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violence with their belt-fed MG42 machine-gun, known to the Allies as the ‘spandau’, of which some 750,000 were produced. On the battlefield, the MG42’s rasping 1,200-rpm rate of fire sounded far more lethal than the slow hammer of the Bren’s or BAR’s 500 rpm. The British and Americans also had Vickers and Browning heavy machine-guns, but the MG42, easily manufactured and capable of changing barrels in five seconds, was a key factor in the German army’s tactical performance. So too was the panzerfaust hand-held anti-tank projector: deadly at close range – much more so than the US bazooka or British PIAT – and produced at the rate of 200,000 a month, the Faust played an important part in checking Allied armour in 1944–45, when the Wehrmacht was short of anti-tank guns. The 88mm dual-purpose gun and nebelwerfer multi-barrelled mortar were also used to formidable effect.

All the European armies had sub-machine-guns for close-quarter fighting. The British 9mm Sten was an adequate weapon produced in millions at a cost which fell to under £3. The US Army’s .45 Thompson was valued for its reliability, but cost £50 apiece to manufacture. Most American units in 1944–45 used the cheaper and simpler M3 ‘grease gun’. Allied soldiers were envious of the German MP38 and MP40 machine-pistols. They called these Schmeissers, though that designer had nothing to do with their creation – they were made at the works of Berthold Geipel. Towards the end of the war, the Germans also acquired small numbers of an excellent assault rifle, the MP43, forerunner of a generation of European infantry weapons thereafter.

But the Allies’ most serious problem was the inferiority of their tanks: numerical advantage counted for little when British and American shells often bounced off well-armoured German Panthers and Tigers, while a hit on a Sherman, Churchill or Cromwell was almost invariably fatal. ‘A sheet of flame licked over the turret and my mouth was full of grit and burnt paint,’ wrote a shocked British tank officer after his Cromwell was hit by an 88mm shell from a Tiger. ‘“Bail out,” I yelled and leaped clear … There were my crew, hiding under a currant bush, miraculously all safe. Joe, the driver, white and shaking, crouched with drawn revolver. He looked like a cornered rat … The Tiger drove off undamaged, its commander waving his hat and laughing … Our hands shook so much that we could hardly light our cigarettes.’ Though Allied tanks were infinitely replaceable, it is hard to overstate the impact of German tank superiority on the morale of Allied units. Captain Charles Farrell wrote: ‘There was, I think, no British tank commander who would not happily have surrendered his “fringe benefits” for a tank in the same class as the German Panther or Tiger.’

‘We were all rather frightened,’ wrote a British tank officer about a night spent on the Bourgebus ridge during one of the most bitter armoured clashes, ‘and two men from my troop corporal’s tank came up and said they would rather face a court-martial than go on. I explained that we all felt much the same but were not given the option.’ Two days later, when one of this officer’s tanks was hit, the crew bailed out. ‘I never saw the gunner and wireless operator again. They were cases for the psychiatrist and the M.O. sent them away. Those fellows had been in nearly every battle the regiment fought, and each had bailed out at least twelve times before.’

Peter Hennessy was ordered to investigate the fate of another tank of his Sherman squadron which had halted immobile a few yards ahead. His driver dismounted, clambered up the hull, glanced into the turret and ran hastily back. ‘Christ!’ he said, ‘they’re all dead in there. What a bloody mess.’ An 88mm round had ricocheted around the interior, killing the entire turret crew and terminating in the co-driver’s back. A few moments later a shocked and emotional figure lifted the driver’s hatch of the stricken tank and emerged, the sole survivor.

Formations which had previously served in the Mediterranean were not the only ones to find the conflict