[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And all the guy, the guys continue to walk around, get stared, glared at everyone, but that doesn't matter. So this is a classic example.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your leader's not leading? I've given this answer so many times, but this is a classic. This might be one of the best examples. Your leader's not leading? That's fine. Good. Step up and lead yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, by dawn the enemy had retired and elements of the battalion moved forward to consolidate and strengthen D company's position. The whole operation was very amateur.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no doubt that the new company commander could not command a company in battle, nor could I, who is just beginning to master the rudiments of commanding a platoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was removed within a few hours. I think Dennis had something to do with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he was not the kind of man to confide in 20 year old subalterns. So that's another classic thing right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that this guy Dennis who is another, uh, officer?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I probably went and said get this guy out of here. Get this company commander out of here. But when he does it, the company commander gets removed and he doesn't say anything to Sydney Jerry. He doesn't, you know, rat it out or brag about it or make a big deal. He doesn't say anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just happens. It's like when I had a mutiny in my platoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the commanding officer's like, no, we're not firing anyone. You guys get out of here, shut your mouths, and go back to work. And we're like, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what reason? Hmm. We knew we had something to do with it, but same thing. So you don't need to create.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, distrust and disloyalty and, and not even just those words, but you don't need to create drama.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're not doing that, we're not building up our own ego, by disparaging someone else's. Let's worry about the whole team. How's that sound? Sounds like a good idea to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, I now have little doubt that for the first two months in Normandy we lacked two things. Comprehensive and imaginative training and personal experience of battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was taught that that's the only way you can ever do it. And these guys, and I've talked about this many times on the podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And those need to be rock solid. But once those things are established, you need to make people understand that you don't always follow them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you need to call off a piece of that standard operating procedure to insert some other thing and bring in another standard operating procedure and mix and match them so you get something that's effective. You need to think. That's what a leader needs to do. A leader needs to think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, the British infantry platoons and companies were overtrained and bored stiff with basic infantry tactics, which as far as they went were good. Much of this training, unfortunately, had been in the hands of battle school instructors who themselves lacked battle experience and imagination.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These tended to become pedagogues. Disciples of DS. Directing staff. Solution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About which no argument could be tolerated. So DS is, he mentions it a bunch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, that's their solution. The directing staff, you can't argue with them. They're the, they're the cadre.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Possibly, like most of our infantry, they suffered some consequences of the pre-war shortage of creativity intelligent regimental officers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Too few of them were professionally dedicated to the extent that they could visualize how battles would be fought and identify the problems that might arise when planning them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They seem to lack the capacity to think relentlessly through these things until solutions were found.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much of their time had been spent policing the British Empire. Also, unlike the Germans, we British instinctively avoid displays of keenness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The enthusiast, particularly if he is innovative, is an embarrassment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thus, the battlefield became our teacher, and, inevitably, it exacted a grim price in blood and time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So as you're training, you've got to push yourself hard. You've got to put yourself in situations. I don't care what you're training for. I don't care if you're training for combat, in a single platoon, in an army infantry platoon,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or if you're in the business world and you're training your leaders to handle situations or you're training your customer service reps to handle situations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What no matter which one of those you're in you need to push people hard You need to put them in worst-case scenarios so that they need to learn how they need to learn how to think to get out of those problems


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An incident at 45th Infantry Divisional Battle School during the spring of 1944. An exceptionally tall and good-natured Canadian officer had been sent to the school to give a talk on the street fighting he had experienced in Italy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was an interesting talk, but some of his advice ran contrary to that being taught in the school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As this officer's experience was probably unusual, we had best not stray from the DS solution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As taught at that school. So, you got a combat veteran coming back with experience from street fighting in Italy. And he'd come back with some different tactics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they tell them, don't listen to that guy. That's just a rare case.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is starting to talk about their overall sort of formulation of combat plans and how they operated. Back to the book. The most successful actions by 18 platoon were fought without the support of artillery or armor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had learned in a hard school how to skirmish, infiltrate and edge our way forward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The right or left flanking platoon attack so beloved of the battle school staff would rarely succeed in the Normandy bocage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember with horror being locked into timetables of meticulously planned large battles. These invariably left the junior infantry commander no scope for exploitation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you found a gap in the enemy defenses, adherence to artillery program, which rarely could be altered, effectively stopped any personal initiative. So what that's saying is, you have these, the artillery that's gonna drop bombs, they're gonna bomb


