"A KIND OF GRAND TOUR" YOUTHFUL COMMANDERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 9 June 1945, Page 6

"A KIND OF GRAND TOUR" YOUTHFUL COMMANDERS

THE 11th ARMOURED DIVISION

TEN MONTHS' CONTACT WITH ENEMY

(By James Lansdale Hodson) London, May 22. The thought occurred to me more than once when with our troops in Germany and Holland that we have now what must be the most efficient and intelligent army in our history. We infantrymen used to say, not without irony, during World War I, that if the war went on long enough we should be fighting it really well. That statement has certainly been proved true in World War 11. You get the impression as you travel the roads that this war has gone through an industrial revolution. You pass—or are passed by—vehicles of extravagant shape and size. One, for carrying tanks, has about thirty-four wheels, others appear to be about forty yards long. Again when you enter a town you are confronted by so many signs and emblems and pointers indicating where everything is from baths to Divisional Headquarters, that you are reminded of the entrance to an agricultural show. Yet again. Ops Tent at Headquarters is most impressive. Glazed maps, eight or ten feet high and equally broad, are illuminated by electricity, telephones are working as efficiently —perhaps, indeed more efficiently—than in London, and young officers who, often enough, left University to join the Armed Forces will explain to you with great clarity what is going on and where various units are to be found. I had arguments in H.Q. Messes on politics and similar subjects that were as lively as those of a civilian club or college commonroom. 10,000 CASUALTIES AND 800 TANKS Another fact that impressed me was the youthfulness of many of our Commanders. This was especially so when I visited the Eleventh Armoured Division. Its Commander, MajorGeneral G. P. B. Roberts, three times D. 5.0., is but thirty-eight, one of his Brigadiers I met named Churcher, is thirty-nine, and a Lieut.-Colonel of the Battalion of King’s Shropshire Light Infantry is only twenty-eight— Max Robinson. I doubt if in the records of this war up to now our Armoured Divisions have had enough credit paid to them. When Wavell first swept across the Western Desert to Benghazi his tanks, few. in numbers and small in size as they were, were as instrumental as the Infantry in achieving that astonishing success. In the victory at El Alamein and again in Tunisia our armour was vital. It is appropriate to mention Tunisia because it was a number of tanks of the Sixth Armoured Division which the youthful Major-General Roberts then commanded that deliberately entered the sea at Hamman —tanks had never done it before—to outflank the enemy and thus break through his position in a fraction of the time first estimated. When World War II began Roberts was merely Adjutant of a Tank Regiment. To-day the Eleventh Armoured Division under him has climbed to front rank, sharing with the Seventh Armoured Division (the immortal Desert Rats) and Guards Armoured some of the doughtiest fighting from D-Day in Normandy to the crossing of the Elbe and Germany’s collapse, and writing its name firmly into the history of this war. When I was with this Division at the end of April it had been out of contact, with the enemy for only five weeks since June of the previous year. In that time it had suffered 10,000 casualties and lost 800 tanks—that is to say, if had lost its total supply of tanks nearly four times over. It is right to mention that in order to show how hard the fighting has often been. On the 18th July, 1944, at Caen—the place where Eisenhower said, “every grain of soil was precious as a diamond—the Division lost 115 tanks in one day. Again in three weeks between the Rhine, and the Elbe, the Battalion of King’s Shropshire Light Infantry lost eight company commanders . But triumphs have been great. The Division has taken at least 48,000 prisoners. Its men liberated Antwerp. The mileage covered in fighting is about 2500. The longest single run—and probably the record foi speed—was from Lens to Antwerp, ninety miles in twenty-six hours. From the Rhine to the Elbe they did 30(f miles in 21 days and from the Seine to Antwerp they travelled and fought 340 miles in six days. Many of the battles and pursuits in which they were engaged lasted a week and sometimes three weeks. WQRE BOOTS FOR TEN DAYS

