Great Britain. Army. Gordon Highlanders - So Few Got Through

By the same author

Sledge
Those Greenland Days
The Epic of Captain Scott
Three Got Through: Memoirs of an Arctic Explorer
The House of Commons (Britain in Pictures)
Shall We Reform The Lords?

First published in Great Britain in 1946 by William Collins
Republished in 2000 and reprinted in 2012 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Martin Lindsay, 1946, 2000, 2012

ISBN 978 1 84884 856 6
eISBN 9781781597712

The right of Martin Lindsay to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

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Contents

Part One

France

It all began with a telegram.

About a month after D-Day I had been spending a few days with Bobby and Dolly near Ascot. Dudley and Eve Tooth were also staying there. He and I talked about our prep. school, where Tooth was swished by Beetle yesterday was scrawled on a wall in the pavilion and reminded successive generations of small boys not only of the birching of the unknown Tooth, but also of that legendary, gouty old tyrant, Hawtrey. Dudley tried to teach me about pictures, Dolly tried to improve my bridge, which nobody will ever succeed in doing, and Eve inspired me to a birdie on the 18th at the Berkshire, the last hole I was to play for a long time. So I left Kingsmead that morning a much better man.

We all drove up the Great West Road together, in Bobbys little car. I saw some duck flighting very high and wondered what echo of war had disturbed their daylight siesta. We passed a long convoy fresh landings on the French coast, perhaps? The porter at my Club handed me the telegram which I had been expecting: Major Lindsay posted to 21 Army Group as a second-in-command will join 12 repeat 12 July at Virginia Water and report to Major Wellington .

I savoured in full that last morning in London. I took a last look round the Club, pinched some notepaper, and promised Alan Lennox-Boyd to ask for news of his brother, missing since D plus 1. I had a military haircut at a fashionable and unmilitary barber. I left my best service dress with my tailor. Of course I had to tell Mr. Welsh that I was just off to France, and he was slightly sentimental. He showed me two tunics belonging to a young officer of the Rifle Brigade, which his mother had sent in to be cleaned before she gave them away. So I left him Joyces address, in case I never called back for mine.

I walked very slowly up St. Jamess Street, sniffing the air like a young spaniel working up a hedgerow. A flying bomb streaked across the sky but everyone continued about their business: two taxi-drivers were haggling over the price for a bottle of black-market gin, an American aviator smiled into the laughing eyes of somebody elses wife, in the bay window of Whites an old man was reading a newspaper.

At Claridges I went to telephone for a car to meet me at Virginia Water. Scribbled on a message pad I read: Sally Lovelace has still not returned to her flat. They have not yet finished digging. We will let you know as soon as possible. But the foyer was crowded. The restaurant was filling up, and soon there was not a table left.

There was another Alert at Waterloo Station, but the All Clear sounded at Twickenham. The train stopped for a long time in front of a village green. The slow left-hand bowler sent down two full pitches running. Dear Daddy, had written Lindsay ma , I think I like crikket. Darling wife, I wrote then and there, if I do not return I want you please to remember that the boys

When we arrived at Virginia Water I asked the A.T.S. driver if she knew where 21st Army Group was to be found. No, she replied, its all so very hush hush. Nobody yet knows where anything is. Well, Dolly told me at lunch that its at the Wentworth Golf Club, I said, so lets try there first.

Major Wellington had never heard of me, so there was much telephoning and searching for files. A lieutenant-colonel came into the room and they talked sotto voce for a while about the crop of adverse reports which had come back from France, against hitherto successful battalion commanders and brigadiers who had lost their heads when the guns began to fire. There was some mention of a new colonel for 11th Scots Fusiliers.

Why, whats happened to Colonel Cuninghame? I asked, for he was just about my greatest friend. Im afraid hes gone, the major said. He was killed three days ago. I felt very sad, for Sandy and I were in the same company at Sandhurst and joined the regiment together.

Wellington rang up France and tried to sell me to 9th Durham Light Infantry, but his opposite number over there was out. So he told me to proceed and get myself fixed up when I reached the other side.

So, on a lovely summer evening in July 1944, I was a passenger in what was formerly a small Dover-Ostend Channel boat one of a number of infantry reinforcements on our way to replace the heavy battle casualties that had occurred in the first weeks bitter fighting in the Normandy beach-head.

We were a silent and sober crowd, standing at the ships rails watching the slanting rays of the setting sun on the green fields of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. I am sure that each one of us was speculating upon his individual destiny, wondering whether he would ever again see the coast of England many never did. Most of that group were little more than twenty years of age, and had not been abroad before. As I looked at those fresh young faces I felt desperately sorry for them all. I myself was spared the more poignant emotions, for all this had happened to me before. Three times before had I put my affairs in order and made peace with myself before setting out on a venture, wondering whether it would be my good fortune to return safely from it.

My companions soon went below, and before long their shouts and laughter echoed up the companion-way. I turned up the collar of my khaki great-coat and stayed on deck for another hour or two, watching the yellow stabs of flak as a lone representative of the Luftwaffe streaked across the sky. The searchlights one by one went out and a pale moon rose higher and higher above the sea. Orion and Leo, Pegasus and Perseus became visible, starting their leisurely noctambulation round the Pole Star as if nothing unusual had happened and a new phase in world history was not being written in blood in the fields and orchards of Calvados just out of sight over the horizon.

We had a good view of the French coast as we steamed in towards it next day: rolling grassfields sloping down to the sea from a ridge behind, and few distinctive features. I was struck by the enormous quantity of shipping of all types riding at anchor: cruisers, cargo vessels, tankers, lighters and many smaller craft; more ships than I had ever before seen in so small a stretch of water. No wonder the Luftwaffe came over most nights to lay mines.