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Thread: On this Day |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Friday, 1st September 1944
----------------------------------------We do not even notice Mons, Bapaume or Cambrai, so we must have gone through that district like a dose of salts. We just go on and on along dead straight roads, along the sides of which are deep little circular pits, each marked with a short stake, with its tip wrapped in straw. These were Gerry's defence against Typhoon rockets. The land is now flat, and interspersed with rivers and canals, including the river Sambre that gave another generation so much trouble, so we keep going off the road and stopping to let the bridge builders pass until we reached the southern outskirts of Lille. Those defence pits and the numerous demolished bridges indicate that this was Gerry's retreat route. We could have advanced a lot faster on secondary roads - but there is none wide enough for the wheeled vehicles, even if the tracked vehicles carry on cutting across country. There must be a whole Armoured Brigade and a whole battalion of Royal Scots ahead of the R.A.P. and we are advancing so slowly that we are making hardly any dust and we can read the road signs. In the UK there are no road signs, as they were taken down to confuse the enemy in case of invasion. Jerry has taken no such precaution. P.O.W.s are coming in droves, escorted by armed civilians, some wearing armbands to identify them as members of various irregular formations - mostly Maquis. We have to wait for the ration trucks to arrive and take them back, so we stop for the night, have a meal and bed down. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Sep 2, 2007 11:24:46 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Saturday, 2nd September 1944
I am not sure where we stop for the night, but it must be somewhere south of Lille, probably somewhere south of the Arras cross roads, nor can I figure out how a whole battalion is quartered in an area where there are no large fields and very few unoccupied buildings. After breakfast, we move off. We are forced to slow down to a crawl, partly presumably because there are no fields where the tanks can get off the road and take short cuts, and partly, as before, because of the necessity for moving P.O.W.s. Mostly, and most appreciably, the hold-up is due to civilians boarding our vehicles. They mob us at the crossroads east of Arras. Bundy, an ex-trooper wonders how the Armour is faring. It would be very dangerous to rotate the turrets with unofficial passengers clinging to them. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sunday, 3rd September 1944
We did not notice Armentieres because we have not passed it. It is on the Belgian border, west of the Menin Gate. In much of the Pas de Calais, French is a second language to Flemish – which makes sense of the words “Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez vous?” Now we are at a standstill, consolidating the gains of the last six days’ mad dash (the “Great Swan”) from Normandy, with small detachments swanning around by day to pick up P.O.W.s, liberated political prisoners and the occasional casualty or perhaps the occasional traitor. Simple collaborators we can leave to the civil authorities. Some of them have been collaborating in order to gain information for passing on to SOE. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Monday, 4th September 1944
11th Armoured Division relieved of these responsibilities, which are more suited to infantry than tanks, are forging ahead towards Lille, Antwerp and Brussels, which we later discover that they took today – or did the Guards Armd. Division do that? We badly need a port of our own, as we can no longer depend on the supplies landing at Cherbourg in the American sector, if we ever could. Ration trucks landing at Gooseberry (Lion-sur Mer), Mulberry (Arromanches & Courseulles) and Jumbo (mobile) keep us fed, presumably, but we need shiploads of military supplies, which we can only land at a seaport. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Tuesday, 5th September 1944
A strange - very strange - formation is now passing through our sector. It is the "79th Armoured Division", but we just call it "Hobo’s Funnies". They have no turrets on their tanks, so cannot fire on the move; in fact, only a few of them can fire at all. These are the self-propelled guns of the mobile Artillery. “Hobo” is Major-General Percy Hobart. His collection of odd vehicles has been building up since the North African desert campaigns, when they used flail tanks, known as "Scorpions" to explode enemy mines. The bulldozer tanks also date back to those campaigns and there are Bailey bridging units, which they have used in Italy. The Bailey is a Class 70, semi-permanent bridge: Bundy will see many of them on revisiting the battlefields in 1948. The Belgians will have diverted interurban tram routes over some of them and a more recent model will still be in use next century. Bundy will use them in the '60s to cross the Yarkon and in the '90s to cross the upper reaches of the Jordan. Now this formation is going side by side with, or ahead of the 11th to restore the many river and other crossings hastily demolished by the Germans. For immediate use, they have fascines and Ark Royals. The fascine is a giant roll of chestnut paling which can either be dropped intact into a narrow river or wide ditch to create an immediate temporary crossing or unrolled on flattened ground to make the base of a new road, such as the Bayeux bypass. The Ark Royal is a longer lasting, prefabricated, rolled steel bridge, folded in two and carried on a Churchill chassis. Its crew can lay it in a few minutes and later pick it up and relay it wherever required. Now the results of this rapid bridge building are creating astonishment among the local population. In 1940, they will say, it took the Germans many months to rebuild these bridges |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Wednesday, 6th September 1944
