On February 15, 1944, US bombers dropped 427 tons of bombs on the mountain top monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy. The operation was planned. B Squadron 2nd Lothian & Border Horse
Initially he was a dispatch rider on BSA and Norton motorcycles for an armoured unit, before being accepted into training and specialisation as tank crew. When mum’s lounge chair was vacant, I’d sit down beside him and ask him what he did during the war. Often he’d sit silent, watching the telly or reading a book and pretending he hadn’t heard anything. He was easy to discuss things with, but when it came to the war, it was a whole lot different. I wanted to hear he was much more than that. I thought, no way, he was more than a car driver! My grandfather won the Military Cross in the First World War but wouldn’t speak about it either; I later got to read his diaries covering 5 years of WWI including the Battle of the Somme and found out why he didn’t like talking about it, but he had a story. He had a wooden leg, numerous scars on his body and several shell and gunshot fragments still embedded in his limbs and body. I felt I deserved to know why he was this way. Yes, it may have been very selfish and even rude of me, and of course I would think twice about it now, but back then I was a typical teenager, inquisitive and naive. I’d ride motorbikes at whatever speed I wanted where ever I wanted. Dispatch riders had top priority. I’d ride at high speed on my motorbike down busy Princess Street, Edinburgh weaving in and out of the traffic. Not even the police were allowed to stop me!” He obviously enjoyed it as he told me about some of these machines, but if he enjoyed it why avoid the conversation I thought. Then finally one day he added, “After I was a dispatch rider, I became a . I was thinking it might be something like a trucker driver. Royal Armoured Corps in the Second World War, The Wartime Memories Project. De Havilland D H.84 Dragon Image Gallery. A Brief History of the De Havilland Dragon DH.84 in RAAF Service. First Special Service Force 1942-1944 In Memoriam 'The First Special Service Force made no distinctions when it went into battle -- its men had the common cause of. Cape San Blas Real Estate Blog Sherri Dodsworth's Real Estate News and Views For Cape San Blas, Indian Pass and Florida's Forgotten Coast. 70th Anniversary of World War II Conference Series Presented by the PRITZKER MILITARY MUSEUM & LIBRARY and the TAWANI FOUNDATION. The 2016 International Conference on.I could often feel tension in the air between us in the conversation, but the tension meant I was getting somewhere. My mind churned over and he explained a little more. What kind of tank, and whereabouts?”. My geographical knowledge outside of my hometown was pretty weak. I wanted to be trained and prepared for it, know what to do, then get it over with as soon as possible, and get back to normal life. I remembering wondering what I would have done faced with the situation. I felt a little guilty for asking as my question really seemed so dumb, but feeling guilty was non- productive if I was to get the whole story out of him. I didn’t care that my 3 elder brothers had already been here before me with these inquisitive questions, but I knew nothing and wanted to know what it was like for him to be in the war. It was 1. 93. 6, just 3 years before the outbreak of war, he was just 1. German cousins in Hamburg, when Adolf Hitler was also in town and at the same popular Hotel. Dad spoke fluent German and incidentally, so did Hitler. Dad was cruising the upper corridors of the hotel, as teenagers do when looking for something to do in a new place, and coming the other way was a large bunch of Gestapo Officers. The Gestapo intimidated everyone, even German citizens. As they came down the hallway in their heavy black outfits, they shoved people in the corridor against the walls and held them there. Dad just stood there in the middle of the hallway waiting to be thrust against the wall as well, but they passed around him. As they passed around him, the body of soldiers opened up. Instinctively, Dad put out his hand, after all this was the most powerful man in all Europe and he was momentarily at his beckon, plus he was surrounded by a bunch of mean looking men in fancy black suits still angry about the outcome of World War One . They shook hands and spoke briefly for a few minutes in the hallway of the hotel. Adolf soon admitted that he couldn’t pick which part of Deutschland Dad’s accent was from, and so asked where he was from. Adolf had no idea where Glengyle Terrace was. So Dad told him it was straight opposite Bruntsfield Links, the world’s oldest golf course. Bruntsfield Links is in Edinburgh. After learning that Dad was from Scotland, Hitler praised his strong knowledge of the German language. No doubt he didn’t consider that it might come in useful down the track and help Dad knock off a few of his fancy soldiers, as he later did by ears dropping in on their radio calls during combat and knowing what they were planning. . Hitler soon lost interest in the young British teenager, obviously he wasn’t going to be able to recruit him into the Hitler Youth and pin any medals on his chest in the years to come. After barely a few minutes, they parted; which is just as well, as Dad may have let it