The Triumph

by Christopher Nicole

  Now I will tell you about the strategy I intend to pursue. Our first objective is of course to gain that lodgement. Once that is done, my intention is to feint with my left, and strike with my right. That is, the British, supported by the Canadians, will move on Caen, which the Germans will have to defend, because of its road network, which includes direct access to Paris. We know that there are considerable armoured forces in France, and we further know that they are commanded by our old friend Rommel, who is not to be despised. It is my intention to force him to commit that armour, if it has not already been committed on the beaches, to the defence of Caen, and thus Paris from the west.

  ‘As soon as he has done this, the two American armies will break out from their lodgements in a southerly direction. They will then pivot on the town of Falaise, to swing to the east, along the south bank of the Seine. As the Combined Air Forces have been instructed to destroy every bridge across the Seine, this movement will cut off, and trap, all the Axis forces south of the river. That is the initial plan.

  ‘Now let us talk about the lodgement itself. Here we come back to Rommel. I have no doubt at all that he will in the first instance attempt to defeat us on the beaches. This is of course the only German plan which can have any hope of success. Now we know, from our experiences in North Africa, that Rommel is a commander who does not like set-piece battles. He is a man for the melée, for the sudden thrust which can be either exploratory or develop into a full attack should he find the opposition weak. He will therefore seek to prevent our armour from debouching out of the beachhead, and concentrating for a pitched battle, in which he must be overwhelmed by simple force of numbers.

  ‘Now, I want to make it perfectly plain that no matter what happens there is not going to be another Dunkirk, another Greece, another Crete. One of those is enough for any war. Once we land in France this time, we are going to stay there. This means that no matter what Rommel throws at us, the Allied armour, and this means you, has got to blast its way ashore, and in such strength that it can defeat any force thrown against it by the Germans. I can assure you that it is going to be the most terrific party. I can also assure you that we are going to win. We are stronger in every department, and our air forces are going to give us constant tactical and strategical support, to limit the movements of German vehicles, and to prevent supplies from reaching their fighting men.’ He grinned at them. ‘I look forward to seeing you on the beaches.’

  *

  ‘So here we go,’ Allack said.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ Fergus agreed, and gazed at the RSM. They had only saluted each other last night. Now he studied the boy, because Bert Manly-Smith was, still, only a boy. His large face with the curiously small features was composed and eager, as always when he was on duty. Did he look like that when screwing Annaliese? But he simply had to avoid such thoughts. Women, love, romance, babies, personal rivalries, had no place in what they were about to undertake. Only the enemy and the regiment mattered.

  Besides, had he not now cuckolded Bert Manly-Smith, rather than the other way around?

  ‘Everything ready, Sergeant-Major?’

  ‘Every man ready to go, sir. I hope all was well at home?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant-Major. All was well at home.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant-Major. Carry on.’

  Presumably it would grow easier as time went on, and under the stress of action. But for an intolerably long time there was no action. April drifted into May, and tension slowly increased. Training was now completed; it was a matter of keeping fit, and keeping the mind off the immediate future. The regiment attended film show after film show, lost themselves in the swashbuckling of Errol Flynn and the villainy of Basil Rathbone, the comedy routines of Abbot and Costello, the manliness of Johnny Weismuller as he swung from tree to tree, the song and dance routines of Van Johnson and Betty Grable, and the sultry beauty of Veronica Lake. Only Miss Lake’s pictures did the Colonel not attend. But the Sergeant-Major never missed one.

  When the order came, on 1 June, it was almost anti-climactic. ‘The brigade will move out at oh eight hundred tomorrow morning,’ the Brigadier said over the Tannoy. The Brigade Major then gave details of the routes they were to follow. It seemed very complicated in view of the short distance that had to be covered, but Fergus discovered just how complicated it was going to be the next morning, when he led his men on to the most crowded roads he had ever encountered. Vehicles were converging from every direction, and soon progress slowed to a crawl. The results were chaotic. The tanks bore up very well, but it was the First of June, and true to tradition it was a glorious day, for all the wind streaks in the sky. The result was that as the sun got up the heat rose, and the truck radiators began to boil. Stopped trucks added to the general disruption, and all contact with the rest of the brigade was soon lost. Nor could it be regained, for the entire air was a kaleidoscope of voices asking directions, trying to contact the rest of their units, and swearing.

