Tankies: Tank Heroes of World War II episode 2
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00:00The Second World War was the ultimate conflict of the machine age, and this machine was an
00:23iconic symbol, the decisive weapon of the war on land. From North Africa to the Russian
00:30front, tank ruled the battlefield, and if you didn't master armoured warfare, you faced
00:37annihilation.
00:42It's quite terrifying really because you can see these flashes of the enemy's guns in the
00:48distance and you think any minute one of them is going to hit me.
00:53The tanks were at the beginning of the war and the end, giving their crews a unique view
00:59of the entire conflict, from the fall of France to North Africa, D-Day, and final victory
01:06in Germany.
01:09As a trainee officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, I was indoctrinated in their exploits, and
01:15who could fail to have been awe-inspired by the way those men faced death time and time
01:21again in these iron-clad monsters.
01:29When I first went in, I thought it was going to be great fun and all that, but I realised
01:35it wasn't. There was a tank near me, I saw it just blown to bits. A couple of my mates
01:41were in that. It was terrible.
01:44This is the story of six remarkable men from one armoured unit, the 5th Royal Tank Regiment,
01:515RTR, or to those who knew them really well, the Filthy Fifth.
01:58Their war is brought to life not only by the last surviving veterans, but also by previously
02:04unseen letters and diaries that give us a real insight into the visceral reality of
02:10tank warfare.
02:13Each man had his own story. Some were wounded, some captured, and some were killed. A few,
02:20very few, made it all the way through. Taken together, those accounts form a unique picture
02:27of the war.
02:44For three long years, the men of the 5th tanks had been fighting in the deserts of
02:50North Africa as part of 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats. Inside their tanks, facing
02:58a sudden fiery death, the crews formed close friendships, like the one between Bill Chorley
03:05and Bob Ley. They joined the 5th at the same time in 1942.
03:11The bond you established was not the normal relationships of friends. You were a partnership,
03:19it was closer than friendship. And that crew were friends for life.
03:31The Allied victory at Alamein in November 1942 was a turning point in the war. The Desert
03:45Rats became celebrated heroes, and the 5th tanks returned home to Britain expecting a
03:51well-earned rest. Instead, Montgomery, architect of that desert victory, sent them in secret
03:59to a run-down camp in Norfolk called Shaker's Wood to prepare for a new fight, one that
04:05would require very different skills to the ones they'd learned in North Africa. The 5th
04:12tanks were now going to spearhead the invasion of Europe, D-Day. Sergeant Gerry Solomon,
04:20a former greengrocer, had survived the last three years of combat in the desert. He didn't
04:26relish the prospect of a murderous close-quarters fight in Normandy. We thought we'd had enough,
04:33let somebody else have a go. But they wanted seasoned troops, and there weren't many seasoned
04:40troops. What I find extraordinary is that even by this stage in 1944, after nearly five
04:48years of war, less than half of the British army had seen active combat. They were people
04:54in support units, garrisons and training bases. The 5th tanks, on the other hand,
05:00had fought all the way through North Africa and Italy. They felt they'd done their bit,
05:06and who can blame them? But the army had other ideas. They were tried and tested, and Monty
05:12knew he could rely on them to deliver. Before D-Day, the 5th tanks received hundreds of
05:19new recruits. The first was 19-year-old Roy Dixon, a second lieutenant fresh from officer
05:26training, making him the only man without the Africa Star campaign medal yet expected
05:32to lead veterans. Fitting into 5RTR was a little bit of a problem because they had so
05:40much more experience, and they all knew each other well, and it didn't help that they spoke
05:46in a sort of special language of their own, partly Arabic, and so one did feel a bit of
05:53an outsider, but they were all extremely friendly. The battalion didn't just get new men as it
06:03was rebuilt for D-Day. The 5th tanks and their fellow desert rats also took delivery of a
06:10brand new fighting machine. When the soldiers saw their new British-made Cromwell tanks,
06:16they were aghast. There was so much wrong with it. The first thing, obvious to the eye,
06:21is that so much of the armour, unlike many other tanks around by that time, is flat on
06:26towards the enemy, and that meant that a shell striking it was much less likely to glance off.
06:32There was a serious problem with the gun too. The 75mm gun performed well enough against Mark
06:393s and Mark 4s in the desert, but it simply lacked the punch to defeat the latest German
06:45heavy Tiger tanks. 29-year-old Scotsman Sergeant Jake Wardrop, one of the 5th's hardened tank
06:53commanders, was all too aware of the differences between the new British and German tanks. In the
06:59remarkably candid diary he kept throughout the war, he was scathing. The big difference between
07:05the Cromwell and the Tiger made it possible for the Bosch to stand back at 2,000 metres
07:11and pick the Cromwells off like a rifle range. At that distance, the 75mm on the Cromwell would
07:19not look at the 4-inch armour of a Tiger, while the long-barrelled 88mm tore through the Cromwell
07:25like a knife through butter. Getting into the Cromwell, a typical British tank, is a tight fit.
