The Second World War wasthe ultimate conflictof the machine age.
And this machinewas an iconic symbol,
the decisive weaponof the war on land.
From North Africato the Russian front,
the tank ruled the battlefield
and if you didn't master armouredwarfare, you faced annihilation.
GUNFIRE
It's quite terrifying,really, because
you can see these flashesfrom the enemy's guns
in the distance and you think,
any minute,one of them is going to hit me.
'Tanks were at the beginningof the war and the end,
'giving their crews a unique viewof the entire conflict,
'from the fall of Franceto North Africa, D-Day
'and final victory in Germany.'
As a trainee officerin the Royal Tank Regiment,
I was indoctrinatedin their exploits.
And who could fail to have beenawe-inspired
by the way those men faced death,time and time again,
in these iron-clad monsters?
When I first went in,
I thought it was going to begreat fun and all that,
'but I realised it wasn't.
'This tank near me,I saw it just blown to bits...
'A couple of my mateswere in that.'
It was terrible.
'This is the storyof six remarkable men
'from one armoured unit,
'The 5th Royal Tank Regiment,5RTR,
'or to those who reallyknew them really well,
'The Filthy 5th.
'Their war is brought to life,
'not only by the lastsurviving veterans,
'but also by previouslyunseen letters and diaries,
'that give us a real insightinto the visceral reality
'of tank warfare.'
Each man had his own story.
Some were wounded, some captured,and some were killed.
A few, very few, made itall the way through.
Taken together, those accountsform a unique picture of the war.
EXPLOSIONS
'For three long years,
'the men of the 5th Tankshad been fighting
'in the deserts of North Africa,
'as part of 7th Armoured Division,The Desert Rats.
'Inside their tanks,facing a sudden, fiery death,
'the crews formedclose friendships,
'like the onebetween Bill Chorley and Bob Lay.
'They'd joined the 5that the same time in 1942.
'The bond you established,
'was not the normal relationshipsof friends.'
You were a partnership,
it was closer than friendship.And, er...
..that crew, um...
..were friends for life.
'The Allied victory at Alameinin November 1942,
'was a turning point in the war.
'The Desert Rats becamecelebrated heroes
'and the 5th Tanksreturned home to Britain
'expecting a well-earned rest.'
'Instead, Montgomery,architect of that desert victory,
'sent them in secretto a run-down camp in Norfolk
'called Shakers Woodto prepare for a new fight,
'one that would requirevery different skills
'to the ones they'd learnedin North Africa.'
'The 5th Tanks were now goingto spearhead
'the invasion of Europe, D-Day.
'Sergeant Gerry Solomon,a former greengrocer,
'had survived the last three yearsof combat in the desert.
'He didn't relish the prospect
'of a murderous, close-quartersfight in Normandy.'
We thought we'd had enough.Let somebody else have a go.
But you see,they wanted seasoned troops
and there weren't manyseasoned troops.
'What I find extraordinary isthat even by this stage in 1944,
'after nearly five years of war,'
less than half of the British armyhad seen active combat.
They were people in support units,garrisons and training bases.
The 5th Tankson the other hand,
had fought all the waythrough North Africa and Italy.
They felt they'd done their bitand who can blame them?
But the army had other ideas.
They were tried and tested
and Monty knew he could relyon them to deliver.
'Before D-Day, the 5th Tanksreceived hundreds of new recruits.
'The first was19-year-old Roy Dixon,
'a 2nd Lieutenantfresh from officer training,
'making him the only man withoutthe Africa Star campaign medal,
'yet expected to lead veterans.'
'Fitting into 5RTRwas a little bit of a problem,
'because they had hadso much more experience
'and they all knew each other well'
and it didn't help that they spoke
in a sort of special languageof their own, partly Arabic.
And so one did feela bit of an outsider,
but they were allextremely friendly.
'The battalion didn't just get newmen as it was re-built for D-Day.
'The 5th Tanks and theirfellow Desert Rats
'also took delivery of a brand newfighting machine.'
When the soldiers saw their newBritish made Cromwell tanks,
they were aghast.There was so much wrong with it.
The first thing, obvious to the eye,is that so much of the armour,
unlike many other tanks aroundby that time,
is flat on towards the enemy.
And that meant thata shell striking it
was much less likely to glance off.
There was a serious problemwith the gun too.
The 75mm gun performedwell enough against Mark IIIs
and Mark IVs in the desert,
but it simply lacked the punch
to defeat the latestGerman heavy Tiger tanks.
'29-year-old Scotsman,Sergeant Jake Wardrop,
'one of The Fifth's hardenedTank Commanders,
'was all too awareof the differences
'between the new Britishand German tanks.
'In a remarkably candid diaryhe kept throughout the war,
'he was scathing...'
"The big differencebetween the Cromwell and the Tiger
"made it possible for the Bocheto stand back at 2000 metres
"and pick the Cromwells offlike a rifle range.
