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GEORGE AMES

Experiences of D-Day and after as troop leader of a tank crew

This is an edited version of an interview by Derek Spruce on 5th March 2004. The original recording and full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 113. © Basingstoke Talking History.

Conscription
At the beginning of the war I was in Basingstoke and I tried to get into the Air Force Rescue Squad who were the people who went out in motorboats but I couldn’t get into that. The Prince of Wales, the Repulse and the Hood had just been sunk and they were a bit short of menfolk so I then tried to get into the Navy, and while I was dithering and making my mind up I was conscripted into the Army, the Royal Armoured Corps 24th Lancers regiment.

Training
I was sent for basic training to Luggershall and from there to Barnard Castle in Yorkshire and then on to Pre OCTU. Unfortunately I had a bad motorcycle smash which knocked me out for three months or more so then I continued where I’d left off and eventually went to Sandhurst and commissioned in February 1942 and joined the 24th Lancers in Chippenham near Newmarket, and after more training in Norfolk went down to Milford on Sea near Lymington. I was there for about a month before being pulled back to an enclosed camp at Hursley Park near Winchester and was shut up there and couldn’t go out. This was in early May 1944 and I then went straight down to Southampton to an assembly area and boarded the Landing Ship Tank (LST) which is the forerunner of the roll-on roll-off ferries and one of my jobs was to load one of these.

D-Day - 1
The Americans were running this and they weren’t a lot of help, then there was a hold up because of bad weather and we were sitting on this ship off the Isle of Wight towing two things called Rhino rafts. The idea was that you drove from your tank onto the Rhino raft, and then it went into the beach. The first wave went in three miles out, or two miles out as it were and swam in, and we, the backup troops, were supposed to go onto the Rhino rafts and then in shore, but it went horribly wrong because the Rhino rafts were very unseaworthy and in the Channel on the way over these rafts came adrift from the towing boat and so some poor people were stuck on them. The LSTs were very precious because they had to be used again and again and there were so few of them to go round we had to wait until we got a Rhino raft before we could get ashore. Rhinos were about 50 or 60 yards square and were very under-engined so were very unwieldy in the Channel.

An LST wasn’t as substantial as the modern ferry and took about 16 tanks so you needed quite a few of LSTs to get a squadron of tanks, or a regiment of tanks on the shore. A regiment of tanks in those days was 52 fighting tanks, and then you’d to add to that eleven reccy tanks and six anti-aircraft tanks as well as an armoured recovery vehicle (ARV). Our tanks were American made Shermans armed with a 75mm gun and also a new invention: the 17-pounder gun. When you put a 17-pounder on a tank it was called a Firefly. We had four tanks that had these 17-pounder guns which would knock out the most formidable of the German tanks. Otherwise the Germans had very much better tanks than us, and very much better guns.

D-Day
When we eventually got off the coast of Normandy on the morning of D-Day, being the second wave we came in an hour or two hours later than the swimming tanks, and when we arrived off the beach it was a wonderful sight. It was a job to take it all in, it was a complete kaleidoscope of everything and you could see shell bursts and everything on the beach. We were very much aware of the Rodney and the Warspite which were shelling from just beside us. They were about two miles offshore and there was a hell of a whirring noise and one of my memories was seeing all these strange things like DUKWs going past. They were very much in evidence ferrying to and fro and when we arrived off the beach there was a lot going on around us, these battleships with the terrific banging and bombardment. Not only battleships of course but cruisers, destroyers and rocket ships.

Beach Landings
We were nearly two miles off shore and we had to wait there all night because with no Rhino raft we didn’t get ashore really until the morning of D+1, and then of course we pushed inland. This beach was called Juno and it was always referred to as Jacob Green because it was split up into coloured sectors and the beach we landed on was at Le Hamel just outside of Arromaches. There were the odd snipers, in fact quite a few of them, and the beach was being shelled too. The first wave of tanks had broken out of the beachhead and were a little way inland and so it was very difficult for some of our regiments. We were part of the 8th Armoured Brigade which was supposed to get ashore and take a town about twelve miles inland called Tilly-sur-Suelles. From Tilly we were to advance and take a town called Villers-Bocage which was a very important place in the whole campaign, because if you took Villers-Bocage you could then get into Caen that way. We didn’t appreciate that. As far we were concerned we’d got to be at Villers-Bocage, but of course we never did get there.