07:36But of course, for the men, it was getting out that was more important, because many had escaped
07:43with seconds to spare from burning tanks in the desert. And more generally, they'd got used to
07:49the bigger American tanks. They were roomier inside, and coming back to this was like coming
07:55back to a tiny flat. Hadn't they listened to our experiences in the desert? Hadn't they learnt
08:02anything? I expressed my views very forcefully, and eventually I was told that if I said any more,
08:10I'd be court-martialed.
08:191944. On the 6th of June, 136,000 US, British and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy.
08:37It's the biggest amphibious landing ever attempted. D-Day has dawned at last. On Gold Beach,
08:48the 50th Northumbrian Division led the assault, and captured it after a fierce fight during which
08:54over 400 were killed, wounded or missing. The 5th tanks were still out at sea. They had been delayed
09:12by bad weather, and it wasn't until 3pm the next day, the 7th of June, that they came thundering
09:20across these sands. 80 tanks and 730 men all keyed up, only to find that the battle for the beach was
09:29already over. It wasn't what I expected at all. I imagined fighting my way up the beach, but it
09:39didn't happen to me. The invasion had taken the Germans completely by surprise. In command was
09:47the 5th tank's old foe, Erwin Rommel. In 1940, he'd chased them out of France. They in turn had
09:55beaten the so-called Desert Fox in North Africa. Rushing back from his wife's birthday in Germany,
10:02Rommel was now to meet with Montgomery and the 5th tanks for the decisive battle. Rommel
10:09knew he had to contain the British and other landing forces before throwing them back into
10:14the sea. He feared that unless he managed that quickly, Allied air superiority would be so
10:20overwhelming that his own armoured forces would be destroyed before they could come into action,
10:26and that would make Germany's defeat inevitable. Both Montgomery and Rommel knew the city of
10:35Caen was central to the battle for Normandy. The Allies had to capture this important road hub.
10:42Doing so would mean breaking out of the bridgehead and through the German defences. Montgomery had
10:50nurtured some hope of capturing Caen on D-Day, but it proved much tougher than that, and the
10:56city's fate became central to the Normandy campaign. Three days on, the Allies only had
11:04their toehold a few miles deep, having failed to break out through German lines containing them
11:09or advance inland as far as planned. New boy Roy Dixon was one of the first in 5th tanks to see
11:18action. The first encounter we had was about a mile and a mile and a half away from the beach,
11:24where a party of Germans, a group of Germans, had been sort of bypassed by the initial infantry,
11:30and they were just holding out for themselves, and we had to attack them. We came to this great
11:37big chateau. There were Germans in there, and they were rattling away with their machine gun. Well,
11:43I badly wanted to fire a shot into the chateau, but no, they wouldn't let me do that. I said,
11:51all right, you can't do that. It's not cricket, I suppose. They put up actually quite a good fight,
11:59including climbing onto one of the tanks, so a little fear, not a very bad thing, but a nice
12:06little action just to get us used to it, really, so we knew what was going on. The Normandy terrain
12:17came as a real shock to desert veterans in the 5th. Out in North Africa, if the enemy got within
12:23500 metres of you, that was getting too near, whereas with these hedges, there could be Germans
12:30on the other side, and you wouldn't even know about it. This closed terrain was a frightening
12:40new experience for many of the 5th tank's old sweat, and some were simply unable to cope.
12:47Corporal Bridges, he was a desert veteran. He came to me and said, I'm terribly sorry about this,
12:53but he said, I really can't go on. I've had it in a big way. I was shaking like a leaf,
12:59and I can't face doing it another day. So I said, well, this is one o'clock in the morning,
13:06of course, by this time. So I said, well, okay, but there's obviously nothing I can do about it
13:13this time of night. We're going to have to go off at one in the morning,
13:16but I will do my best to see if we can get you replaced the next day.
13:24Next day, we moved off, and the very first shot was fired, hit right at the turret ring level,
13:29and took half of him off, killed instantly. And so I then ran across to see what had happened,
13:35climbed up in his tank, looked down, and it was not a very good sight to see, as you can imagine,
13:40whole place pouring in blood and a headless body at the bottom, and very nasty indeed. That was my
13:46first initiation. That's when I realized that this war wasn't going to be so much fun.
13:53Inside, you are safer, but there's a distinct limit to what you can see
13:57through these vision blocks. So most of the commanders kept their heads
14:03out of the turret. Now, that was more dangerous, of course,
14:06but it gave them a much better idea of what was going on around them.
14:14And that was vital in these narrow lanes and high hedgerows called Bokaj,
14:19because it was ideal country to ambush tanks.
14:33Any hedgerow could be concealing a panzer or an infantryman armed with one of these,
14:39the Panzerfaust. It's a handheld anti-tank weapon. Germany produced more than six million of these
14:46during the war. This variant has a range of 60 meters. Now, that would be pathetically inadequate
14:53in the desert. You'd be killed before you could get that near. But in the close country of Europe,
15:00it allowed the humble infantryman the chance to take out any Allied armored vehicle.