"At that distance,the 75 on the Cromwell
"would not look at the four incharmour of a Tiger,
"while the long barrelled 88
"tore through the Cromwell,like a knife through butter."
Getting into the Cromwell, typicalBritish tank, is a tight fit.
But of course, for the men,it was getting out
that was more important,because many had escaped
with seconds to spare fromburning tanks in the desert.
And more generally, they'd got usedto the bigger American tanks,
they were roomier inside,
and coming back to thiswas like coming back to a tiny flat.
'Hadn't they listenedto our experiences in the desert?
'Hadn't they learned anything?'
I expressed my views very forcefully
and eventually I was toldthat if I said any more
I'd be court marshalled.
GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS
'1944, on June 6th,
'136,000 US, Britishand Canadian troops
'land on the beaches of Normandy.'
'It's the biggest amphibiouslanding ever attempted.
'D-Day has dawned at last.
'On Gold Beach,
'the 50th Northumbrian Division,led the assault
'and captured itafter a fierce fight
'during which over 400 werekilled, wounded or missing.'
'The 5th tanks were stillout at sea.
'They had been delayedby bad weather.'
And it wasn't until 3pmthe next day, June 7th,
that they came thunderingacross these sands.
'80 tanks and 730 men,all keyed-up...
'only to find the battle forthe beach was already over.'
'It wasn't what I expected at all.'
I imagined fighting my way up thebeach, but it didn't happen to me.
'The invasion had taken the Germanscompletely by surprise.
'In command was the 5th Tank'sold foe, Erwin Rommel.
'In 1940, he'd chased themout of France. They, in turn,
'had beaten the so-calledDesert Fox in North Africa.
'Rushing back from his wife'sbirthday in Germany,
'Rommel was now to meet withMontgomery and the 5th Tanks
'for the decisive battle.'
Rommel knew he hadto contain the British
and other landing forces, beforethrowing them back into the sea.
He feared that unless he managedthat quickly,
Allied air superiority would beso overwhelming
that his own armoured forceswould be destroyed
before they could come into action
and that would make Germany'sdefeat inevitable.
'Both Montgomery and Rommelknew the city of Caen
'was central to the battlefor Normandy.
'The Allies had to capturethis important road hub.
'Doing so would meanbreaking out of the bridgehead
'and through the German defences.'
'Montgomery had nurtured somehope of capturing Caen on D-Day.
'But it proved much tougherthan that,
'and the city's fate became centralto the Normandy campaign.
'Three days on,
'the Allies only hada toe-hold a few miles deep,
'having failed to break out throughGerman lines containing them,
'or advance inlandas far as planned.'
'New boy, Roy Dixon, was one of thefirst in 5th Tanks to see action.'
'The first encounterwe had was about a mile,'
a mile and a half away from thebeach, where a party of Germans,
or a group of Germans had been,sort of bypassed
by the initial infantry and theywere holding out for themselves.
And we had to attack them.
DISTANT GUNFIRE
'We came to this great big chateaux,there were Germans in there
'and they were rattling awaywith them machine guns.'
Well, I...I badly wantedto fire a shot into the...
into the chateaux, but no,they wouldn't let me do that.
They said, "Oh, no,you can't do that."
-HE LAUGHS
-Not cricket, I suppose!
DISTANT GUNFIRE
'They put up, actually,quite a good fight,
'including climbingonto one of the tanks.'
So, a little fear, not very bad,
but a nice little action justto get us used to it really,
so we knew what was going on.
'The Normandy terrain cameas a real shock
'to desert veterans in the 5th.'
Out in North Africa, if the enemygot within 500 metres of you,
that was getting too near.
Whereas with these hedges, therecould be Germans on the other side
'and you wouldn't evenknow about it.'
GUNFIRE
'This close terrain wasa frightening new experience
'for many of the 5th Tank'sold sweats,
'and some were simplyunable to cope.'
'Corporal Bridges,he was a desert veteran...'
he came to me and said,"I'm terribly sorry about this,
"but I really can't go on,I've had it in a big way.
"I was shaking like a leafand I can't face doing another day."
So I said -
this is one o'clock in the morningof course by this time -
so I said, "Well, OK,
"but there's obviously nothing I cando about it at this time of night.
"We're going to have togo off in the morning.
"But I will do my best to see if wecan get you replaced the next day."
'The next day we moved off
'and the first shot that was firedhit at the turret, ring level...
'and took half of him off,killed instantly.
'And so I then ran acrossto see what had happened,'
climbed up onto this tankand looked down
and not a very good sight to see,as you can imagine.
The whole place pouring in bloodand a headless body at the bottom...
Very nasty indeed.That was my first initiation,
that's when I realised that this warwasn't going to be so much fun.
Inside you are safer, but there isa distinct limit to what you can see
through these vision blocks, so mostof the commanders kept their heads
out of the turret.
Now, that was more dangerous,of course,
but it gave them a much better ideaof what was going on around them.