Now we carry on along the main road east and north of Lille, through satellite towns like Tourcoing, Roubaix and Halluin. Until now, it has been our practice at every stop to dismount and water the wheels of our vehicles to cool them down, but our method of performing this is not suitable for the mixed company that now begins to welcome us. As the cheering crowd thickens, and the convoy comes to one of its many halts, Bundy notices a narrow unoccupied ginnel and makes use of it while there seems to be nobody about. Just as he starts readjusting his uniform, two smart young women appear and brush past him, giggling . . . When he gets back to the convoy, it has hardly moved, so he takes the opportunity to obtain a newspaper. This turns out to be a local one, headed: “Nord Éclair - Organe de Libération Française 1e. Année. - No. 2. . BUREAUX: LILLE. . 27 rue Faidherbe MERCREDI, 6 SEPTEMBRE, 1944 1-FRANC” Bundy still has enough of the front page of this to fill two pages of his scrapbook. According to items on this page, Belgium is practically liberated and the Allies are in the suburbs of Strasburg, Aix-la-Chapelle and Sarrebruck. Other pages have articles on Roubaix and Tourcoing. On the approach to Menin the crowd includes gendarmerie, Maquis and douanes, but these are replaced by police, Brigade Blanche and doganes on the other side of the frontier, where we leave the conurbation and stop for the night near Waereghem, in Belgian Flanders. Somewhere near here is the famous Menin Gate, a lasting memorial to many of our previous generation. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thursday, 7th September 1944
Today we move on again - Lord knows where - Bundy has no time to explore, because soon after our arrival Cpl. Farrier arrives to take him back to 194 Field Ambulance on the pillion of his bike. We know where we were going, but have no idea of the route, Bundy’s French is no help in the country districts. Bundy's meagre German is not a lot of help either, although Flemish is a Teutonic language, not unlike German. The local people, we find out later, think we are Belgian (Walloon presumably, since we speak no Flemish at this stage), because the rampant lion of Scotland on our flashes resembles that of Belgium. Maybe that is why an elderly country gentleman takes us in and takes down from the rafters a well smoked ham, which he immediately slices expertly and shares with us. He seems to understand Bundy's description of Waereghem, if not our pronunciation of the name, which should sound more like “Vairekhem”, and gives us adequate directions in simple Flemish, combined with sign language, and we are soon on our way and spend another night in almost the same place as Bundy's previous night |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Friday, 8th September 1944
From Waereghem to Kortryk is only a short drive, but we then have a river to cross, so we stay the night under the stands at Courtrai (Kortryk) racecourse. Here we adopt - or rather are adopted by, a little, brown, smooth haired dog with a loose skin, especially round its scraggy neck. By now Bundy has been conversing with civilians in Meenen, Waereghem and other places up to here, and having Flemish lessons from a local hairdresser (whose card is in Bundy's scrapbook). Bundy now knows the Flemish for "rubberneck", which is "rubernek", so from now on we have a live company mascot named "Rubernek". From the same hairdresser we now have an inkling of what the people of Hitler's empire have been using for soap - a small, expensive, greenish tablet, labelled "Palmolive", which feels gritty and only works if rubbed long and hard. Now that things are quiet otherwise, Capt. Kilpack decides to deal with an application from Ptes. "Nobby" Clark and "Brigadier" Banks for transfer to a unit less likely to meet the enemy, as both of them are ex-P.O.W, exchanged with German P.O.W.s after the Tunisia campaign. Banks received his nickname on acquiring a red piping circle round the wrist of his battle blouse. This is not a badge of rank but the mobilisation badge of an N.O.1 (Nursing Orderly, Class 1). They, and other prisoners, have been released as non-combatants, and will not be treated as ordinary P.O.W. if recaptured |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Saturday, 9th September 1944
We complete the river crossing in the dark of the night, then try and prove it by the light of the last quarter of the moon. The road to the next crossing is even shorter than yesterday's and we arrive in time for the cooks to set up for a proper mid-day meal in a house in Oudenaard. The back garden has apple trees, which have been left unattended, so there is a multitude of windfalls on the ground. When we clear these, the rest of the day is for settling in, and Bundy chooses a woodshed for his "bedroom". While Bundy was with the Royal Scots, 194 Field Ambulance was trailing behind and a shell hit one of B Coy's trucks while it was on the move, so "Scotty" Barnett reorganised the squad. He has now received the M.M. for this. Bundy and Rubernek, now mingle with the local population. Bundy learns a few more Flemish phrases, and adds a visiting card or two to his collection before suppertime. After this, there is no more daylight and nothing more to do but go to sleep in the dark of the night until the rising moon will reveal yet another completed bridgehead. The Canadians are now on the outskirts of Dunkirk. We wonder if this means we will soon have a port of our own, and stop trying to rely on long distance supplies via the congested American lines of communication. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sunday, 10th September 1944
In the words of the song "One More River . . . " No, not the Jordan -- never found out its name -- just another tributary of the Scheldt. Until this week it has been the general rule that the lead division of 2nd Army is either 15th Scottish or 11th Armoured Division, Which this is depends upon which is more suited to the type of country over which we are advancing. Now the lead division seems to be the 79th Armoured. No point in getting up at dawn; the next river is even closer - just the other side of Aalst where we pass the next night. Only Percy Hobart’s "funnies” can get us across quickly. |
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