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My father, the late Richard Finlan former RSM with the 53rd Field Regiment, Royal Welsh Artillery told me this story.
After the D-Day landings, the 53rd fought their way through France, into Belgium and then onto Nijmegen in Holland. Here they fought for a month non-stop at s'Hertogonbosch. But, when they were in Belgium, they were leaving a small village they had liberated. My dad sent the guns on up to the front whilst he and a few others stayed behind to ensure there were no Germans left in the village. Needing transport, dad sent one of his sergeants off to find some. He returned with an American half-track he had borrowed from the US forces that were coming up behind the British. As they were leaving the town, my dad, standing in the machine gun pulpit of the half-track looked over a wall and saw a Tiger tank driving along parallel to them just behind the wall. Ordering the driver, Bryn, to 'put your bloody foot down Bryn 'cause there's a Jerry tank over there,' my dad swung the machine gun around and blazed away at the tank as Bryn crashed through the gears to get some speed up. The Tiger managed to get a shot off, but luckily missed the fleeing half-track. The Tiger was taken out by a patrolling Typhoon fighter. Dad told me that that was the closest he ever came to death in all the fighting he participated in.
As an afterthought, before the war, my dad met Spike Milligan at Bexhill. Dad, then a BSM was on a training excercise with a heavy artillery battery, whose HQ was at Bexhill-on-Sea. Going through the gunnery practice, Spike had to shout the word 'BANG!' when the gun was fired as they had no live ammunition for firing at the time.

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