slip that his father kicked his arse on the Western Front in the Great War! He bought the one of Hitler standing in uniform, and quickly made is way up to where all the Gestapo were gathered. They were not hard to find, the fancy dress get up and the line of disgruntled citizens hemmed up against the wall easily gave their location away. He wanted Hitler to autograph the postcard, and he may even have had better harassing skills than me, but it wouldn’t be enough. The large burley intimidating Gestapo surrounded him, news had obviously travelled that this teenager was from the wrong side of the English Channel. I guess it took all their combined brain cells to work this out and find a way to keep him away from Das F. Fortunately for them the brainpower of the combined Gestapo in the building was enough to outwit the little Scots boy, or maybe it was shear intimidating knuckleheaded brawn. Either way, it didn’t happen. The postcard is still in the family and I’ve marvelled it many times. . Dad later said to me, . Although the crew were trained for all tank crew tasks so they could replace injured or killed crew immediately, Dad main task was the wireless operator/gunner loader operator and co- driver in B Squadrons’ command tank. He packed with him a small number of small musical instruments, plus his favourite guitar. The unknown months of fighting ahead would require evening campfire sing- a- longs along the front line, and this was to spread some evening joy among the tankers talking their thoughts away from their daily dice with death. . The British- American armada was the largest in history and left in ships for an unknown destination: France? The huge invasion fleet became known as . En route, orders were opened at sea and they learned they were landing along the northern coastline of the African continent. . What they probably didn’t know after reading the orders that of all the entire Anglo- American invasion force, they drew the short sticks and were to land at Bone, a seaport right on the Libyan side of the Tunisian border. At Bone, no one was closer to the Germans than 2nd Battalion of the 2. Armoured Brigade other than the Italians, but they were on the same side as the Germans and much like the Vichy French, they were quite reluctant to die for fascism. The rest of the invading Allied armada landed along to the west of Bone all the way to Casablanca and were confronted by Vichy French Forces who were confused on which side they were fighting, how they’d be liberated and who by (as if it wasn’t now obvious) due to the German occupation of France and all it’s territories. . I guess it soon became apparent they were very close to the Axis forces as it seemed that most of the German Luftwaffe were there to greet the tankers and the supporting regiments as they unloaded troops and tanks at the docks. The German bombing went for days. A few years earlier and a long way from the frontline in London during the Blitz, Dad had been wounded by a small piece of shrapnel, but fortunately was able to escape injury on the Germans doorstep with waves of Stuka dive- bombers, and the bigger Heinkel and Dornier bombers welcoming them to Africa. . The German Army, Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK), occupied Tunisia, as they did all North Africa and the Middle East. Their armies were yet undefeated. Operation Torch was to wrestle North Africa from the hands of General Erwin Rommel who led Germany's . If this could not be done, the Germanic Army holidaying on the French Coast would inevitably overrun Britain. Therefore both sides had an important strategic agenda and winning the war in Europe was completely dependant on achieving victory in North Africa first. Operation Torch shone a light on Hitler’s cardinal rule which he was forced break, never fighting 2 wars at the same time: He’d won Europe, struck out against Russia, but failed to take the British Isles before the combined Allied armies could strike back - thanks in part to Herman Goring spending more time art- raiding French art galleries than air- raiding British arms factories. He participated in front line action with many tank battles and because he was spoke German, he was always assigned to the Troop Leaders /Sqn Leaders tank and they always had a habit of being the pointy tip of any spearhead attack such as at the Battle of Kasserine Pass (Rommel's first defeat by the combined British and American Forces). His unit fought against German adversaries such as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's (Tom Cruise's character in Valkyrie) 1. Panzer Division (they were on opposing battlefields at the time when Stauffenberg was wounded in the film), the battled hardened 2. Panzer Division (that like the 1. Panzer, had on their resume successful battle hardened campaigns all the way through Poland and France) and Herman Goring Panzer Division to name a few. Dad was to hide these memories away, but the sad way he chewed his fingernails completely off his fingers, even across the tender surface tops where they first appear on every finger and thumb, said to us children that some very nasty memories lingered below the surface. This fuelled my curiosity and I always felt for him when he chewed away at them every evening watching TV.
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