Spitfire patrol zoomed overhead It was then that they got the opportunity of loading every weapon they had, and every man possessed rifle, carbine, LMG, and pistol- and it was never very long before the necessity to re-load again occurred. The Huns threw everything they had at this canal-bank garrison, but they were strongly lodged and would not budge. They said that they did not give Jerry very much chance of sniping at them.

On the same afternoon I spoke to the most hideously wounded chap I ever saw; all that was left of him was a head and trunk. During an attack, rushing through an orchard, he had stepped on A Tellermine (the shear wire must have been almost shorn through) and both arms and both legs had been torn from his body. He was smiling quite cheerfully, and smoking a cigarette, as he lay on the stretcher waiting to be loaded into the plane. The medical orderly told me that he was really marvellous. "Does he know?" I asked. "Yes," replied the orderly. It is on such occasions when one cannot speak for a lump in the throat, when the mind is full of the horrible cost of war, and when one realises the soundness and nobility of the human heart and mind.

Many men in the invading armies felt that they were not welcome in Normandy. The people had become accustomed to the German occupation; many of the German troops had been stationed there for years and some of them had married Norman girls. In Normandy, the granary of France, there had been no lack of food, the Huns had waxed fat, treated the peasants quite decently and had been thoroughly accepted. Many of the girls who had married Germans were definitely hostile to us, but in my own experience that hostility had never a physical, or practical, manifestation.

The first prisoners taken in Normandy were a motley crew. Many were elderly men; there were quite a number of Russians, and it was rather surprising to see a number of young yellow-skinned Japs being herded together to embark on LSTs leaving for England on the morning of the 8th, June.

Throughout the campaign there was one characteristic of the Hun which never altered, and that was his love of comfort. There were many occasions when his leaning towards comfort seriously jeopardised his life, but he would have his comparative luxury. Whenever he was in the vicinity of houses, or villages, whether advancing or retiring, he chose to sleep indoors rather than rest in the open or in ditches. On numerous occasions when his British or American counterpart would have got down to rest on the outskirts of a village, holding that point by standing patrols or a small garrison, the German settled in in force, and for his brief rest occupied the most comfortable quarters he could find. And he suffered many casualties from shelling as a result. This pre-occupation with comfort was found throughout Europe, from the country just behind the beach-head in Normandy to the Rhine and beyond.

About two or three miles in from the beaches in Normandy there was left ample evidence that the Bosche was being strongly re-enforced. There were a great number of soundly planned dug-outs in course of construction, and those that were finished, and furnished in a style which bordered on luxury, were really first-class dwellings and strong enough to withstand anything other than a really heavy shell or bomb. Had the invasion been delayed much longer there is no doubt that it would have been a much graver job. The story is now told that Hitler had a last minute intuition that the invasion would take place in and around the Cherbourg area, and the signs of feverish activity which were to be found in all sectors behind the beaches revealed that the intuition was being acted upon.

To many of us in Normandy during the terrific storm which stopped all landings a few days after the initial assault it was a constant puzzle, and a great relief, that the Germans did not launch an all-out counter-offensive during those few fateful days when the great storm lashed the coast and the Channel. Had he then attacked in his greatest strength I believe that we could not have held him. I had only to look at my Colonel's face in the early morning when I made my dawn report to know that the position was hellishly serious. Later I was told that for once the German meteorologists were wrong in their forecast; they had ventured the opinion that the storm would last for three or four days longer than it actually did, and that was one reason for the delay in the attack. I am quite ready to believe this story since, without doubt, much importance was laid on the theories of the German weather men. After all, during the Blitzkreig of 1940 their forecasts upon which the lightning attacks were based, had proved to be absolutely correct.

I know that the Allied airforces did a magnificent job of work during those fateful storm days in harrying German convoys and communications (and the German High Command had ordered convoys, including armour, to move by day rather than by night - had they moved during the hours of darkness the number reaching the rendezvous point would have been far greater than it actually was as a result of day movement) but their undoubted power alone could not have been responsible for the - to the Huns - disastrous delay in the counter-attack.

It was a great relief on the morning of D plus 14 to dash back to a vantage point on the Crepon road on a motorcycle and watch for a few minutes the mass of men and materiel being hurriedly unloaded in the artificial harbour. Had the Hums launched an all-out attack during the height of the storm it could not have been another Dunkirk; it would have been impossible to get away after a German break-through, and such a catastrophe would have resulted in stalemate for many months, if not years, and, by such time, the Germans would have undoubtedly brought into being many of the ghastly and deathly things which we found in the almost complete stage on the mad dash through from Holland deep into the Reich.

