During the actual fighting, we tried to rest whenever and wherever we could – in the vehicles, in barns and even in Dutch homes. On one occasion though, when I was seeking billets for my troop, the door was opened by a completely bald woman whose head had been shaved by revengeful villagers because she had collaborated with the Germans. The time we spent in our winter quarters was really good. I was billeted in a very comfortable Dutch home in Nederweert with the Regimental Quartermaster, Captain Ted Acres, a dry, exact, pedantic and incredibly efficient chap, and Fred Sowerby, a blunt and cheerful Yorkshireman who ran the light aid detachment. It was Fred who refused to help me out of a difficult situation when I forcibly removed the windscreen of my regimental Jeep. I had done so in a moment of madness when driving across an airfield while a B17 bomber was starting to take off. The chap who was with me said he’d bet I couldn’t catch it. I not only did so but clipped the back of its tailplane with the top of my windscreen. ‘You did it, you silly young bugger,’ said Fred, ‘so you can live with the consequences!’
In the evenings though, when the day’s training schedules, joint manoeuvres with the infantry, gunnery practice and tank maintenance tasks had been completed, Ted, Fred and I could relax in front of a roaring fire catching up with the very welcome mail from home and listening to the American Forces Network. Frank Sinatra was the man, Peggy Lee was the woman and the big bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller were and still are my passion.
In the middle of February 1945 the Greys’ winter rest period ended. The long-serving personnel had returned from their UK leave and the Regiment was refurbished and refreshed – just as well, for the end of winter heralded some of the bloodiest fighting of the Second Front. The war had now surged up to the very borders of Germany at the Reichswald Forest and the mighty River Rhine. The Greys were heavily involved, co-operating closely with the infantry, and the going was very tough indeed with the Germans resisting every inch of the way with anti-tank guns, rivers, ditches, snipers, blown bridges and Panzerfausts. Their homeland was now being directly threatened and that added extra steel to their resistance. It was here that I had one of the most emotional experiences of my life.
Times arose when we had to let other units leap-frog through our positions so that we could refuel, take on fresh ammunition and eat. You stopped by the supply vehicles and then there was a flurry of activity: humping five-gallon jerricans up to the engine compartment and sloshing petrol into tanks, passing shells and ammo boxes up into the turret, maintenance work – a sort of tank pit stop. Sitting on the turret with my legs dangling inside while my troop was on its way to one of these, I saw a group of four men in army uniform and idly thought that one chap looked just like my father. As we got closer I realized to my amazement that it was my father: he may have been in battledress and wearing a khaki beret but his stance was unmistakable and to clinch it he was smoking his inevitable pipe. At the time he was editor of Motor Cycling, and had got himself accredited as a war correspondent with the express intention of finding me, which he’d done. Needless to say it was wonderful to see him but there wasn’t any time for more than a short conversation because I had to get back into action.
This all happened close to a place called Udem, near the towns of Goch and Kleve which had been completely obliterated by over a thousand bomber raids. I remember having to get out of the tank at one point during the night and thinking that I must be in Dante’s Inferno. The road was blocked by rubble, houses all round me were ablaze, there were dead bodies lying on the ground amid a nauseating smell, bemused cattle were wandering about, people were shouting, guns firing and there was the constant worry that somewhere up the road was an 88mm or Germans to let fly at you with a Panzerfaust. With V1 rockets aimed at Antwerp soaring over us, we advanced despite the most stubborn resistance by Panzers and elite Paratroops. The Reichswald was cleared and on 24 February 1945 we crossed the border into Germany.
It is difficult to find the words to express my emotions as I saw the crudely signwritten board saying, ‘YOU ARE NOW ENTERING GERMANY’. Since 1939 Britain had been subjected to defeat after defeat in Europe, Africa and the Far East. Our towns and cities had been bombed and torched with incendiaries. Countless thousands of men and women had been killed, maimed and injured on land, sea and in the air and Hitler’s U-boats had done their best to starve us out. Standing alone, Britain had been on its knees but it had fought back and now, with the might of America at its side, it was winning.
The British Army’s part of the Eisenhower/Montgomery master plan called for the crossing of the Rhine and then a mighty surge towards the Baltic. Now, after the bloody night attacks using ‘artificial moonlight’ from searchlights, we were on the west bank of the Rhine near Xanten. Looking across its mighty width, it seemed impossible to cross but we knew that it was just a matter of time. On 23 March there was a 3300-gun artillery bombardment of the far shore and beyond which must surely have been one of the most intense in military history, and on the following day the 6th Airborne Division swept into action. I simply could not have imagined what it would be like, and if I hadn’t seen it would never have believed it. As the gathering roar grew louder and louder, I stood beside my tank looking up at a vast fleet of hundreds of aeroplanes towing gliders containing troops and equipment. With no opposition from the Luftwaffe, they reached their targets, cast off their gliders and returned for more. It was the most amazing demonstration of military might and how Britain had clawed its way from the brink, rebuilt its forces and turned the tables on its enemy. But it wasn’t all euphoria: at one point, to the horror of the forces below, a Tetrarch reconnaissance light tank emerged from its glider hundreds of feet above us and plunged to the ground with its crew still inside. What had happened I do not know, but the story was that with the engine running for a rapid exit, the driver had dropped the clutch while still high up in the air. Whatever the reason, it was a terrifying sight.
On 25 March we crossed the Rhine. Unlike Arnhem, the air drop had been a total success and a bridgehead had been established. German forces were still holding out in Holland, to our left, and the Ruhr, to our right, but between them the way was now open for a charge to the River Elbe and Hamburg. But there was still a lot of bloody conflict before that could happen. Progress was slow and painful. At one point there was particularly bitter resistance from the German Second Marine Division and I remember standing over one of them, who was clearly dying, with a drawn pistol in my hand in case he was bluffing and tried some desperate move.
After virtually continuous fighting, during which I liberated a fine pair of Zeiss binoculars from a German 88mm gunner who had been trying to wipe us out, we reached the crucial River Elbe, south of Hamburg. In a mammoth military traffic jam pouring across the newly constructed army bridges, the mighty Elbe was crossed and now our momentum was unstoppable. With the Russians advancing rapidly towards Berlin from the East and the combined forces of the West pressing forward from the other direction, the Germans were in a vice and their resistance melted. With vivid and bitter memories of the Russian campaign uppermost in their minds, the last thing they wanted was to be captured by Stalin’s men, merciless and eager for retribution and revenge. Things became very political as it was vital to the Allies that their forces reached the Baltic before the Russians. The key was Lubeck. ‘Get to Lubeck first!’ was the stirring order given by the War Office to the 21st Army Group. The Greys and the 6th Airborne Division were instructed to head for Wismar on the Baltic coast, and we went for it. It was an incredible experience. At the rate of some 5000 troops an hour, the German army was heading west as fast as possible to avoid being captured by the Russians, while on the same single carriageway road we were hammering east absolutely flat out. With the British and the Germans going their different ways just feet away from each other there was no fighting, no acknowledgment even. At one point our headlong gallop was brought to a halt by the sheer weight of traffic and, sitting on the top of the turret eating a tin of Spam, I found myself looking down on to a vast open Mercedes-Benz staff car containing