GUNFIRE
'And that was vital in thesenarrow lanes and high hedgerows,
'called "bocage", because it wasideal country to ambush tanks.'
EXPLOSIONS
Any hedgerow could be concealinga Panzer or an infantryman,
armed with one of these,the Panzerfaust.
It's a handheld anti-tank weapon.
Germany produced more thansix million of these during the war.
This variant has a rangeof 60 metres.
Now, that would be patheticallyinadequate in the desert.
You'd be killed beforeyou could get that near.
But in the close country of Europe,
'it allowed the humbleinfantryman the chance
'to take out any Alliedarmoured vehicle.
'And for many in the 5th tanks,it proved to be their undoing.'
EXPLOSIONS
The Panzefaust implodedinto the tank, blew it up.
You were all finished if that hit.
'So, you were virtually withthe infantry all the time,
'you needed infantryto protect you.'
Breaking out of the bocage to theopen countryside beyond was vital
if the pent-up Allied armour wasto flow as an unstoppable torrent.
The alternative was unthinkable.
German containmentof the Allied bridgehead,
a war of attritionin the hedgerows
and in the worst-case scenario,failure.
'One week after D-Day,
the Americans forced a gapin the German front line
'and an opportunity appeared tobreak out towards the city of Caen.
'Montgomery seized his chanceto open up the battle
'and rout the Germans.
'The 7th Armoured Division,including 5th Tanks,
'was ordered to push throughthe gap as fast as possible.'
They advanced six milesthrough the Norman countryside
and arrived along thishigh street in Villers-Bocage.
The people of the town came totheir balconies and open windows
to cheer the British tanksand throw flowers on them.
The Commander of that leadingbattle group felt they'd done it
and ordered everybody to stopwhile the men made tea.
The 5th Tanks meanwhile,the second battle group
were on a nearby hillside,
oblivious to the fact thata disaster was about to unfold.
'So far, the dreadedGerman Tiger tank
'had failed to makean appearance in Normandy,
'but now it was to makeits spectacular debut,
'confirming the worst fears aboutthe Cromwell tank's vulnerability
'and lack of fire power.'
'You knew very well thatif you came up against a Tiger,
'you weren't going to be ableto penetrate it.'
So you've got to blooming well avoidit. That's all there was to it.
EXPLOSIONS
'A Tiger tank appeared,commanded by Michael Wittmann,
'a Panzer ace with 137 killsto his credit.
'With this talent for mayhem,he was quick to seize his chance.'
It was along this road that Wittmannsowed a trail of destruction.
Appearing here witha couple of other Tigers,
he first engaged the rear-most tanksof the leading British group,
who were up on that hill.
That was to stop them taking anyfurther part in what was to follow.
He then set off down this road,
engaging half-tracks and Cromwellsas he went.
Within minutes,25 British vehicles were ablaze.
EXPLOSIONS
In this particular spot,
one of the British tanks managedto stalk the German vehicle.
They came up to within 100 metresof the back of Wittmann's tank
and fired twice at it.
They watched their own shellsbounce off,
and then in horror,
as the German tank traversedits turret to the rear,
pointed its 88mm gun at themand opened up,
destroying the Cromwell instantly.
EXPLOSION
'Almost single-handedly,Wittmann had brought
'the British Army's advancein Normandy to a halt.'
JAKE WARDROP: "I hold the designof the Cromwell tank
"and the men who ordered itsproduction personally responsible
"for the death of hundreds of men
"who fought in those tanks and hada lot more guts than common sense."
'British and German reinforcements,including more Tiger tanks,
'now poured in to the village,feeding the fierce fight there.
'The British decided to pull back.
'The 5th Tanks on the hillside
'waited nervously, as the soundsof battle came closer.'
DISTANT GUNFIRE
'We just didn't quite knowwhat was going on.
'We knew there wereTiger tanks there.
'That was all we knew about it.'
And we were unaware of what reallya serious situation it was.
We didn't realise that they werebeing massacred in the town
and a whole regiment had gone.We didn't realise that at all.
'Now it was the turn of 5th Tanksto face the formidable Tiger.
'But, as well as Cromwells,
'they were equipped with another newtank, the British Sherman Firefly.'
Now, this is an American copy,
but the Firefly combinedthe proven Sherman hull
with a powerful 17 pounderanti-tank gun.
It was such a beast of a weapon,
that it firedits anti-tank projectile
at three timesthe speed of sound.
And it could punch a holein any German tank of the time.
GUNFIRE
'The Sherman Firefly,yes, very good tank...'
The 17 pounder, yeah.
That's...that wasan entirely new gun.
Muzzle velocity,2,000 feet per second.
That's going some.
'That weapon producedsuch a flash and bang'
that it could easily give awaythe position of the tank.
And for the crew inside the turret,
they could be temporarily blindedby that blast,
or even have their hair singed.It all made it vital
to get that first roundon target accurately.