One of the greatest sights of the whole war was the 1,000 Lancaster bomber raid on the city of Caen on the evening of July 6th. And never before, or after, did I see so much flak in the sky. As the marker planes went in it seemed impossible that any aircraft could go through that sky barrage and live. It was interesting to see the flak dying gradually as wave after wave of the heavies sailed in to drop their loads. I think it was on that night that everyone who saw the spectacle knew that the war was won no matter how long it would be before Jerry quit. Any nation, or nations, capable of putting so many heavy aircraft into the sky at the one time simply could not lose a war. And for thousands of Jerries who survived that holocaust the writing must have been very plainly on the wall.

We moved up into the Cristot area Just after the fierce battle which had taken place there. Matters were still damned unhealthy. The stench, or stenches, were terrible; the nauseating smell of violent death pervaded the whole place. The batteries in our rear pounded away nearly all day and night, and the air was in perpetual torment with the sighing of shells winging their way towards the Hun. There were some Jerries at Juvigny with 88's and mortars, and after leaving us in comparative peace for the first couple of days they opened up on the third night and he. for eighteen consecutive nights they let us know that had not been liquidated. One night a terrifically large piece of shrapnel shattered the rough shelter covering seven of my men and shrieking through, missed the whole cowering bunch! We cussed our gunners a little on these nights too since they kept up their infernal racket practically throughout the hours of darkness, and the flash of their guns brought Jerry planes round like moths to a candle. On their run-in to the guns in our rear they usually sprayed our area for fun.

It should be said though that the German planes attacked in their greatest strength just after dusk, not that they ever attacked in strength as we, the British and Americans, knew air power. And their primary targets were always the beaches and the bay.

When at Cristot we nightly expected German patrols and took the necessary precautions, but there was never a clash. We were not a big unit, and we appeared to be entirely alone and divorced from everything, and everyone else. Every night, just in front of us on a ridge, there appeared what seemed to be hundreds of Bren carriers with Vickers guns, etc. They charged up to the top of the ridge discharged thousands of rounds of ammunition and then ran down again. We got some marvellous views of the old Typhoons dive-rocketing the German armour-harbours. Those chaps certainly did a magnificent job of work throughout the campaign. The Caen area was never healthy.

This part of the country had a number of small woods, or copses, and there I found one or two dead German riflemen. Their scattered, and in some cases, camouflaged positions showed that they were not just ordinary infantrymen, and there was ample evidence that they had done some execution. But all that remained of their rifles revealed that none had been equipped with telescopic sights.

One of my colleagues complained that for a couple of days his sleeping place, a lean-to close to a ditch, had become unbearable as the result of a terrible stench. For quite a time the weather had been very hot, and he was not really anxious to change his abode since it was shady, and anyway everywhere stank in that area. After a day or so of exceptional heat we got about thirty hours of torrential rain which effectively stopped all movement on both sides and we settled down to a short period of peace such as one expects from reports of Chinese wars which apparently stop when the rains come. Due to the rain there was a slight subsidence of the floor of my colleague's lean-to and he awakened in the morning to find a German hand sticking out of the ground about three or four inches from his nose. The body had been buried only a very few inches below the surface. My colleague found another place!

It was in this area that one afternoon I did about a hundred yards in something under "evens." I had been talking to a number of chaps who were resting behind the line and spending a pleasant hour testing captured German weapons, including Schmeissers and Lugers, and was just going back to HQ when I saw a plane shoot out from the wood about 600 yards distant. It was a FW 190. Within a split second a couple of hundred men disappeared into the earth. There was absolutely nothing for me to fall in so I ran faster than I have ever run before, or since, spurred on by the rattle of the FW's machine guns. Reaching the tiny orchard which masked our HQ I cleared a terrifically high hedge and fell on top of the cook who was grovelling in his garbage pit. An exotic lady's boudoir could not have smelled so sweet! The FW secured only one hit - one chap having taken a bullet through the right shoulder. The wounded man was smiling happily. He had little pain and was talking excitedly about "Blighty"! And he was in the centre of a slightly envious crowd!

In Normandy, and throughout the campaign, there was a good deal heard about German snipers in trees. I am quite sure that the majority of riflemen will share my doubts as to the efficiency and effectiveness of tree-shooting. There certainly were Germans in trees, but I am of the opinion that they were acting as observers rather than snipers. There are comparatively few men who can shoot with sniper-accuracy in the off-hand position, let alone the far more difficult position which arises from almost any stance in a tree. The Germans used slings for these "Tarzans" and, of course, such a contrivance captured the attention and fired the imagination of war artists and correspondents, with the result that a most graphic, if not entirely factual, portrayal resulted. The most notable tree merchant I saw - smelled would be a more fitting word since there was little left of him but smell - swung lazily in his sling in a large tree near Cristot in July. He reminded me of highwaymen's remains swinging from the gibbet in the "good old days." A burst of machine gun fire and the hot sun was responsible for this excrescence. When speaking of this monkey-business it is only fair to mention that, according to German small arms manuals, training in tree shooting was practised.