15:05And for many in the fifth tanks, it proved to be their undoing.
15:17The Panzerfaust imploded into the tank, blew it up. We were all finished if that hit. So
15:26you were virtually with the infantry all the time. You needed infantry to protect you.
15:34Breaking out of the Bokaj to the open countryside beyond was vital
15:39if the pent-up Allied armour was to flow as an unstoppable torrent. The alternative was
15:46unthinkable. German containment of the Allied bridgehead, a war of attrition in the hedgerows,
15:52and in the worst-case scenario, failure. One week after D-Day, the Americans forced a gap
16:00in the German front line, and an opportunity appeared to break out towards the city of Caen.
16:07Montgomery seized his chance to open up the battle and rout the Germans. The 7th Armoured
16:13Division, including 5th Tanks, was ordered to push through the gap as fast as possible.
16:18They advanced six miles through the Norman countryside
16:22and arrived along this high street in Villers-Bocage.
16:27The people of the town came to their balconies and open windows to cheer the British tanks and
16:33throw flowers on them. The commander of that leading battle group felt they'd done it,
16:38and ordered everybody to stop while the men made tea. The 5th Tanks, meanwhile, the 2nd battle group
16:46were on a nearby hillside, oblivious to the fact that a disaster was about to unfold.
16:57So far, the dreaded German Tiger tank had failed to make an appearance in Normandy,
17:03but now it was to make its spectacular debut,
17:07confirming the worst fears about the Cromwell tank's vulnerability and lack of firepower.
17:15You knew very well that if you came up against a Tiger, you weren't going to be able to penetrate
17:20it, so you just got to bloody well avoid it, that's all there was to it.
17:29A Tiger tank appeared, commanded by Michael Wittmann, a panzer ace with 137 kills to his
17:37credit. With this talent for mayhem, he was quick to seize his chance.
17:46It was along this road that Wittmann sowed a trail of destruction.
17:52Appearing here with a couple of other Tigers, he first engaged the rearmost tanks of the leading
17:59British group who were up on that hill. That was to stop them taking any further part in what was
18:04to follow. He then set off down this road, engaging half-tracks and Cromwells as he went.
18:11Within minutes, 25 British vehicles were ablaze.
18:25In this particular spot, one of the British tanks managed to stalk the German vehicle.
18:32They came up to within 100 metres of the back of Wittmann's tank and fired twice at it.
18:39They watched their own shells bounce off, and then, in horror, as the German tank traversed
18:46its turret to the rear, pointed its 88mm gun at them, and opened up, destroying the Cromwell
18:53instantly. Almost single-handedly, Wittmann had brought the British army's advance in Normandy
19:00to a halt. I hold the design of the Cromwell tank and the men who ordered its production
19:07personally responsible for the death of hundreds of men who fought in those tanks
19:12and had a lot more guts than common sense. British and German reinforcements, including
19:19more Tiger tanks, now poured into the village, feeding the fierce fight there. The British
19:26decided to pull back. The fifth tanks on the hillside waited nervously as the sounds of battle
19:33came closer. We just didn't quite know what was going on. We knew there were Tiger tanks there,
19:48that was all we knew about it. And we were unaware of what really a serious situation it was.
19:56We didn't realise that they were being absolutely massacred in the town and
19:59the whole regiment had gone. We didn't realise that at all.
20:08Now it was the turn of fifth tanks to face the formidable Tiger. But as well as Cromwells,
20:14they were equipped with another new tank, the British Sherman Firefly.
20:21Now this is an American copy, but the Firefly combined the proven Sherman Hull with a powerful
20:2817-pounder anti-tank gun. It was such a beast of a weapon that it fired its anti-tank projectile
20:34at three times the speed of sound and it could punch a hole in any German tank of the time.
20:43Sherman Firefly, yes, very good tank. A 17-pounder, yeah. That was an entirely new gun.
20:53The muzzle velocity, 2,000 feet per second. That's going something.
21:00That weapon produced such a flash and bang that it could easily give away the position
21:06of the tank. And for the crew inside the turret, they could be temporarily blinded by that blast
21:12or even have their hair singed. It all made it vital to get that first round on target accurately.
21:23When we received these new Sherman 17-pounders, the Firefly, the decision was made that troops
21:30would consist of three Cromwells and one Sherman. So that gave one a really good
21:37hitting power within the troop.
21:43But of course, that's all very well, but when tanks get spread out in battle,
21:49the Firefly is not where you want it when you need it.
21:53But it was a vast improvement and it did knock out Tigers.