'When we received these newSherman 17-pounders, the Firefly,'
the decision was made
that troops would consist ofthree Cromwells and one Sherman.
So that gave one a really goodhitting power within the troop.
'But of course,that's all very well,'
but when tanks getspread out in battle,
the Firefly's not where you want itwhen you need it.
But it was a vast improvementand it did knock out Tigers.
'And using the Sherman itselfalso was a mixed blessing.
'The British Army knewthe tank very well,'
but it was in Normandy that it wasdiscovered just how easily
it set firewhen it was hit or brewed up,
leaving the British crewsto nickname them Ronsons
after the popular lighter
and the Germans to dub themTommy Cookers.
'The one dozen Sherman Firefliesin the 5th Tanks
'were commanded by its mostexperienced sergeants and corporals,
'all of them desert veterans,
'including Gerry Solomonand Jake Wardrop.'
OK, movement spotted.Use the AP rounds.
JAKE WARDROP: "Back on our front,somebody had seen a couple of Tigers
"and we got ready to engage them.
"By sitting on top of the turretand looking through the trees,
"I could see the thingabout 150 yards away.
"It was closer nowso I said, 'Well, fire anyhow,
"'or the bloody thingwill be alongside.'
"Like the stout lad he is,
"no sooner had the empty caserattled on the floor,
"than Woody had slammedanother one up."
"The Tiger halted now,
"so I gave the gunneraim little left and fire again.
"They had the wind upon the Tiger by now
"and it was reversingas fast as it could go.
"I was kicking myselffor not brewing it up,
"but we had twisted the tailof the big brave Tiger
"and he had run awayand my morale was way up."
Well, whether or not 5th Tanks hitany of the Tigers
moving up that valley,German records show 16 of them
were put out of actionduring the three days
of the Villers-Bocage battle.Nine of those Tigers destroyed.
A couple of dozen other types ofGerman tanks were also knocked out.
'But it wasn't just Panzersthat the 5th Tanks had to face.
'The Germans also threwtheir infantry into the battle.'
'I got out of the tankto water the grass,'
Jock got out...
..and did the same,
and when he got back inand was adjusting his overcoat,
he got a dum-dum bullet to his head.
There were snipers about.
So I count myself lucky.
'The battle raged for two days
'and as the death of Bob'scommander demonstrated,
'it was far too risky to leavethe protection of the tank.'
When you're closed down insidefor long periods,
it can be very tough mentallyas well as physically.
I remember doing it for 20 hourson a Cold War exercise in Germany
and pretty soon, because I couldn'tstand up or stretch,
I was very uncomfortable.
My legs and the kneewere singing with pain
and there was a voice in my head,pleading with me to get out.
In Normandy, because of the threatof artillery and snipers,
they had to do it for long periods
and of course the smell musthave been pretty terrible,
people were getting onone another's nerves
and having to urinateinto shell cases.
Must have been a nightmare.
'Bill Chorley had abandoned his tankwhen it broke down.
'He'd seen Cromwell crews,including his own commander,
'abandon their vehicles in panicwhen the Tigers appeared.
'Now Bill, just 23 years oldthat day,
'tried to sneak back to his ownlines with two other crew members.'
BILL: "We crept through thehedgerows, which took a long time,
"until we came to the main road.
"It seemed all quiet, so I got upand suddenly heard,
"Hande hoch, Englander!
"Followed by a burstof machine gun fire.
"We had no weapons,so had to surrender.
I heard a burst of mauser fireand I thought, God, they've got him
and I firmly believedthat he'd been killed.
'Devastated, absolutely, he was...'
He was my best friend...Marvellous chap as well.
Er, but...
..by the time we'd reachedthe Seine,
I'd lost all my friends.
When that happens,you're on your own.
'Allied aircraft dominatedthe skies over Normandy,
'striking fear into the Germans.
'5th Tanks now witnessed a massiveair attack on Villers-Bocage,
'where earlier that day,
'French civilians had greetedthe triumphant British.'
EXPLOSIONS
'They just stonked the place,flattened it altogether.
'You couldn't mess aboutwith things like that,
'you had to get on with it.It was desperate times...'
We were in a bridgeheadand wanted to get out...
and, you know, you couldn't worryabout details like that.
'If the RAF cameand hit the target, well,
'so be it. As far as we wereconcerned, it was a good thing.'
Because war is warand there's no half measures.
'Allied air powerwas a blunt instrument.
'Its bombs killedabout 70,000 French people.
'A third more killed by accidentthan the British suffered
'from the Luftwaffe's deliberatebombing during the blitz.'
'British Infantry divisionshad failed to link up
'with the 5th Tanksand 7th Armoured Division.
'So on June 14th,the order came to retreat,
'giving up all the groundthey'd captured over the past days.
'They'd inflictedheavy casualties on the Germans,
'but they were isolatedsix miles forward of Allied lines.
'It was feared only a matter of time
'before they'd run out of supplies.