Advance into France
Things started happening as we got towards Tilly-sur-Seulles. We were there for about three or four days on a hill called 102 at St Pierre which was just on the outskirts of Tilly-sur-Seulles. We went through a place called Creuilly and got into a fight on the Caen Bayeux railway line and particularly at a village called Loucelles. There was a sniper there who, we think was shooting from a signal box, but we weren’t quite sure, and he killed two of our tank commanders. One was the second-in-command of my Squadron and they were quite close to me when it happened and so we had to keep our heads down, but it was very difficult to command a tank when you hadn’t got your head stuck out of the top.

Tank Crew
I was in charge of the troop; I was a troop leader. There was a crew of five in a Sherman tank with a driver and a hull gunner who sit in the front, and then there’s the turret crew which was myself, a wireless operator, who also acted as a loader for the 75mm gun, and the gunner. The gunner of course was preoccupied in actually firing the gun, and the loader had to load the gun and also work the wireless set. So he was pretty busy too. I was in charge of the tank plus two other tanks so my head was stuck out of the top to see where I was going, and that was tricky. The command system worked in that there were 52 tanks in a regiment and there were 19 in a squadron, and each squadron had a headquarters of five tanks.

Infantry Support
We were pushing on towards our objective and were being supported by the Durham Light Infantry and a battalion of the Green Howards and the Dorsets. We had these people on the back of the tanks whenever there was a push and at one place we got to, a farmer gave us a big tin of honey. I’ll always remember this lovely honey. We had dried biscuits and all these infantry were terribly hungry and they used to clamour for food, so I spent a lot of my time spreading these biscuits with honey and handing them to the infantry on the back.

French Civilians
The French people came out as we advanced. One lot came out and greeted us and I remember I was very cross because I had to get out of the tank and go and shake hands with some rascal who turned up and said he was the head of the local resistance. When we got to towards Tilly the resistance had hardened by then and so we were held up there for about three or four days. We were shooting at targets on a hillside way ahead of us towards the south of Bayeux, which was the route down to Villers-Bocage. Then the 7th Armoured Division was supposed to be ashore by this time and come in on our right and go hell for leather for Villers-Bocage, which of course they eventually did, and they took a most awful hammering there.

Skirmishes + Injury
Just south of Tilly-sur-Seulles at a village called St Pierre we were on a hill called 103 and we were stuck on this hill for virtually the whole time I was there. I never got any further than 103 and at some stage I was sent back to refuel and get more ammunition. Our range was about 4,000 yards which is between two and three miles but it was quite a good view and so we were having quite a satisfactory shoot over a hedge. So there we sat and then I was sent back for more ammunition. I had to send one tank at a time to go back, so my troop sergeant had gone back and he’d got his, the corporal had also done it, and so then I went back. I was on my way back to hill 103 when I ran into a little battle between the troops that had the 17-pounder gun, which was commanded by one of my colleagues, and when I got there I blundered into this and he was rather cross because I was spoiling his battle as it were, and so he was waving to me to get the hell out of it and in the confusion my tank went into a French apple tree and this blessed tree brought one of the lids of the tank down onto my hand and completely smashed it up and so I was pretty useless from then on. Although there was quite a bit flying about at the time we got out of the tank and I think we drank half a bottle of whisky and I felt a little better then, more able to cope. The rest of the hand was an awful mess but my driver and the co-driver were absolutely marvellous. They pushed the top of my fingers back in position. Then they had to take me back to the regimental Aid Station and I was virtually eliminated from the war. I went back to the Aid Post and was put into an ambulance and taken to Casualty Clearing Station and started going back and eventually finished up on the beach which was still being shelled at that stage. This was about D-Day+4 or 5 and then eventually I was taken out to a ship on a DUKW and hoisted aboard and taken on the journey back to Southampton.

Hospitals
I was operated on at Chichester and then sent to Leeds for a couple of months, then to Park Prewett in Basingstoke. They did an awful lot for me there and really tidied my hand up and I then gradually recovered.

After the War
I was given a job instructing and then about three weeks after the war I went back to Germany in the army of occupation. I was there on and off for almost two years, going back at times to Bovington on courses and later as an instructor. I didn’t come out until November 1946.

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