21:58And using the Sherman itself also was a mixed blessing. The British army knew the tank very well
22:05but it was in Normandy that it was discovered just how easily it set fire when it was hit or brewed
22:11up, leading the British crews to nickname them Ronsons after the popular lighter and the Germans
22:18to dub them Tommy Cookers. The one dozen Sherman Fireflies in the 5th Tanks were commanded by its
22:26most experienced sergeants and corporals, all of them desert veterans, including Jerry Solomon
22:32and Jake Wardrop. Okay, movement spotted. Use the AP rounds. Back on our front, somebody had seen a
22:40couple of Tigers and we got ready to engage them. By sitting on top of the turret and looking through
22:46the trees, I could see the thing about 150 yards away. It was closer now, so I said we'll fire
22:54anyhow or the bloody thing will be alongside. Like the stout lad he is, no sooner had the empty case
23:01rattled on the floor than Woody had slammed another one up. The Tiger halted now, so I gave the gunner
23:09aim little left and fire again. They had the wind up on the Tiger by now and it was reversing as
23:16fast as it could go. I was kicking myself for not brewing it up, but we had twisted the tail of the
23:22big brave Tiger and he had run away and my morale was way up. Well, whether or not 5th Tanks hit any
23:29of the Tigers moving up that valley, German records show that 16 of them were put out of action during
23:36the three days of the Villers-Bocage battle. Nine of those Tigers destroyed. A couple of dozen other
23:43types of German tanks were also knocked out. But it wasn't just Panzers that the 5th Tanks had to
23:53face. The Germans also threw their infantry into the battle. I got out of the tank to water the
24:02grass. Jock got out and did the same and when he got back in and was adjusting his overcoat, he got
24:11a dum-dum bullet to his head and my sniper was about. So I kept myself lucky.
24:22The battle raged for two days and as the death of Bob's commander demonstrated,
24:27it was far too risky to leave the protection of the tank.
24:33When you're closed down inside for long periods, it can be very tough mentally as well as physically.
24:40I remember doing it for 20 hours on a Cold War exercise in Germany and pretty soon, because I
24:47couldn't stand up or stretch, I was very uncomfortable. My legs in the knee were singing with pain
24:54and there was a voice in my head pleading with me to get out. In Normandy, because of the threat
25:01of artillery and snipers, they had to do it for long periods. And of course, the smell must have
25:07been pretty terrible. People were getting on one another's nerves and having to urinate into shell
25:12cases must have been a nightmare. Bill Chorley had abandoned his tank when it broke down. He'd seen
25:21Cromwell crews, including his own commander, abandon their vehicles in panic when the Tigers
25:27appeared. Now Bill, just 23 years old that day, tried to sneak back to his own lines with two
25:34other crew members. We crept through the hedgerows, which took a long time, until we came to the main
25:41road. It seemed all quiet, so I got up and suddenly heard, hand hock englander, followed by a burst of
25:48machine gun fire. We had no weapons, so had to surrender. I heard a burst of a smell of fire
25:57and I thought, God, they've got him. And I firmly believed that he's been killed.
26:09Devastated, absolutely. He was my best friend. He was a marvellous chap as well. But
26:18by the time we'd reached the Seine, I'd lost all my friends and when that happens, you're on your own.
26:28Allied aircraft dominated the skies over Normandy, striking fear into the Germans. Fifth tanks now
26:35witnessed a massive air attack on Villa Bocage, where earlier that day, French civilians had
26:41That day, French civilians had greeted the triumphant British.
26:53They just stonked the place, flattened it all together. You couldn't mess about with things
26:58like that. You had to get on with it. It was desperate times. I mean, we were in a bridgehead
27:06and we wanted to get out. And, you know, you couldn't worry about detail. If the RAF came in
27:13and hit the target, well, so be it. As far as we were concerned, it was a good thing.
27:19Because war is war and there's no half measures.
27:29Allied air power was a blunt instrument. Its bombs killed about 70,000 French people.
27:36A third more killed by accident than the British suffered from
27:40the Luftwaffe's deliberate bombing during the Blitz.
27:51British infantry divisions had failed to link up with the 5th Tanks and 7th Armoured Division.
27:58So on the 14th of June, the order came to retreat,
28:01giving up all the ground they'd captured over the past days.
28:06They'd inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans, but they were isolated six miles forward of
28:11Allied lines. It was feared only a matter of time before they'd run out of supplies.
28:195th Tanks, acting as rearguard, was the last to leave.
28:26Captain Arthur Crickmay was the 5th Tank's adjutant, right-hand man of the battalion's
28:32commanding officer. He'd been fighting since 1939 and had won the Military Cross for bravery.
28:40We moved off in pitch dark and clouds of choking dust to the steady clanking of tracks and the
28:46dull roar of Rolls-Royce engines. It seemed too much to expect of the enemy to let us go unmolested,
28:53but they did. They'd had enough.
28:56The true vision of Arthur was somebody who was absolutely immaculate.
29:03We hadn't any sleep for about five nights. We'd tablets to keep ourselves awake,
29:07and when we pulled out, most people flopped out and went to sleep. None of us were still on my feet.
