Delaforce - Marching to the Sound of Gunfire: North-West Europe 1944 – 1945

MARCHING TO THE

SOUND OF GUNFIRE

MARCHING TO THE
SOUND OF GUNFIRE

NORTH-WEST EUROPE 19441945

PATRICK DELAFORCE

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Sutton Publishing Limited

Reprinted in 2014 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley, South Yorkshire
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Copyright Patrick Delaforce, 1996, 2014

ISBN 978 1 78346 264 3

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

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Contents

I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to the many sharp end contributors to this book, some alas no longer present or able to march to the sound of gunfire.

Major Bill Apsey MC, Chuck Baldwin, A.J.M. Bannerman, Les Baynton, J. Bell, Major Noel Bell MC, Bill Bellamy MC, Major W.R. Birt, Geoffrey Bishop MC, Major Bindon Blood, Snatch Boardman, Robert Boulton, Wally Brereton, R.N.B. Brett-Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Steel Brownlie MC, J.A. Brymer, Hedley Bunce, Major B.E.L. Burton, Wally Caines, Jim Caswell, Major Bill Close MC, Eric Codling, Ron Cookson, Major Arthur Cuckmay, Bernard Cuttiford, D. Davies, Bob Day, Edward K. Deeming, Stanley Dickinson, Nipper Dutton, Lieutenant Colonel Hart Dyke DSO, Raymond Ellis, Major John Evans DSO, Rex Flower, N.L. Francis, Simon Frazer, Major Creagh Gibson, Major H.S. Gillies, Major Mickey Gold, William Gould, Richard Greenwood, Phil Grimmet, Major Algy Grubb, Norman Habertin, Henry Hall MC, Ernie Hamilton, Lieutenant Colonel C.D. Hamilton, Ian Hammerton, Lieutenant Colonel Godfrey Barker Harland MC, Stuart Hills MC, Major J.J. How MC, Major S. Jacobson MC, Sydney Jary MC, Anthony Jeans, Roland Jefferson BEM, H. Jobson, Lieutenant Colonel Eddie Jones, Major Harry Jones MC, Albert J. Kings, G.H. Kingsmill, Jim Kuipers MC, Revd John du B. Lance, John Lappin MC, Barrett Leonard, Major John Leytham, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Lindsay DSO, John Longfield, Major D.W. McCaffrey, George Marsden, Brigadier G.G. Mears, John Meredith, Albert Mitchell, Major Robert Moberley, Major L. Moody MC, Frank Moppett, W.R. Moseley, Roy Nash, D. ODonnell, Roden Orde, Major Harry Parker, Major A.D. Parsons, Albert Pattison, Clifford Payne, Geoffrey Picot, John Pilborough, Doug Proctor, Hedley Prole, Guy Radcliffe, Lieutenant Colonel Ivor Rees DSO, Peter Reeve, Major W.N. Richardson MC, Peter Roach, Lionel Robertson MC, Graham Roe, Lionel Roebuck, Reg Romain, S. Rosenbaum, Major Sandy Saunders, Robert Sheldrake, Revd Leslie Skinner, Norman Smith, Reg Spittles, Geoffrey Steer, Lieutenant Colonel John Stirling MC, Len Stokes, Lieutenant Colonel David Swiney, Lieutenant Colonel George Taylor DSO, John Thorpe, Michael Trasenster, George Upton, Major Derrick Watson, Bill Wellings, Kenneth West, Major Mike Whittle MC, Michael Wilford, George Wilson, Major Humphrey Wilson, Revd Iain Wilson, Rex Wingfield, Revd Jim Wisewell.

Nobody enjoys fighting. Yet the forward area in any theatre of war, the sharp end of the battle, as we used to call it, is inhabited by young men with a gleam in their eye, who actually do the fighting. They are comparatively few in number and they are nearly always the same people. Those were the memorable words of a great Corps Commander perhaps the best in the Second World War Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks.

This book is about the young men with a gleam in their eye who actually did the fighting, told by themselves, in that fantastic and dangerous eleven months of bloody warfare in North-west Europe after D-Day. It is written by a young man (at that time) who had a gleam in his eye and like thousands of others who fought their way from the Normandy bridgehead, took part in many actions: Operation Bluecoat in the break-out; The Great Swan to liberate northern France, Belgium and Holland; the capture of Antwerp, and right-flanking for Market Garden. He was blown up in the Peel Country in the bleak midwinter of 19445, fought in the Reichwald and at the Rhine crossing, and took part quite vigorously in the five canal and river battles in Germany before his Armoured Division smashed its way to the Baltic.

Marching to the Sound of Gunfire has stories by the PBI, the tough, solid, mortar-swept infantry who plodded forward from slit to slit the Brengunners, riflemen, mortarmen, stretcher-bearers and signallers; stories from the Tankies in their out-gunned Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills tackling Mk IVs with some relish, Panthers with trepidation and Tigers with fear in their hearts, and tales of the brave assault troops Dragoons and Hussars who bashed their way ashore on D-Day with AVREs and Flails. Also here are the intrepid Recce types in their thin-skinned armoured cars, pushing and prodding round dangerous corners, always radioing back their vital information to the management; the various kinds of gunners, led by their devoted FOOs with self-propelled or towed guns bringing down fast, furious, close support barrages to protect their little friends; sappers building bridges under fire, clearing minefields, delousing booby traps all the nasty battlefield jobs; padres seeking dead young men burnt alive in tanks or lying in ditches and giving them a decent burial; RAMC doctors and orderlies in the front line tending their wounded with their RAP under fire, and all the support services RASC bringing up food, ammo and mail and the REME repairing armoured vehicles for the morrow.

Marching to the Sound of Gunfire depicts not only victories, but also bloody defeats, attacks and withdrawals, the shock of being wounded in action, the trauma of being surrounded and captured, friendly fire and grim accidents in the field. It brings back the magic moments of the breakout from Normandy, the exhilaration of the chase called The Great Swan, and the delirious welcomes in the liberated villages and towns on the centre lines. It recalls the tragedy of Market Garden, the tedium of the winter months, watching and guarding the Maas, the dash south to act as longstop in the Ardennes and the ferocious little rearguard battles fought by the SS and paratroopers in Germany on the way to seizing Bremen and Hamburg. But interspersed with the grim and sometimes frightening incidents are many comical interludes, as Tommy Atkins has always been renowned for his sense of humour.

Grateful thanks are owed to the hundred or so front-line soldiers whose stories are included in this book, and specially to Donald Green, the young Queens Rifleman with the Desert Rats in Normandy for his marvellous live pencil drawings. Thanks also to Birkin Haward OBE, the AVRE sapper whose drawings of the major battlefields enhance this book, and to Random House for permission to use extracts from Martin Lindsays