'5th Tanks, acting as rearguard,was the last to leave.'
'Captain Arthur Crickmaywas the 5th Tank's Adjutant,
'right-hand man of the battalion'sCommanding Officer.
'He'd been fighting since 1939
'and had won the military crossfor bravery.'
ARTHUR: "We moved off in pitch darkand clouds of choking dust,
"to the steady clanking of tracks
"and the dull roarof Rolls Royce engines.
"It seemed too much to expect ofthe enemy to let us go unmolested.
"But they did. They'd had enough."
The true vision of Arthur
was somebody who wasabsolutely immaculate.
We hadn't had any sleepfor about five nights,
we had tabletsto keep ourselves awake
and when we pulled out, most peopleflopped out and went to sleep
and I was still on my feet.
So I was required to goto Arthur's tank,
and Arthur was shaving.
And so there he goes,Americans arrived.
And one wanted to knowwhat the position was.
And Arthur finished his shaving
and slowly told them,
quite quietly and slowly,what was happening.
But he wasn't going to be rushed byany Americans while he was shaving.
HE CHUCKLES
So what actually happened here?
Well, on the morning of the 13th,no doubt about it,
the 7th Armoured Divisiontook a beating.
But later that day,and on the 14th of June,
it was the Germanswho got the drubbing.
So in my view,Villers-Bocage was a score draw.
The Germans quite understandablymade great propaganda play
out of Wittmann's actions,
and painted it asa great British defeat.
Far less understandableor forgivable was the fact that
certain British armchair criticstook the same line.
The commanders of the7th Armoured Division were sacked,
despite the fact that it wasthe infantry who failed to follow up
on their gains.
And some historians alsounforgivably have bought the line
that, after this battle, the 7thArmoured Division was traumatised,
sticky, afraid to getinto a fight.
There are criticisms of the 5thTanks for being over-cautious.
But when you had the experiencethat we had,
you know when to goand when not to go.
And, er...
..that experience saved many lives.
We'd moved from a different typeof terrain for warfare.
It was open desert,but here we were close country.
That was why we were cautious.
Stalking their enemiesthrough the Normandy countryside,
many of the tank soldiers werestruggling with inner demons.
Today we would call itpost-traumatic stress.
Jake Wardrop, in his diary,mentions more than once
attacks of the jitters.
Mastering those feelingsof fear and panic
was one of the biggest challengesfacing the veteran tank commanders.
I think the general feelingamongst most fighting men was
that people only havea certain amount of stamina,
and when it's run out, that's it.
And you're lucky if you've gotthe stamina to keep going.
So we didn't blame them, really,when their nerves went.
Scared? Oh, yes.Everybody was scared.
Eventually I got to the stagewhere I was saying to myself,
"You keep getting away with it.
"God, you must have a charmed life."
And then I thought...
then later I thought to myself,
"Yeah, but my oddsare getting shorter, surely."
Having failed to surroundthe city of Caen,
the 5th Tanks were pulled out of thefront line for rest and to resupply.
"There was a cinema and bathsin Bayeux which we visited,
"and in the improving weather we layaround and started to get tanned.
"At night we just simply sat aroundand read, wrote letters
"and took things easy."
GUNFIRE
Thirteen days after D-day,on the 19th of June,
a devastating storm hit the Channel.
Supplies fell to a trickle.
And since the 5th Tanks alone needed650 tonnes of fuel, ammunition
and rations each day in combat,many operations had to be postponed.
While they rested, in the west,American units,
some with just three daysof ammunition left,
were painfully grinding their waysouth against fierce resistance.
In the east, Monty kept up the warof attrition in the hedgerows,
trying to capture Caenand break out of the bridgehead.
With losses continuingday after day,
British infantry casualty rateswere approaching those
of the First World War.
After years of fightingand worldwide commitments,
Britain was running outof foot soldiers.
Pressure was on Montgomeryto get a move on.
On the 8th and 9th of July, heordered a massive aerial bombardment
that devastated Caenand its civilian population.
After three major offensives
and 30 days of bloody fighting,
the city he'd hoped to takeon D-day itself finally fell.
One week later, the Germans sufferedanother serious blow.
General Rommel had always fearedAllied air superiority
and now he became one ofits victims, seriously wounded
when his staff car was strafedby British fighters.
His war was over,but for the 5th Tanks
and others at the front,it continued.
General Montgomery called forwardthe Desert Rats
to play a key partin a coming offensive.
Operation Goodwoodwas to be a tank thrust across
the open countryside beyond Caen.
After weeks of sufferingby his infantry, Montgomery intended
to use all threeof his armoured divisions
to punch his wayout of the bridgehead.
Over 1,000 tanks,
more than 60,000 infantry
and 700 pieces of artillery
guided into position,and then the rumble of thunder.
In the distance,2,000 Allied bombers,
the largest number ever launchedin support of ground forces,
pummelled the Norman fields.
