Inferno - Max Hastings [342]
“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 baled 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 baled 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 codriver’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 in France a ghastly experience: some men who had never before seen action recoiled from this ferocious initiation. “There were a lot of problems in Normandy and some of the units of the British Army, bluntly, were not in very good shape,” wrote Lt. Michael Kerr. “[They] had had many years in Britain before going into battle.” Some green units seemed slow to treat their task with the absolute commitment necessary: a Waffen SS officer was baffled to observe British infantry advancing behind their tanks on 18 June, “strolling, hands in pockets, rifles slung on their shoulders, cigarettes between their lips.”
Lt. Tony Finucane felt that the doctrine of reliance upon artillery and air support corroded proper infantry spirit. His own unit advanced, he said, “knowing that with the first burst of spandau everyone would go to ground and that would be it for the day. So much for dash, verve and pursuit—those who tried such antics were usually caught by our own 25-pdrs.” Finucane believed responsibility for many of the problems properly rested with senior officers at brigade and divisional level, some of whom had no more experience of battle than did their men. “It was not necessarily the training of the army in U.K. which was wrong. Rather was it that many senior officers were inexperienced and may have viewed themselves as ‘above’ training.”
It is hard to exaggerate the strain imposed upon every man by responsibility to join the spearhead of an attack. Ken Tout described the agonisingly slow progress of a typical armoured advance: “The front tanks are venturing slowly and agonisingly towards the first blank, savage corners. Their caution filters slowly back along the column, dictating a snail’s pace … The morning drags slowly by, the sluggish progress of the clock accentuated by our jolting, ten-yards-at-a-time advance as we wriggle about in our tight coops, like battery hens, trying to restore circulation in legs, buttocks and shoulders.” A Lancers officer edged his Sherman forwards into a wood, ordering his squadron to follow him. The commander of the next tank forgot to switch off his set before speaking into the intercom, and thus the entire unit heard him order, “Driver left, driver left.” The reply came, “But he’s gone right, sergeant.” The tank commander said, “I know bloody well