29:13So I was required to go to Arthur's tank, and Arthur was shaving. And so there was a
29:22And Arthur was shaving. And some very gauche Americans arrived,
29:29and wanted to know what the position was. And Arthur finished his shaving and
29:37slowly told them, quite quietly and slowly, what was happening.
29:43But he wasn't going to be rushed by any Americans while he was shaving.
29:53So what actually happened here? Well, on the morning of the 13th, no doubt about it,
29:57the 7th Armoured Division took a beating. But later that day, and on the 14th of June,
30:03it was the Germans who got the drubbing. So in my view, Villa Bocage was a score draw.
30:11The Germans, quite understandably, made great propaganda play out of Wittmann's actions
30:17and painted it as a great British defeat. Far less understandable or forgivable was the fact
30:24that certain British armchair critics took the same line. The commanders of the 7th Armoured
30:30Division were sacked, despite the fact that it was the infantry who failed to follow up on their
30:36gains. And some historians also, unforgivably, have bought the line that after this battle,
30:43the 7th Armoured Division was traumatised, sticky, afraid to get into a fight.
30:51There are criticisms of the 5th Tanks for being overcautious. But when you have the experience
30:59that we had, you know when to go, when not to go. And that experience saved many lives.
31:11We've moved from a different type of terrain for warfare, where it was
31:16open desert. But here, we were close country. That was why we were cautious.
31:23Stalking their enemies through the Normandy countryside, many of the tank soldiers were
31:29struggling with inner demons. Today, we would call it post-traumatic stress. Jake Wardrop,
31:35in his diary, mentions more than once attacks of the jitters. Mastering those feelings of fear
31:43and panic was one of the biggest challenges facing the veteran tank commanders.
31:49I think the general feeling amongst most fighting men was that people only have a certain amount of
31:54stamina. And when it's run out, that's it. And you're lucky if you've got the stamina to keep
32:01going. So we didn't blame them, really, when their nerves went. Scared? Oh, yes. Everybody
32:09was scared. Eventually, I got to the stage where I was saying to myself, you keep getting away with
32:17it. God, you must have a charmed life. And then later, I thought to myself, yeah, but my odds are
32:27getting shorter, surely. Having failed to surround the city of Caen, the 5th Tanks were pulled out of
32:34the front line for rest and to resupply. There was a cinema and baths in Bayeux, which we visited.
32:42And in the improving weather, we lay around and started to get tanned.
32:46At night, we just simply sat around and read, wrote letters and took things easy.
33:01Thirteen days after D-Day, on the 19th of June, a devastating storm hit the channel.
33:08Supplies fell to a trickle, and since 5th Tanks alone needed 650 tonnes of fuel, ammunition and
33:15rations each day in combat, many operations had to be postponed. While they rested, in the west,
33:24American units, some with just three days of ammunition left, were painfully grinding their
33:30way south against fierce resistance.
33:35In the east, Monty kept up the war of attrition in the hedgerows,
33:39trying to capture Caen and break out of the bridgehead.
33:48With losses continuing day after day, British infantry casualty rates were approaching those
33:53of the First World War. After years of fighting and worldwide commitments,
33:59Britain was running out of foot soldiers. Pressure was on Montgomery to get a move on.
34:10On the 8th and 9th of July, he ordered a massive aerial bombardment that devastated Caen
34:16and its civilian population. After three major offensives and 30 days of bloody fighting,
34:24the city he'd hoped to take on D-Day itself finally fell.
34:33One week later, the Germans suffered another serious blow. General Rommel had always feared
34:39Allied air superiority, and now he became one of its victims, seriously wounded when his staff
34:46car was straffed by British fighters. His war was over, but for the 5th Tanks and others at the
34:52front it continued. General Montgomery called forward the Desert Rats to play a key part
34:58in a coming offensive. Operation Goodwood was to be a tank thrust across the open countryside
35:07beyond Caen. After weeks of suffering by his infantry, Montgomery intended to use all three
35:14of his armoured divisions to punch his way out of the bridgehead. Over a thousand tanks,
35:24more than 60,000 infantry, and 700 pieces of artillery guided into position,
35:33and then the rumble of thunder. In the distance, 2,000 Allied bombers,
35:40the largest number ever launched in support of ground forces, pummeled the Norman fields.
35:52We saw the bombing raid which preceded the Goodwood, and that was enormous,
36:00and you would have thought nobody could have lived through it.
36:04In places, 56-tonne Tigers were hurled upside down. German infantry went mad, some even
36:12committed suicide. So began Operation Goodwood, the biggest tank attack in the history of the
36:20British Army. Today, the ground over which Goodwood was fought is pretty much unchanged.
36:33From this higher ground, the Germans had a grandstand view as all three British armoured
36:39divisions in Normandy advanced from behind me along an axis in line with these rows of crops.
36:47The Germans had prepared defences, the villages had been fortified,
36:55and the woods concealed scores of the feared 88mm anti-tank guns.