BOMBS WHIR
We saw the bombing raidwhich preceded the Goodwood.
And that was enormous.
And you would have thoughtnobody could have lived through it.
In places, 56-tonne Tigerswere hurled upside down.
German infantry went mad.
Some even committed suicide.
So began Operation Goodwood,
the biggest tank attackin the history of the British Army.
SOUND OF EXPLOSIONS
Today, the ground over whichGoodwood was fought
is pretty much unchanged.
From this higher ground,the Germans had a grandstand view
as all three British armoureddivisions in Normandy advanced,
from behind me, along an axisin line with these rows of crops.
The Germans had prepared defences,the villages had been fortified.
And the woods concealed scoresof the feared 88mm anti-tank guns.
An 88 can knock out a Cromwellat 2,000 yards.
One 88 covers 4,000 yards.
They had lots of them togetherwith Panthers and Tigers.
We were really up against it.
EXPLOSIONS
You know it's a 88 becauseyou hear a tearing of paper.
And you move.
If you didn't hear it...
that was the end of you.
Despite the huge aerial bombardment,the Germans had hardly been harmed.
They had been expectingan attack for days
and had dug infive lines of defence,
stretching nine miles deep.
When Goodwood started, it's beenlikened to the French cavalry attack
at Agincourt or the Chargeof the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
The British advanced downa narrow corridor of death.
On the first day of Goodwood, nearly200 Allied tanks were knocked out.
But 5th Tanks, along withthe rest of 7th Armoured Division,
the most experienced of the threearmoured divisions taking part,
was late getting to the fight.
They were stuck in a hugetraffic jam near the Orne River.
But on day two of the battle, itwas their turn to run the gauntlet
with 5th Tanks leading the way.
Going up a slope and looking downthe other side,
my main thing was horror,
seeing a whole squadron of Shermans,in squadron formation, knocked out.
The place was littered withburning tanks everywhere
and there were bodieseverywhere as well.
It was all very unpleasant indeed.
There were sort of half bodiesaround the place,
where people had been blown up.It was all very, very nasty.
As Jake Wardrop's troop approacheda village across open fields,
an anti-tank gun concealedin woods opened fire.
"Then it happened.
"There was a loud thud behind,the tank slowed and stopped
"and the turret was full of flames,
"so I yelled, 'Jump!'and bailed for it.
"Poor Woody had been burnedon the face and hands,
"they were starting to blister.
"We had lost all our kit."
For its crew,a tank is also a mobile home.
And when Jake Wardrop's Fireflywent up in flames in this field,
they lost all their possessions.He was particularly upset
about losing a blue sweater he'd hadsince the desert battles,
and some chapters from his diary.
And they weren't the only peopleto get burnt out
of their vehicle that day.
The 5th lost three other tanks too,
and Roy Dixon had a close escape.
I had got out of my seatand was sitting on the turret ring,
so that I was higher up,so that I could see a bit better.
And an airburst went off above me.
And a bit of the shrapnelcame down straight between my legs
and straight into the gunner.
I was incredibly lucky,it missed by about that much.
And the poor old gunner,we had to get him out of the tank
and getting a wounded man outof a tank is extremely difficult.
He subsequently died, regrettably.
You just had to accept it.
Everybody said, "Too bad, but, youknow, make way for the new man."
You had to do that.
You couldn't go round...
weeping about it all, really.
When the operation endedon the 20th of July,
the British had advanced seven milesand taken this high ground.
But the cost of Goodwoodhad been high.
Critics made much of the fact theBritish had 400 tanks knocked out,
never mind that only half of themhad actually been destroyed,
the rest could be repaired.
5th Tanks got offrelatively lightly.
Sergeant Wardrop had survivedbeing knocked out,
Gerry Solomon and Bob Layhad come through unscathed.
But the fact was,it wasn't the breakthroughthat many had hoped for.
Goodwood was seenby many as a disaster
and Montgomery was nearly sacked.
But the Germans lostthousands of troops here,
scores of anti-tank guns and around80 tanks and self-propelled guns.
And whereas the Allies were ableto top up their tanks
to the original levelwithin 36 hours of Goodwood,
the Germans had only succeeded,in all the weeks since D-day,
in replacing 17 out of 1,700lost Panzers.
Two-thirds of the German Armywas tied up fighting the Soviets
on the Eastern Front.
In France, Allied airpower strafedalmost anything that moved.
As Rommel had feared, even thoughGerman tank production
was at its height,most were sent east,
while in France the resupply systemhad broken down
under pressure of air attack.
The Germans were being ground downand, bound by Hitler's orders
not to yield an inch of Normandy,
were becoming vulnerableto break-out and encirclement.
Just five days after Goodwood,on the 25th July,
the Americans launchedOperation Cobra to great success.
The British had sucked mostof Rommel's Panzer divisions
into the fight for Caen.
That helped the Americansbreak into open country.
The dream of mobile armoured warfarewas now a reality.