In Normandy, Brigadier Churcher did not take his boots off for ten days. General Roberts has gone for three weeks with no more than four hours’ sleep a night and he himself estimates that, on an average his infantry have fought on three hours’ sleep and his tank men on five hours. He has been surprised, as Commanders have constantly been surprised in this war, by the stamina and endurance of his men. In World War I tank men occasionally bled from the ears, and between wars it was thought that three or four days’ tank fighting at a time was as much as men would be able to do. I have heard of no instance of men bleeding from the ears in this war and in the Western Desert there were times when tank men fought with little respite for as many as thirty days. And, as I have said, the Eleventh Armoured Division was in contact with the enemy for ten months with the exception of five weeks’ rest. Moreover during fighti -in wooded country in Normandy it was found advisable and possible for the infantry to work in closer touch with the tanks than had been thought feasible hitherto. The infantry rode on tanks, cleared the wood and climbed back on to tanks. At Caumont the Division broke through so successfully that it created an apex five miles forward and three miles wide and stayed in that position for five days. Ge. jral Roberts, not given to heroes, described it to me as “nerve-wracking—our head might have been cut off. It was here that the Division found the trick through Foret Leveco, a track which happened to be the boundary between two German divisions, each of which thought the other was guarding it. Down this track went our armour, and beyond sat in the main road and _ook counter-attack after counter-attack.” Of that race down the track an officer said to General Roberts: “Two men and a boy could have held us there.” To which Roberts replied: “But they hadn’t got the boy, Joe!” Antwerp was taken partly by the wit of a portionately fewer of them for the work to be done. It was an infantryman who gave me the following notes on the Eleventh Armoured— notes which show that they are men and not automatons who fought the war Dutchman who knew “another way round” when the canal had to be

crossed. The German garrison had no idea we were so close. Our tanks drove straight down to the docks. WON BY SPEED AND DA Til Throughout, it is fair to say that our armour defeated German armour by speed and dash, by manoeuvrability, and, latterly, by numbers. We lacked tanks that were as thickly armoured as German tanks so that their shells often pierced our armour when our shells could not penetrate theirs. “But the gun on our latest tank is very accurate and it will hit any part of the enemy tanks at 1200 yards,” said General Roberts. It would seem that the German tanks have been better defensively than ours, it may well be that ours have been better offensive tanks. An armoured division has its infantry in addition to its tanks. Those infantry work harder than in an infantry division, because there are proin Europe: “Near Falaise there was rain and mud and, to crown it, misquitoes. They could have bitten through armour-plating, and in slit trenches it was misery. At Baron-on-Oder we had not had our boots off. At Caen they nearly dropped off and the tank boys’ ankles—they way they swelled up! We buried a lot of chaps down there: it was Sherman Cemetery. At Caumont, lanes were sunk between high hedges. Tankmen cursed the ditches and everyone blasted eighty-egihts, moaning minnies and snipers . . . near Amiens we did twenty miles in pitch black dark. There was supposed to be a moon, but it rained most of the time. The column got bigger and bigger—swollen by Jerries—they joined in—we advancing, they retreating, and everyone catching prisoners ... on the road towards Antwerp we got tired of kissing girls, catching plums, apples, tomatoes and pears—the lorry I looked like a harvest festival and in Antwerp itself cigars, champagne, brandy and coffee, were pushed at us. Taking Horst, we crossed a place called the Peel, which was just swamp and bog and it blew and rained for forty-eight hours. “Passive Resistance”—mines—was the worst. I don’t think Jerry fired a shot, but having legs or arms blown off by a mine when up to your knees in water . . . you’d see one chap after another disappear or stop and drop dead, his leg blown off clean as a whistle. FIRST IN THE QUEUE “It’s funny how paralysing a mine can be—much worse than a bullet or bomb. Stretcher-bearers came up and five of them had their legs blown off. Everybody had to stick where they were till a pioneer platoon could clear a path by prodding in the ooze and mud with bayonets and laying down planks . . . later we sat on the Maas in ice and snow and sleet and if a chap dropped off to sleep in a slit trench, like as not he’d wake up with his face frozen to the trenchside. We wore every stitch of clothing and some of the nattiest fur coats you ever saw, but still we were cold. The rum ration was handy and teetotallers were first in the queue . . over the Rhine we saw every sort of white flag from a sheet off the spare bed to mother’s unmentionables . . in Teutoburgerwald we were up Germans from N.C.O. and Cadet Schools at Hanover, tougher and more fanatical than the usual run. Later the enemy changed into Bosch* Marines and we had a healthy respect for these, too. By the time we got to the Elbe Jerry seemed to have packed it in except for odds and ends . . . we’ve had a kind of grand tour— Thomas Cook couldn’t do you more proud.” The tasks have been different from World War I and many weapons have been different, but the men don’t change much.