37:07An 88 could knock out a Cromwell at 2,000 yards. One 88 covers 4,000 yards,
37:15they had lots of them together with Panthers and Tigers. We were really up against it.
37:25You know it's an 88 because you hear a tearing of paper,
37:30and you move. If you didn't hear it, that was the end of you.
37:36Despite the huge aerial bombardment, the Germans had hardly been harmed. They'd been expecting an
37:43attack for days, and had dug in five lines of defence stretching nine miles deep. When
37:50Goodwood started, it's been likened to the French cavalry attack at Agincourt or the charge of the
37:56Light Brigade at Balaclava. The British advanced down a narrow corridor of death.
38:03On the first day of Goodwood, nearly 200 Allied tanks were knocked out. But 5th tanks, along with
38:10the rest of 7th Armoured Division, the most experienced of the three armoured divisions
38:15taking part, was late getting to the fight. They were stuck in a huge traffic jam near the Orne
38:21River. But on day two of the battle, it was their turn to run the gauntlet, and they were
38:28But on day two of the battle, it was their turn to run the gauntlet,
38:32with 5th tanks leading the way. Going up the slope and looking down the other side,
38:38my main thing was horror, seeing a whole squadron of Shermans in squadron formation knocked out.
38:51The place was littered with burning tanks everywhere, and there were bodies everywhere
38:56as well. It was all very unpleasant indeed. There were sort of half-bodies around the place,
39:01you know, where people were being blown up. It was all very, very nasty.
39:07As Jake Wardrop's troop approached a village across open fields,
39:12an anti-tank gun concealed in woods opened fire.
39:17Then it happened. There was a loud thud behind. The tank slowed and stopped,
39:23and the turret was full of flames. So I yelled, jump and bail for it. Poor Woody had been burnt
39:30on the face and hands. They were starting to blister. We had lost all our kit.
39:41For its crew, a tank is also a mobile home, and when Jake Wardrop's Firefly went up in flames
39:49in this field, they lost all their possessions. He was particularly upset about losing a blue
39:55sweater he'd had since the desert battles and some chapters from his diary. And they weren't
40:01the only people to get burnt out of their vehicle that day. The 5th lost three other tanks too.
40:09And Roy Dixon had a close escape. I got out of my seat and was sitting on the turret ring,
40:15so that I was higher up, so that I could see a bit better. And an air burst went off above me,
40:22and a bit of the shrapnel came down right between my legs and straight into the gunner.
40:28I was incredibly lucky, I missed that much. And the poor old gunner, of course,
40:32we had to get him out of the tank, and getting a wounded man out of a tank is extremely difficult.
40:37He subsequently died, regrettably. You just had to accept it. Everybody said, oh, too bad, you know,
40:43but make way for the new man. You had to do that. You couldn't go around weeping about it already.
40:53When the operation ended on the 20th of July, the British had advanced seven miles and taken
41:00this high ground. But the cost of Goodwood had been high. Critics made much of the fact
41:06the British had 400 tanks knocked out. Never mind that only half of them had actually been destroyed.
41:13The rest could be repaired. Fifth tanks got off relatively lightly. Sergeant Wardrop had
41:20survived being knocked out. Gerry Solomon and Bob Ley had come through unscathed.
41:26But the fact was, it wasn't the breakthrough that many had hoped for.
41:31Goodwood was seen by many as a disaster, and Montgomery was nearly sacked. But the Germans
41:37lost thousands of troops here, scores of anti-tank guns, and around 80 tanks and self-propelled guns.
41:45And whereas the Allies were able to top up their tanks to the original level within 36 hours of
41:52Goodwood, the Germans had only succeeded in all the weeks since D-Day, and had not been able to
41:58succeed in all the weeks since D-Day in replacing 17 out of 1,700 lost panzers.
42:11Two-thirds of the German army was tied up fighting the Soviets on the eastern front.
42:17In France, Allied air power straffed almost anything that moved.
42:22As Rommel had feared, even though German tank production was at its height,
42:26most were sent east, while in France the resupply system had broken down under pressure of air
42:32attack. The Germans were being ground down, and bound by Hitler's orders not to yield an inch of
42:40Normandy, were becoming vulnerable to breakout and encirclement.
42:51Just five days after Goodwood, on the 25th of July, the Americans launched Operation Cobra
43:00to great success. The British had sucked most of Rommel's panzer divisions into the fight for Caen.
43:08That helped the Americans break into open country.
43:12The dream of mobile armoured warfare was now a reality. In four days they advanced 30 miles.
43:21Meanwhile, fifth tanks found themselves in their fiercest battle of the Normandy campaign so far.
43:27Fighting to keep the Germans tied down in their sector
43:31so the Americans could exploit their breakout, the fifth found themselves surrounded.
43:39British infantry and tanks had to operate closely together as a team, but this time it broke down,
43:47and the British infantry bugged out, leaving the fifth tanks to the mercy of SS panzer grenadiers.