  ‘Hell’s bells, if it’s like this on the other side of the Channel, Rommel is going to have a field day,’ Allack commented.

  ‘It’ll be different over there, sir,’ Bert said. ‘Half of this lot will have been shot up before we make the beach.’

  ‘Oh, cheer me up, Sergeant-Major.’

  The day dragged by, but they were making progress, and at last the traffic thinned, and Fergus navigated them to the field outside Southampton which had been marked by the Brigadier and where they had been told to park and await embarkation. Here they discovered a small caravan, blocking the entrance through the hedge, a motorbike, and a single bored military policeman.

  ‘Royal Western Dragoons?’ he said, turning over the pages of a typewritten list. ‘I ain’t got no Royal Westerns down ‘ere, sir.’

  ‘Well, you have them down there,’ Fergus said, and pointed back along the road at the tanks and trucks. ‘So are you going to move that caravan, or am I going to crush it?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ the MP said, scratching the back of his neck.

  Another motorcycle engine roared, and a Major arrived. ‘Nineteenth Yeomanry?’ he inquired.

  ‘No,’ Fergus said grimly. ‘Royal Western Dragoon Guards.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ the Major commented, and consulted another typewritten list while the MP stood to attention. ‘I don’t think this is where you belong, sir. In fact, I can’t find you anywhere. Are you supposed to be going to France, sir?’

  ‘We are going to France,’ Fergus told him. ‘Have you tried looking under Seventh Armoured Division?’

  ‘Desert Rats,’ Allack suggested, having joined the mêlée. ‘Seventh Armoured...oh, dear. Oh, dearie, dearie me.

  Fergus wondered if the idiot knew he was on the verge of becoming the first casualty of the invasion.

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here, sir,’ the Major explained. ‘You’re supposed to be five miles away, over there. This field is reserved for the Nineteenth Yeomanry.’

  ‘But they’re not here,’ Fergus said patiently.

  ‘Well, no, sir.’

  ‘And we are. And my men are dog tired; they have been driving, and inhaling dust and petrol fumes, all day. So we will use this field.’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t know that I can permit that.’

  ‘Major,’ Fergus said. ‘Look along this road. You will count sixty tanks and thirty trucks. I am now going to give them the order to enter this field. If you feel you cannot permit that, you have my permission to stand right here with your hand up saying “Halt!” And that goes for you too, Private. Now move it.’

  The caravan was hastily removed, and the regiment entered the field.

  Next morning they embarked.

  PART THREE

  TRIUMPH

  11

  Normandy, June 1944

  It was three days after embarkation before the invasion armada sailed. For those three days the troops sat on board their transports in the Solent, and waited, while it blew better than a
gale and teemed with rain.

  ‘Ike will have to cancel,’ Allack growled. ‘He can never hope to put us ashore, and keep us supplied, in this weather.’

  ‘On the other hand, the Germans will feel the same way,’ Fergus argued. ‘So it might be worth the risk.’

  He worried for the morale of his men, after the build-up of actually boarding. But he needn’t have. The Westerns had a sufficient nucleus of veterans to take three-day delays in their stride. The Landing Ships Tank which were to carry them were naturally moored alongside each other, and it was possible to get from one to the other without risk. Except that of stepping on someone’s stomach. Every square inch of deck space was crowded, with men standing, men sleeping, men playing cards, and, most numerous, men eating. It was as if the fact that they might be supplied with difficulty once they got ashore had permeated down to trooper level, and every man was determined to stuff himself to the eyeballs. They queued up at the ship’s galley, and as soon as they had finished eating they queued up again. The naval cooks took it all in good part; they regarded the dragoons with the air of surgeons aware that their patients were suffering from an incurable disease.