After eighteen very colourful days and noisy nights, the only comforts of which were twice undressing for a bath in a bucket and sleeping at odd times in greatcoat and blanket in, and on, Mother Earth, we were pulled back about fifteen miles mainly to rest. For the first two nights the silence was uncanny, and no one could sleep. Here I took the opportunity of looking around for a suitable place to re-zero and test the rifles of the Squadron, and found a rough, a very rough, 30 yards range in the headquarters of a replacement wit. The butts were just a dug-out plot with a rock background which provided many alarming ricochets, and here men just going up the line give their rifles a last testing. These people had no targets, but fired at tins, etc.; I wanted something a little more elaborate, so I had one or two small frames made and got the orderly room people to make a stencil of the "Rommel's Runners" target which was in the copy of the National Rifle Association journal which I had brought across with me. Although the "printing" was nor good the targets were certainly better than corned beef tins. When we started to fire there were a number of officers sitting about in the sunshine, within fifteen yards of the butt. When I told them that I proposed to start firing they said "All right, old man, carry on; we shall be all right here." But they did not stop long. As I have said before - there were many alarming ricochets!

Even at this early stage this particular replacement unit had quite a good museum of captured German weapons and equipment and I spent an interesting how studying the specimens. But I found that the officer in charge of the "museum," although having some knowledge of the stuff on view, had not that unbounded enthusiasm of the true weapon devotee; he did not really "know"! This kind of superficial knowledge I found prevalent throughout the Services both in England and overseas. I could quote many examples, but here are two to illustrate my points: --R.A.F. armament officers in England had never heard of the Mk. VIIIz ammunition; many Army officers to whom I showed some rounds of the round-nosed British Mk. VI cartridges said "Oh, dum-dum bullets"! Even officers of years of experience were woefully lacking in their knowledge of firearms and ammunition, and I often thought that had these men occupied a corresponding position in a civilian business house they would not have been employed long had they shown such a lack of interest in the equipment of their job.

NORMANDY NIGHT

There are three men in the signals trench; a signaller on the RT set a corporal with the field telephone and an officer. They are seated, cramped and uncomfortable, an empty biscuit tins. Above them forming a roof are the trunks of shell-spattered trees loosely covered with earth, proof, they all devoutly hope, against shrapnel and machine gun bullets. Overall is a low, perfectly camouflaged tent, through the odd bullet holes in which a star occasionally blinks obscenely. The harsh discordant chatter of the wireless set is nerve-wracking. The thoughts of all three men are similar. They are thinking of their wives and their homes; the homes they now realise were never fully appreciated in the halcyon days of peaceful civilian life. The officer, one time poet and author, prays silently with head sunk into the upturned collar of his greatcoat; although late June it is cold and damp in the trench. His prayer is semi-pagan in its simplicity - "Guard my beloved wife. Grant me the guts and courage necessary to be an example to my men. Grant us a speedy victory, and that the sanity of peace may return to a mad world. I ask these things in the name of Christ, the Perfect Man."

The corporal is garrulous and drones away interminably about nothing if given the opportunity or encouragement. The radio-operator, a dark, saturnine Welshman, with something of the quiet brooding mystery of the Welsh mountains about him, is almost sullen, and he reads his small home-town newspaper, received that afternoon, with unblinking eyes in the yellow light of a battered hurricane lamp. The officer reaches for the rifle which stands in one corner of the trench, and polishes the already gleaming butt with his handkerchief, It is a P14 and a much loved weapon.

Suddenly our of the south comes the ominous drone-note of approaching hostile aircraft. Above the cacophony of the RT set ack ack guns of all calibres spring to guttural life. It is easy to differentiate between the short snake-spitting hiss of the Bofors guns, the deep tone crack of the 3.7s, the harsh cough of the 20mms and the monkey chatter of the LMGs. Above all rides the ear-splitting roar of the heavy field gun which now opens fire some distance to the rear. As the big calibre guns shake the earth and the tent tosses as though shaken by a mischievous wind, the officer shudders. He takes his cigarette case from his left breast pocket and hands it to the signallers. As he strikes a match and passes it to his two companions his fingers are perfectly steady; that pleases him.

The earth vibrates to the impact of HE bombs dropped a short distance away. Closer comes the sharp crack of bursting anti-personnel bombs with the resulting shower of hissing shrapnel seeking lodgement in shrinking flesh. All sound is magnified by the acoustic properties of the tent. The men crouched in the trench force themselves to talk, but no attention is paid to that which is said. They feel that they are trapped, and they want to scream and to clamber out of the trench and run headlong into the night.