43:59We were clustered there in a group, and we were told we were going to wait until
44:04the moon got a bit higher, it would give us a bit more light, then we were going to break out.
44:09But unfortunately the enemy beat us to it.
44:17I knew the tank had been hit. I felt my right hand side go numb.
44:36Gerry Solomon had got through all the North Africa battles, from Crusader to Alamein,
44:43and he'd been one of the first men into Tunis. He'd been in Italy in Villa Bocage and on
44:48Operation Goodwood too. He knew he was living on borrowed time, but true to the honour code of the
44:55fifth sergeants and corporals, the key tank commanders, he refused to put in for a cushier job.
45:02Being seriously wounded had given him an honourable way out.
45:06When I was injured, I wasn't sorry to be going home, because I'd been there for two months and
45:13you know, I thought all I'd done in the war, I'd done my bit anyway.
45:21The British succeeded in holding the German army in place. For Gerry and the Fifth, that came at
45:27quite a price. They lost seven tanks and 25 casualties in one day. But the bigger picture
45:34was the German army was now trapped and annihilated. On the 25th of August,
45:41the Battle of Normandy was declared over. The cost had been high. In 80 days of fighting,
45:47the Allies had over 200,000 casualties, the Germans around 300,000 out of a smaller force.
45:57Of the 2,300 German tanks committed to the battle, less than 120 were brought back across the Seine.
46:05The Allies lost many more tanks, 4,000, but all of them were rapidly replaced.
46:11Jake Wardrop, Bob Ley, Arthur Crickmay and Roy Dixon had all come through relatively unscathed.
46:20On the 31st of August, after nearly three months of fighting in the hedgerows,
46:25they crossed the River Seine, about here, and left behind the horrors of Normandy.
46:33The tanks now sped across France, driving in hours across the Flanders fields their
46:39fathers had contested for years during the First World War. In just five days,
46:45they travelled 200 miles, the fifth tanks being the first Allied unit to liberate the Belgian city
46:52of Ghent. When we got to Ghent, it was tremendous because it was a big city.
46:57Everybody turned out, girls leaping on your tank and embracing you, and it was good stuff.
47:12Parts of Ghent were still occupied by the Germans, so Arthur Crickmay, now a major,
47:18came here to their headquarters in an attempt to persuade the German commander to surrender.
47:24After five days on the road, though, Crickmay was painfully aware that his
47:29usually immaculate standards had slipped, and that he was living up to the nickname
47:34of the Filthy Fifth. To describe my kit, overalls tanked in, slept in, non-stop for a week,
47:42as a mess, would be understating a condition that compared most unfavourably with that of
47:47General Brun. He took this in, and, being appraised of my meagre rank, immediately took
47:53off on his thesis, often repeated, that surrender could only be made to a British officer of equal
47:59rank to himself. The fifth tanks had advanced so rapidly, though, that there were no generals to
48:05hand, so Major Crickmay persuaded his boss, the commanding officer of the battalion, Lieutenant
48:11Colonel Holliman, to act the part. Unfortunately, the German general guessed what was going on,
48:17and still refused to surrender, but he did agree to pull his troops back to the north of the city,
48:24and so the fifth tanks played their part in saving the historic centre of Ghent from destruction.
48:31It was now September, and fighting raged to the north of the city. The tide of war had moved
48:38decisively against Germany, but they fought on, much to the frustration of many British soldiers.
49:08Perhaps they were wounded. At any rate, I nipped down to pick them up, when just then, the Bosch
49:14started to lob over more mortar. They dropped quite close, and I picked up a small splinter in my face.
49:21That settled it. I got back on the tank, gave Jimmy the word, and he chopped them down.
49:27Jake's attitude to war was very belligerent. He wanted to get at them and knock them out,
49:41and that had been great satisfaction. Not everybody felt that way.
49:49Jake Wardrop testified to the bitterness of the fighting. Near here, he saw two wounded Germans
49:56being finished off with headshots after they'd surrendered by a British soldier.
50:01It wasn't a good thing to do, he wrote, but at least it saved the danger of sending a British
50:06stretcher party to get them. The fifth, by this stage of the war, contained some very hard men,
50:13many of whom fought according to their own rules. Another sergeant in the battalion wrote that he'd
50:19become a bloodthirsty fighter who just longed for the next battle. They wanted to get home too,
50:25of course, but that just added to their anger with the Germans who fought on.
50:32By the 14th of September, the whole of Belgium and Luxembourg was in Allied hands.
50:39Now they crept into Holland, nearer the German border. Progress was slow. There simply weren't
50:45enough supplies coming through to an Allied army that now numbered three million men.
50:51For the fifth tanks, the war now came to a pause.
50:57The battalion's casualty record for November shows just how inactive they were at that stage
51:02of the war. It records just two deaths, one from artillery fire, the other from a heart attack,
51:09and it was that second one that shocked the men. For them, natural death had become unnatural.