  So did the sailors, as they went about their duties, saluting the officers and NCOs who patrolled ceaselessly. RSM Manly-Smith was as ever a tower of strength, constantly on the watch for anyone moping or gazing at the shore, jollying them out of it with a quip and a reminiscence — he was now using the story of his Alexandrian experience as an in-joke, suitably embroidered, Fergus had no doubt...the only three who might have contradicted him were all dead.

  He wondered how Annaliese would fare, as Bert’s wife. Not very well, he supposed. But he was still determined to make her go through with it. Cutting off his nose to spite his face? He did not think so. He knew now that not only had he never loved her: he had never even really liked her. Which was why he had hesitated for so long before taking her to bed. He had fallen for an idea: Ian’s widow; the mother of his nephew, whom he adored; and a beautiful woman, all wrapped up in one magnificent package. To complete the analogy, it was only when he had started peeling off the paper that he had realized the contents had been around just a little too long, and had gone sour.

  So where did that leave him, when Johnny came marching home? He really did not know. Perhaps he could advertise for Monique. There was a laugh. A girl like Monique would long ago have got herself married.

  ‘Cheer up, sir,’ Bert said at his shoulder. ‘Soon be on our way.’

  Just as if I was some blasted recruit, Fergus thought. ‘I hope so, Sergeant-Major,’ he said. ‘By God, I hope so.’ Because if he didn’t kill a German sometime soon, he’d kill Bert.

  *

  On the Sunday evening, 4 June, news was circulated through the fleet that the Allied Fifth Army had entered Rome. Nearly all the while that the regiment had been training in Hampshire, its erstwhile comrades had been banging their heads against that Gustav Line, dominated by Monte Cassino, which the Eighth Army had just reached in December. But it had at last been breached.

  ‘If we don’t get them from the West, we’ll get them from the South,’ Allack declared jubilantly. Then added, sadly, ‘I always wanted to see Rome.’

  ‘Let’s hope there’s enough left of it to be worth looking at,’ Fergus said. ‘Tell you what, we’ll go there together, when this is over.’

  ‘You’re on,’ Allack agreed.

  Next morning the Brigadier and Major Crawford came on board to inform them that they were sailing that afternoon. ‘As you know,’ Manton said, ‘it is Monty’s intention that we shall be the first of the armour ashore. I’m afraid, however, that there can be no question of our support group accompanying us; the trucks will have to wait for the construction of these artificial harbours the sappers have up their sleeves. It follows therefore, that our initial radius of operation will be limited to the fuel we can carry in our tanks. Tell your fellows not to waste it.’

  ‘What happens when we run out, sir?’ Allack wanted to know.

  ‘We beg, borrow or steal some more, or we sit tight and wait for support to come to us. I’ll be in touch as soon as we’re ashore. But you may inform the men.’

  There was no immediate reaction amongst the troopers; the eating and the card games went on as usual — but now there was an air of quiet desperation. This was it. Whatever dreams each man might have had in his secret mind, that, like a condemned prisoner, he could be reprieved by the news that Germany had suddenly surrendered, had now to be buried. The beaches were waiting, and would have to be stormed.

  There was, however, considerable discussion amongst the officers when the other squadron commanders, Captains Smithie, Hartley and Mather, came on board Fergus’s LST.

  ‘One thing is certain,’ John Allack declared, ‘I’m not hanging back with the ACV waiting for some damned harbour to be built. For God’s sake, that could take days. I’ll ride with Sergeant Sullivan.’

  Fergus had to agree; he couldn’t be totally separated from his second in command. ‘I’ll leave you in charge of the support group, Padre,’ he decided.

  ‘Me?’ Long demanded. ‘What about divine service?’

  ‘We’ll wait for you to catch up with us. Tell you what, I’ll leave the Sergeant-Major with you. He’ll see it all goes according to the book.’

  ‘Me, sir?’ Bert asked when he was informed.

  ‘That’s an order, Sergeant-Major,’ Fergus told him. For Christ’s sake, he wanted to say, I’m trying to save your life, you silly twit.