In four days,they advanced 30 miles.
Meanwhile, 5th Tanks foundthemselves in their fiercest battle
of the Normandy campaign so far,
fighting to keep the Germanstied down in their sector.
So the Americans could exploittheir break-out,
the 5th found themselvessurrounded.
British infantry and tanks had tooperate closely together as a team.
But this time it broke down,and the British infantry bugged out,
leaving the 5th Tanks to the mercyof SS Panzer grenadiers.
We were clustered there in a groupand we were told we were going
to wait until the moon got a bithigher, give us a bit more light.
Then we were going to break out.
But, unfortunately,the enemy beat us to it.
I knew the tank had been hit.
I felt my right-hand side go numb.
Come on. Stand up.
Gerry Solomon had got throughall the North Africa battles,
from Crusader to El Alamein,
and he'd been one ofthe first men into Tunis.
He'd been in Italy,in Villers-Bocageand on Operation Goodwood, too.
He knew he was livingon borrowed time.
But true to the honour code ofthe 5th's sergeants and corporals,
the key tank commanders, he refusedto put in for a cushier job.
Being seriously wounded hadgiven him an honourable way out.
When I was injured,I wasn't sorry to be going home
because I'd been therefor two months and, you know,
I thought all I'd done in the war,I'd done my bit anyway.
The British succeeded in holdingthe German Army in place.
For Gerry and the 5th,that came at quite a price.
They lost seven tanksand 25 casualties in one day.
But the bigger picture wasthe German Army was now trapped
and annihilated.
On the 25th of August, the Battleof Normandy was declared over.
The cost had been high.
In 80 days of fighting, the Allieshad over 200,000 casualties,
the Germans around 300,000out of a smaller force.
Of the 2,300 German tankscommitted to the battle,
less than 120 were brought backacross the Seine.
The Allies lost many more tanks -4,000.
But all of themwere rapidly replaced.
Jake Wardrop, Bob Lay, ArthurCrickmay and Roy Dixon had all
come through relatively unscathed.
On the 31st of August, after nearlythree months of fighting
in the hedgerows,they crossed the River Seine,
about here, and left behindthe horrors of Normandy.
The tanks now sped across France,
driving in hours across the Flandersfields their fathers had contested
for years duringthe First World War.
In just five days,
they travelled 200 miles,the 5th Tanks being the first
Allied unit to liberatethe Belgian city of Ghent.
DISTANT CHEERING
When we got to Ghent, it wastremendous, it was a big city.
Everybody turned out.
Girls leaping on your tankand, you know, embracing you.
And it was good stuff.
Parts of Ghent were stilloccupied by the Germans,
so Arthur Crickmay, now a major,came here to their headquarters,
in an attempt to persuadethe German commander to surrender.
After five days on the road, though,Crickmay was painfully aware
that his usually immaculatestandards had slipped
and that he was living up tothe nickname of the Filthy 5th.
"To describe my kit - overallstanked in, slept in,
"non-stop for a week - as a mess,would be understating a condition
"that compared most unfavourablywith that of General Bruhn.
"He took this in and, beingappraised of my meagre rank,
"immediately took off on his thesis,often repeated, that surrender
"could only be made to a Britishofficer of equal rank to himself."
The 5th Tanks had advancedso rapidly, though,
that there were no generals to hand.
So Major Crickmay persuadedhis boss, the commanding officer
of the battalion, Lieutenant ColonelHolliman, to act the part.
Unfortunately, the German generalguessed what was going on
and still refused to surrender.But he did agree to pull his troops
back to the north of the city,and so the 5th Tanks played
their part in saving the historiccentre of Ghent from destruction.
EXPLOSIONS
It was now September, and fightingraged to the north of the city.
The tide of war had moved decisivelyagainst Germany,
but they fought on,much to the frustrationof many British soldiers.
"The stupid, pig-headed Bochesinfantry came at us,
"marching across the open fields.When they were good and close
"we went to townwith the machine guns.
"There was no cover and we keptfiring and firing.
"It was great.
"One was waving a white flagso we didn't fire
"but they didn't come in.Perhaps they were wounded.
"At any rate, I nipped downto pick them up
"when just then the Boche startedto lob over more mortar.
"They dropped quite closeand I picked up a small splinter
"in my face. That settled it.
"I got back on the tank,gave Jimmy the word
"and he chopped them down."
Jake's attitude to warwas very belligerent.
He wanted to get at themand knock them out
and that may have beengreat satisfaction.
Not everybody felt that way.
Jake Wardrop testified tothe bitterness of the fighting.
Near here he saw two wounded Germansbeing finished off with head shots,
after they'd surrendered,by a British soldier.
It wasn't a good thing to do,he wrote, but at least it saved
the danger of sending a Britishstretcher party to get them.
The 5th, by this stage of the war,contained some very hard men,
many of whom foughtaccording to their own rules.