51:20While war raged elsewhere in Europe, over the winter months,
51:24the fifth tank's biggest battle was keeping warm.
51:31After months of inactivity, the fifth tanks crossed the Rhine on the 27th of March.
51:36I can only imagine how hard it must have been for the likes of Arthur Crickmay or Jake Wardrop,
51:41who'd been at war for five years and had so many close escapes, to steel themselves for battle
51:47once more, knowing that they'd probably used up their nine lives.
51:57The fifth tanks was now fighting in the last desperate battles
52:01against a crumbling Third Reich. Their objective, Hamburg, 200 miles away.
52:11For fifth tanks, the last major engagement of the war was at a place called Rethem,
52:16small in the overall scheme of things, perhaps,
52:19but for the battalion, it was a place of huge significance.
52:29Jake Wardrop was advancing through woods just south of Rethem when all hell broke loose.
52:47Jake was found, pistol in hand.
52:50Wounded in the legs, he'd fought to the last,
52:53but finally succumbed to a bullet in the heart.
53:01When Jake was shot, the regiment was really upset
53:05because he was such a very widely respected guy in the regiment.
53:10Everybody in the regiment knew about him, so I think his loss was particularly badly felt.
53:23When Jake's tank was knocked out, and another one shortly afterwards,
53:28we had lost great characters who were great treasures to the regiment,
53:33and we had lost a lot of people.
53:37We had lost a lot of people who were great treasures to the regiment,
53:39and nine people altogether out of 75 crew members of C Squadron,
53:46just at the end of the war.
53:49And that, that hurt.
53:52It was very, very tragic.
53:59Jake Wardrop's precious diary was recovered from his tank
54:02and eventually made its way home.
54:05His best epitaph, perhaps, comes in his own words to his mother,
54:09explaining in a letter why he wouldn't take a safer job.
54:14I am a tank commander, and I shall continue to be one until the end.
54:20Should it be the wrong one, don't worry.
54:22I've played the game as it seems to me the right way to play it.
54:27I have respected the women and given my rations to the little children
54:31because they were hungry,
54:32and I've shot the Germans down and laughed because of friends lost,
54:37and in any case, they started it.
54:41Wardrop had been killed less than a month before the end of the war.
54:50The 5th Tanks, in their drive to Hamburg,
54:53now encountered Allied prisoner of war camps.
54:56By an amazing coincidence,
54:58Bill Chorley, captured eight months earlier in Normandy,
55:01was liberated by his own division.
55:04He was lucky to be alive.
55:06Used for slave labour in Poland, when Russian forces approached,
55:11his captors forced him on a death march west.
55:14It was the depths of winter.
55:16Many prisoners never made it.
55:20By God, I was reluctant.
55:22He weighed 6.5 stone.
55:32On the 3rd of May, the 5th Tanks crossed the Elbe into Hamburg.
55:36There was no resistance at this moment of triumph.
55:40In 11 months since landing at Normandy,
55:42they'd suffered 84 killed and two dozen tanks destroyed.
55:51Driving into Hamburg was an amazing experience.
55:54The war hadn't technically finished,
55:56but in all senses, fighting had stopped.
55:59And we drove through what was a completely shattered city.
56:02It was an appalling sight, really.
56:15On the 4th of May, General Montgomery accepted
56:18the unconditional surrender of all German forces
56:22in Holland and north-west Germany.
56:24Four days later, victory in Europe was declared.
56:31We knew we'd made it.
56:34And we didn't know what to do.
56:37We just hugged each other and we threw our berries in the air,
56:41never got our own berries again.
56:43But that was it.
56:45That was the end of the war.
56:48It was the end of the war.
56:51But that was it.
56:52That was the end of the war for us.
56:56It was a marvellous moment.
57:07The war had been an extraordinarily hard experience
57:10for the men of 5th Tanks.
57:12By VE Day, there were just a few dozen,
57:15less than 50 serving in its ranks,
57:17who had been there at the outbreak of the conflict.
57:22Their odyssey had lasted six years,
57:25carrying them across thousands of miles
57:28and costing the lives of 240 of their men.
57:32Their advances across North Africa and France
57:35equalled the achievement of Hitler's panzer divisions.
57:39But our tank soldiers were citizens in a democracy
57:43and modest with it,
57:44their achievement even now understated and distinctly British.
57:52It is a terrible thing, in a way, to admit
57:55one was taking part in a sort of war of destruction.
57:58But from a personal point of view, as a very young man,
58:03it was some of the happiest days of my life
58:06because you were living in a little compact group,
58:09in this case the troop, who were great sort of pals.
58:13You had no responsibilities
58:15other than keeping yourself alive and doing the job.
58:22The people in the services had a job to do.
58:27It had to be done, and we'd done it.
58:33It wasn't a matter of rejoicing.
58:35I didn't go to the parade in Berlin.
58:39I didn't see anything to rejoice about.
58:43I didn't see anything to rejoice about.