  Bert went off to board the landing craft carrying the trucks and the ACV; that wasn’t leaving until the next morning.

  *

  The wind had dropped, but the skies remained grey and leaden, and looking through his binoculars beyond the Spit forts Fergus could see that the seas were still big.

  Now the waiting was close to intolerable. The armada started getting under way about noon, but as the initial assaults were to be made by the infantry, it was late afternoon before the LSTs finally began to move. Smithie and Hartley returned to their own men while Fergus, Allack, Mather and Long — who had insisted on coming along with the first wave even if he understood he would have to wait for the support group once they reached the beach — moved amongst the troopers of A Squadron, talking to them, laughing and joking with them, Fergus being able to tell them stories of campaigning in France in 1940 — Allack had not joined the regiment until after Dunkirk.

  When the lead ship at last began to make its way down the Solent, Fergus went up to the bridge. He looked back at the support group, and received a wave from Bert, also standing on the bridge; he wondered if they would ever see each other again. ‘Choppy outside the Solent, sir,’ said Lieutenant Moon, who was in command. ‘Hope your chaps are good sailors.’

  Fergus wasn’t all that worried about the men, but he collected Sergeant Sullivan and went down to the lower deck to make sure all the tanks were secured, and requested the sailors to signal the other ships with their Aldiss lamps in order that they too might have their precious cargoes checked out. Then he returned to the bridge, to look with some awe at the scene about him. The entire surface of the Solent — and this body of water, enclosed against the England shore by the Isle of Wight, was some twenty-two miles long and three wide — was covered with ships, of every size and description, and this after at least a third of the armada had already sailed.

  ‘Just about seven thousand vessels in this op,’ the Lieutenant said. ‘Including little ones like us, of course. Biggest fleet ever to put to sea.’

  While overhead, audible but not visible because of the low cloud — so much for the moon everyone wanted, Fergus thought — roared a continuous succession of aircraft. Most of these were bombers, off to continue their methodical destruction of every bridge and every road which could be of use to the Germans. But quite a few, Fergus knew, would also be carrying the various airborne detachments who would actually be the first in France, landing hopefully several miles behind the beaches f
urther to disrupt enemy communications.

  They drew abreast of the Needles, and soon turned south. Immediately the LST began to rise and fall, and to plunge as well; spray flew over the ramp and splattered across the tanks, even reaching the afterdeck where the men were. Within minutes the land behind them had disappeared, and, the sun long gone into the evening gloom, they were surrounded by the purple dusk.

  But even the Channel seemed too small for all the ships which were at sea, crowding onwards, while destroyers, like anxious sheepdogs, scurried to and fro, the whoop-whoop of their sirens cutting through the evening.

  Now men started to be seasick. Fergus felt all right — he had been on too many sea voyages, although never in a ship as small as this, and never with the prospect of action before he had even disembarked. He and Allack, Long and Mather, and the two lieutenants, Brereton and Openshaw, dined with Lieutenant Moon, and drank a lot of coffee.

  ‘Might be an idea to have a kip,’ Moon suggested. ‘Nothing you can do for a couple of hours.’

  He too was being as solicitous as a doctor about to see a patient into the operating theatre. But it was sound advice, and Fergus passed it on to the men. He didn’t know how many of them took it, but he dozed himself; Long, Allack, Mather and Brereton preferred to play bridge.

  Fergus awoke with a start when the night exploded. He looked at his watch: it was just after midnight, and the sky in front of them, to the south, was suddenly a mass of fire and flame.

  ‘There are seven battleships down there,’ Moon told him when he went on to the bridge. ‘Together with twenty-three cruisers. Softening Jerry up for you.’

  The glare of the exploding big guns, and equally their booming reverberations, seemed to make the night darker than it actually was. Fergus peered out at the ships to either side, moving onwards in orderly lines. Everyone was equipped with radar, and Moon had his face constantly buried in the eyepiece, but even so to Fergus’s unnautical mind it was a miracle they did not all collide in one tremendous mid-channel smash.