Normandy 1944

Part 2 - FOOing

The Regiment is now, 'on theatre grid' meaning the guns are accurately positioned so that each FOO can order every British and Canadian gun in Normandy to hit the same target if required.

Then the German guns open up on our position with devastating accuracy. For the first time we discover the sickening experience of crouching in a slit trench while the ground jerks and shakes and the air is filled with ear bursting explosions. This continues until it seems everyone else must be dead but when at last the shelling stops, the command post Tannoy asks, 'Number one gun, alright?' A few long seconds later brings the reply, 'Okay.' And by some miracle no one is injured and there is no damage to the guns.

The next day we are not so lucky. We are strafed by a squadron of Messerschmitt 109's and then the German guns open fire again, causing 18 casualties including four deaths. Miraculously although one gun received a direct hit none of the crew are injured. The MO (medical officer) is kept busy.

Today I take over FOOing for the infantry, the Royal Regiment of Canada. Our transport is a universal carrier, usually called a Bren gun carrier, about the size of a car. It is basically an open topped, steel box mounted on two tank tracks. The driver and the FOO sit in the narrow space right at the front while the ack and the radio operator sit in the narrow space on one side of the engine compartment while the other side is filled with compo ration boxes, remote control cables, field telephones, personal weapons, one large radio, one backpack radio and a walkie-talkie plus a clutter of personal packs, tarpaulins and extra batteries for the radios. The tracks wheels (bogies) are supported by springs so the ride is surprisingly smooth even over the roughest trails.

The Battalion Tactical Headquarters of the Royal Regiment of Canada is not easy to find although its position is clearly marked on the map. Almost immediately we are forced to take cover while the Germans start dropping mortar bombs on the position. Our cover is inadequate but it is almost dark when we get a chance to look for a safer location. As we set out, out of the gloom a voice calls out, 'Wait! Don't go there! They've orders to shoot anything moving after dark.'

The warning is too late as we are already running at full speed when we hear the clicking of a rifle bolt and, 'Halt, who goes there?' We do not remember the password for tonight so we dodge around a line of trucks barely visible in the gloom desperately searching for a slit trench before the next basin of bombs arrive. We find a hole barely big enough for one but the two of us jam into it and spend the night uncomfortably pressed together not daring to move. The guards are only 30 feet away and if we make the slightest noise we can hear their conversation. 'Did you hear that?' Click clack. Click clack.

The order to shoot is not stupid, for the Germans are in the habit of infiltrating our lines after dark and all infantry have orders to stay below ground level and shoot at anything moving.

Early in the morning I spot another trench and quickly scramble into it. Rolled up in a blanket, within seconds I am asleep but almost immediately I'm awakened by a bayonet on the end of a rifle jabbing me in the ribs and a voice calling, 'Stand to! Wake up!'

Tac HQ is a U shaped trench with the excavated earth piled on the outside leaving a grass covered mound that serves as a table for maps. It is deep enough for a man to stand upright without exposing himself but it is open to the sky.

The major gives us directions to A Company Head Quarters which is in an abandoned German bunker. There, a slightly mad officer advises me to get rid of anything which advertises rank because Jerry snipers are targeting officers. He rips off my epaulets and snarls,'Get rid of that tie and the holster. Put the pistol in your pocket, your clipboard and binoculars in the front of your battledress.'

We are just about to leave when the German guns opened up with one gun. Shells started to arrive every few seconds but the intensity increases and for 24 hours it is continuous. The poor bloody infantry have suffered the relentless explosions for two days, never knowing if the next shell will end their lives. When the shelling finally ends and the place is acrid with the stench of explosives there are calls, 'Stretcher! Over here.'

My ack and I leave the carrier and take our radio and field telephone up to an enormous bomb crater, unreeling the telephone cable as we go.

With a little camouflaged scarf draped over my head, I scan no-man's-land through the binoculars. The enemy could be yards away hiding in the tall yellow wheat that covers the fields as far as I can see. The area is littered with derelict Churchill and Sherman tanks, victims of German 88 mm anti-tank guns and Tiger and Panther tanks, which have thicker armour and longer range guns. There are several allied tanks with blackened hulls and a few parked in the shade of trees but there is nothing that might be an enemy position.

The next salvo of shells cuts the remote control cable connecting us to the guns. My ack waits for the next lull in the shelling and sprints back with the cable running between his fingers until he finds the other end and reconnects before the shelling resumes when he takes cover in the nearest hole. Once he shelters under the carrier where the radio operator is making sure the radio set is working.

While he is away, I keep sliding down the sides of the funnel like crater and worry that I am too exposed, so I move to a nearby slit trench. I am rearranging the control box when I hear the faint crackle of a shell dead on for range and line. I flatten myself in the trench as it lands in the crater with a deafening noise leaving a wisp of smoke precisely in the centre. I marvel all day at the instinct which convinces me to move minutes before the shell arrived and before my ack returned.