Outside there is quiet again. The telephone orderly closes his eyes, and the wireless operator reads the most popular Sunday newspaper, many days old. The officer lights a pipe and bites hardly on the stem, re-arranges his blanket beneath him on the biscuit tin, endeavouring to loosen cramped limbs and ease aching buttocks and thighs. He polishes the rifle butt again, and thinks of his dogs and his guns and of long, glorious days in the field and on the range. And he thinks of War. If there had ever been within him any romanticism regarding war it had been killed during those first few violent days when the stench of death filled the mouth and choked the throat, and indelibly printed on his mind was a picture of a death-dilated cow lying obscenely with legs and udders stiffly, starkly pointing to the sky - the Mecca of a million flies. His eyes close and his head droops lower and lower. Suddenly he is vitally alert again as the mad symphony of the night war rises to crescendo. The corporal shivers. "Here they are again, sir," he mutters. "How long to dawn?" The officer glances at his watch. "Two hours, " During the brief air attack the men's nerves and muscles are taut, but there is no fear on their faces. But a month of strain is becoming apparent; there is a slight trace of grey about the temples of the officer, and below the eyes of all three there is a delicate, web tracery of exhaustion.

Except for the crackling chatter of the radio set all is quiet. Occasionally the staccato report of a rifle shot and the angry "drrrp, drrrp" of a Spandau comes out of the night. Frequently the three men are covered by showers of dirt as some industrious mole, a lovely little creature of shining black velvet, undisturbed by the manifold noises of war, burrows assiduously and forces his tunnel out into the gaping chasm of the trench, the brown, damp walls of which are changed to smooth elephant grey in places by the impress of great-coated backs. A beetle in shining ebony armour moves quickly along the arm of the officer. With a woman's tenderness he allows it to run on to a piece of paper and then places it on the parapet of the trench. It does not seem strange to him that he who will, and must, kill Man, will not crush out the life of a lowly beetle.

Cramped and with legs and feet tingling with pins and needles the officer slowly climbs out of the trench, crawls through the darkness of the low tent and passes out into the cool night. He breathes deeply. Behind him the dark sky is slashed with the crimson, yellow-shot, flash glow of heavy artillery. He and the corporal who has joined him, exchange a few words with the two-man patrol who slide up like grey wraiths. A large fire reddens the south horizon. To the north-west, over the beaches, the tracer of naval pom-poms climbs lazily and eccentrically into the blue velvet of the sky weaving fantastic patterns. Vivid blotches of orange and red, like ink stains on a blotting pad, mark the bursting of heavier calibre shells. The scene and the atmosphere remind the officer of the grotesquerie of the ballet. Only the blue-silver gleam of the few stars is constant.

Across the dull muted note of our own batteries comes a harsher, more piercing wail. "Shells-Jerries" shouts the officer, and he and the corporal dive into the tent and fall into the trench. They lie with thumping hearts and brains on fire. The ground shakes and earth pours down through the crevices in the trunks covering the trench. Sweat rises on the foreheads of the three men. The officer shakes his head, and struggles for his cigarette case - always the cigarette - the consolation of thousands of men throughout two great wars!

And so the night drags on, seeming interminable. And then comes the dawn. The officer goes out into the open. In the east the sky is crystal grey and green, and shafts of mauve, scarlet and gold herald the slow approach of the sun. The dawn wind is swishing the corn a hundred yard away. The officer thinks of slim pale-backed women in long, rustling evening gowns.

The corporal joins the officer. Together they look skyward with gladdened eyes. There is relief in their hearts. The subaltern feels that he wants to laugh and sing. As he goes to his ditch leaving an uneven-trail through the dew-drenched grass, he knows that for a couple of hours he can sleep secure in the knowledge that no Hun will haunt the blue Normandy sky whilst Spitfire, Thunderbolt and Lightning gambol in the sun. He shakes the mud from his blanket, and scrapes the dried earth from where it has sealed the crevices in the buttons of his greatcoat. He finds pleasure in dallying over such trivialities.

He lies down in the bottom of the ditch, places his rifle beside him, and happily draws a blanket over his weary body. Above in the sky the Allied planes ride like triumphant hawks, hurtling in the burning blue and gold of the morning.

The subaltern sighs. He is oblivious to the many discomforts of his bed. He sleeps.

Another long Normandy night has slipped into vivid, agile memory!

Published by Greenhill Books. © Greenhill Books. All rights reserved. Reproduced on MagWeb with permission of the publisher.

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