CHAPTER 1
We weren’t there in the first wave, thank god. We had sat offshore in an LCT for hours while things the size of an Austin 7 flew over our heads to burst inland, and I was more than happy to keep well away from either end of their flight. The lads at the other end had been having a closer view for more than twenty-four hours, while we had waited and fretted.

Wilf had a brew on. He always had one on, any time that we had a chance to sup it. We had just got our mugs filled when the boat? Ship?

When the landing craft, tank, started its run into shore.

The Twelfth were on their way to more glory, and I was nearly crapping myself. It was almost unreal: there we were heading towards a shore covered in smoke, with massive explosions behind it and planes every bloody where, and we were sitting down drinking tea. All of us apart from Bob, that is, because he was head and shoulders outside, stood up in the commander’s position. Wilf called over his shoulder from the bow gunner’s position.

“You going to stand up like that when we get off, Bob?”

“That’s Sergeant Bob to you! Drink up, lads”

Laughter, jokes, my knuckles white on my mug’s handle. I should be braver, that was my thought; have more courage. I mean, Bob had been through Tunisia and Italy, and he wasn’t showing any nerves. I suppose he knew what to expect. Ernie tapped me on the shoulder.

“You OK, Ginge?”

“Fine, Ernie, fine. Just… just I’m shitting mesen. Bit apprehensive, I mean. Whose bloody idea was this?”

He laughed. “Some mad bastard called Adolf, if I remember rightly, son! But…”

He raised his voice. “You know what I always say, lads?”

We all shouted in chorus. “Bugger this for a game of soldiers!”

He lowered his voice again. “You’ll be fine, mate, fine. Ey up, feel that? We’re on the proper run in now. Won’t be long”

Our skipper dropped down into the turret and the lid clanged shut. Wilf laughed.

“Seen sense then, Sarge?”

“That’s Bob to you when we’re closed up, Wilf”

“Make your mind up! Worse than being wed!”

Bob-for-now grinned and gave me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Go off closed down, just in case there’s any hate, like, and then I’ll have to stick me head out again. Bound to be a lot of traffic, and we don’t want to run any PBI down. Well, not ours, anyway”

The LCT’s engines were suddenly roaring, and over the net we heard ‘start engines’. The Meteor coughed into its own roar, and six others followed it. Our troop was ready to move off as soon as the command came, but I nearly missed it when the LCT slammed to a halt and my face flew straight at the gunsight, only held back from collision by Bob’s swift grab at my collar. I heard the ramp go down, and then there was a grinding noise as Harry engaged first gear. We were third off, and after very little splashing we were rolling up a roadway laid by a Bobbin. Nothing went bang, nothing hammered at the armour, and Bob threw the hatch open again and stood up.

“Fucking hell. Driver stop. Harry, pop your visor open. You’ll need to see as clearly as you can for this bit. Ginge, get up here. I need another pair of eyes”

I gathered what courage I didn’t have and threw the two flaps open. Still nothing banging against the metal that surrounded me; I stood up.

Bodies. Rows of them, covered in blankets, some of them clearly not intact. There was a couple of DUKWs parked up, medics around them helping lads who were clearly wounded, a few on stretchers, but… bodies.

“You OK, Ginge?”

“Sarge, look, I---“

“I know, son. This is it, this the real thing, aye? All that training, all gone to mist and fog now? Hang onto it, remember what you were taught. First time you see a dead’un, it’s never easy. That’s done now. Just want you steady at the main armament, aye?”

He looked around at the devastation that surrounded us. A Churchill AVRE lay burnt-out about a hundred yards away, and the other tanks of our troop were slowly and carefully following us as we slipped past the dead. Bob was muttering quietly to himself, and then turned back to me after a quick “Driver left!”

“Ginge, I knew it would be like this. It always is; I just didn’t want to drive over any of the lads who can’t go home. Eyes peeled, son”

We led the way down a long canalside straight, and I felt even more twitchy. It was just so, so open, and any half-decent gunner would see us miles off. A pair of Typhoons shot by overhead, stripes clear on their wings, and I saw they still had their rails full. Please, lads: don’t save any for me.

“Back in, Ginge. We need to start tightening up now. Leaguer is in three miles”

A field was full of smashed gliders. There were more bodies beside them, and dull-eyed civilians were staring blankly at us as we passed. A little girl sat by a bridge, eating chocolate. A smashed German tank sat beside the road. Things were burning. All images seen briefly from my periscope and sight as we passed.

That was all there was for that day, oddly. We disembarked, we drove for a bit, trying our best not to tear up any of our dead mates. In the distance, other people were trying to kill each other. Wilf did a brew. What a bloody anti-climax.

Three o’clock the next afternoon and I felt rather differently about it. Bob was clipped and precise.

“Turret traverse left. Target at 800 yards. Got it, Ginge?”

I pulled it out of my recognition lectures somehow. “Mark IV, by the war memorial?”

“Aye. Think he’s engaging someone else”

“Gun on”

“Shoot! Fuck, get another one in, Ernie! Quick as you like, Ginge!”

Tap on my shoulder from the loader. Sight on. Bugger windage. This time I saw a hit, and black smoke started to pour out of the Panzer, hatches flying open in the top and sides of the turret as bodies scrambled clear. Bob yelled in my ear.

“Shoot the bastards!”

Wilf’s Besa was already hammering, sparks flying off the enemy’s hull as black-overalled figures lurched and fell. I joined him in the slaughter, and then left my stomach’s contents in the piss-bucket.

“Driver, off to the left. Off the road now!”

There was a rattle of small-arms fire up ahead, and then a tearing scream as something went past us and through where we would have been. My mouth was drying up rapidly, and Bob was on the net.

“Sunray, sunray, bravo seven one”

“Go ahead, seven one”

“Position seventeen, just up from the war memorial. At least one pak. Can we have some pedestrians, over?”

“Could you mark with smoke, over?”

“Not unless I want a turret with a view, Sunray!”

I was sure I caught a chuckle from the other end. “Bob, the East Riding boys are passing you now, over”

Just then, the phone rang, and Ernie grabbed it. “Sarge, boys at the back!”

“Tell him I’m dismounting, Ernie”

Up he went through the hatch, returning three minutes later.

“They’ve got a lad running a wire forward. See if he can spot the gun. Harry, there’s a house behind us. I want us round the other side quick as you like. He knows we’re here”

There was another scream, and a very loud bang. Bob stuck his head out again.

“Fucking hell, that was Jimmy’s. Harry, now, aye?”

Shouting instructions as we reversed, Bob got us behind the wrecked house in what seemed like an eternity of waiting for the strike of the armour-piercing round on the hull. I knew where it would come, of course: through the front of the turret, through me. There was another scream as the gun or guns fired again, but this time there was no answering explosion. There were, however, screams, human ones this time.

The infantry did what infantry do, though, and we rolled back out onto the road only an hour later. I was still head down, so I couldn’t see what was left of Jimmy, his tank and his crew. I could still hear their screams. That was what kept me awake for my second ever night abroad, but in my dreams I couldn’t tell whether those screams were from Jimmy and his boys or the Germans I had cut down with the Besa.

We lay out that night, leaguered with the rest of the squadron. I had looked at kipping under the tank, but Wilf had laughed. “Rains in the night, tank settles, you’ll be sleeping a lot sounder. Marshy ground here”

I didn’t sleep that much anyway, as there were odd moments of hate all night. Somebody got mortared off to our right, and there was always a bloody star shell floating down. Spandaus ripped away, the sound just like tearing paper, they fired so quick, but all I really heard that night were the screams.