Another sergeant in the battalionwrote that he had become
"a bloodthirsty fighter who justlonged for the next battle".
They wanted to get hometoo, of course,
but that just added to their angerwith the Germans who fought on.
By the 14th of September,the whole of Belgium
and Luxembourg was in Allied hands.
Now they crept into Holland,nearer the German border.
Progress was slow.
There were simply not enoughsupplies coming through
to an Allied Army that nownumbered three million men.
For the 5th Tanks,the war now came to a pause.
The battalion's casualty recordfor November shows just how inactive
they were at that stage of the war.It records just two deaths.
One from artillery fire,the other from a heart attack.
And it was that second onethat shocked the men.
For them,natural death had become unnatural.
MORTAR AND GUNFIRE
While war raged elsewhere in Europe,over the winter months
the 5th Tanks' biggest battlewas keeping warm.
After months of inactivity,the 5th Tanks crossed the Rhine
on the 27th of March.
I can only imagine how hardit must have been for the likes
of Arthur Crickmay or Jake Wardrop,who had been at war for five years
and had so many close escapes,
to steel themselvesfor battle once more,
knowing they had probably used uptheir nine lives.
The 5th Tanks was now fightingin the last desperate battles
against a crumbling Third Reich,
their objective, Hamburg,200 miles away.
For 5th Tanks, the last majorengagement of the war
was at a place called Rethem.
Small in the overallscheme of things perhaps,
but for the battalion it wasa place of huge significance.
Jake Wardrop was advancing throughwoods just south of Rethem
when all hell broke loose.
CACOPHONY OF GUNFIRE
HE GROANS
Jake was found, pistol in hand.
Wounded in the legs,he had fought to the last
but finally succumbedto a bullet in the heart.
When Jake was shot,the regiment was really upset.
Because he was such a very widelyrespected guy in the regiment.
Everybody in the regimentknew about him
so his loss wasparticularly badly felt.
When Jake's tank was knocked outand another one shortly afterwards,
we had lost great characterswho were a great treasure
to the regiment.
And nine people altogether
out of 75 crew members of C Squadron
just at the end of the war.
And that...that hurt.
It was very...
..very tragic.
Jake Wardrop's precious diarywas recovered from his tank
and eventually made its way home.
His best epitaph perhaps comesin his own words to his mother,
explaining, in a letter,why he wouldn't take a safer job.
"I am a tank commanderand I shall continue to be one
"until the end. Should it bethe wrong one, don't worry.
"I've played the game as it seemedto me the right way to play it.
"I have respected the womenand given my rations to the little
"children because they were hungry,and I've shot the Germans down
"and laughed because of friends lostand, in any case, they started it."
Wardrop had been killed less thana month before the end of the war.
The 5th Tanks, in their driveto Hamburg,
now encounteredAllied prisoner of war camps.
By an amazing coincidence,
Bill Chorley, capturedeight months earlier in Normandy,
was liberated by his own division.
He was lucky to be alive.
Used for slave labour in Poland,when Russian forces approached
his captors forced himon a death march west.
It was the depths of winter.Many prisoners never made it.
MEN CHEER
By God, I was delighted.
He weighed six-and-a-half stone.
On the 3rd of May, the 5th Tankscrossed the Elbe into Hamburg.
There was no resistanceat this moment of triumph.
In 11 months sincelanding at Normandy,
they'd suffered 84 killedand two dozen tanks destroyed.
Driving into Hamburgwas an amazing experience.
The war hadn't technically finished
but in all senses fighting hadstopped, and we drove through
what was a completelyshattered city.
It was an appalling sight, really.
On the 4th of May,
General Montgomery acceptedthe unconditional surrender
of all German forces in Hollandand Northwest Germany.
Four days later,Victory in Europe was declared.
We knew. We'd made it.
And we didn't know what to do.
And we just hugged each otherand we threw our berets in the air,
never got our own berets again.But that was it.
That was the end of the war for us.
A marvellous moment.
The war had been an extraordinarilyhard experience
for the men of 5th Tanks.
By VE Day there were just a fewdozen, less than 50 serving
in its ranks, who had been thereat the outbreak of the conflict.
Their odyssey had lasted six years,carrying them across thousands
of miles and costing the livesof 240 of their men.
Their advances across North Africaand France
equalled the achievementof Hitler's Panzer divisions.
But our tank soldiers werecitizens in a democracy
and modest with it, theirachievements even now understated
and distinctly British.
It is a terrible thing, in a way,to admit one was taking part
in a sort of war of destruction,
but from a personal point of view,as a very young man,
it was some of the happiestdays of my life
because you were living in a littlecompact group, in this case
the troop, who were greatsort of pals.
You had no responsibilitiesother than keeping yourself alive
and doing the job.
CHEERING
The people in the serviceshad a job to do.
It had to be done.
And we'd done it.
It wasn't a matter of rejoicing.
I didn't go to the parade in Berlin.
I didn't see anythingto rejoice about.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