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or strike with artillery at certain regions at certain times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you might see the enemy running away, and you have a chance to gain a superior tactical position, but you can't because you know that that's where the bombs are gonna, that's where the artillery's gonna be hitting in the next 12 minutes. So you can't go. So now you sit and wait.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he got locked in by that, back to the book. To me, the preparations for these battles assumed the demented proportion of a Kafka-like nightmare ballet in which the anonymous they ordained that we must perform a choreographed ritual dance macabre. I felt trapped and helpless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No solo parts were written into the score, nor was there scope for small groups of performers in this mammoth ballet of machines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Undoubtedly, far shadows from the Psalm, that's the Battle of Psalm, clouded my emotions. But instinct told me that this kind of show would be unlikely to succeed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Irony was that this support was planned and given to the infantry with the best of intentions. The Psalm had cast its shadows on our artillery and armored commanders. Both genuinely believed that their hands, they, that in their hands they had the pancia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Junior leaders into the big picture and too little time spent training them and stimulating their imagination, initiative, and individual resourcefulness to probe, draw conclusions, infiltrate, and exploit weakness in the enemy's dispositions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's, he's criticizing this lack of initiative, lack of creativity, and the training to get that initiative and creativity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, after the first of August, 18 platoon never failed in any attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes we took a little longer than planned, but we always got there in the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In defense, we never lost one yard of ground, nor did the enemy ever penetrate our platoon position. And we always dominated No Man's Land with our patrols.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's saying once he kind of figured it out, they didn't lose anymore. They didn't lose any attacks and they didn't give up any ground. Talks about the armor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our armor was accused of being tiger shy, meaning scared of the tiger tanks or the Germans, and I don't wonder why. The devastation caused by a single hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of an 88mm armor piercing shell needed to be seen to be believed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is an overall statement. For the infantry and armor, the British 2nd Army, the sheer ferocity of the fighting in Normandy came as a salatory shock for which they were in some ways unprepared. So it was devastating for these guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, we start pushing out, out of uh, out of Normandy. And pushing into the CN.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And here we go. They're pushing in the next day, 28 August, D Company occupied Haracourt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the only operation of war that I've ever known to go precisely as planned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our supporting field regiment softened up the objective with their 25 pounders. The company advanced over open farmland in immaculate formation and consolidated exactly on time. The only thing lacking was an enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book experience and Normandy had removed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anxieties regarding commanding an under-strength platoon. So he hasn't had enough men. He's supposed to have 36, he's had like 17, 18, 19.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the attack, particularly at night, a platoon at full strength is just too big to maneuver quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first opportunity to do so since I took command of 18 Platoon. It also gave me time to meet and talk with other young officers in the battalion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was then that I realized that 18 platoon was no ordinary platoon. It had some undefinable magic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No quarrels, little swearing, despite the war that was, despite the war there was something peaceful about it. A helping hand was always available for anybody. The emotional links were firm and true. I was a happy man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he realizes once he starts talking to the other platoon commanders, he's got this really special platoon that gets along great and he's, he realizes it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, no young officer can command a platoon in battle on his own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Normandy, I'd seen platoon commanders served by poor NCOs struggling to gain some semblance of control over their bewildered and frightened men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had also seen platoons with good NCOs go to pieces in the hands of an indifferent officer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jim Kingston, Doug Proctor, and Owen Cheeseman set the standard and tone for 18 Platoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Without them, I, as the platoon commander, would have joined the ranks of so many poor young officers who never achieved grip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At 0400 hours on 24th of September, Douglas, this is the new company commander, Douglas. Douglas held a long O group by candlelight in the cellar of the farmhouse at which, much to his annoyance, I kept falling asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were ordered to advance straight eastward down a narrow country lane from the orchard to the main road and consolidate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After the O-group, and O-group is what they call like when they're, when their officers get together and pass the word. They call it O-group. After the O-group, I made myself unpopular by asking why we're advancing towards an area of considerable German opposition when my patrol had found a better route by which we might outflank the enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so he's saying, hey, wait, why? Cause his platoon had been out on a patrol and found a better route, and he's asking why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he kinda gets shut down. I was just 20 years old at the time. And even then, I knew I was incapable of disputing orders without giving offense. We started at 0600 hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two platoons leading on either side of the track, the third falling in single file down the track itself. On either side were the small holdings, were small holdings, a few allotments and bungalows surrounded by small picket fences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The platoons advanced through the gardens and vegetable patches and passed on either side of the bungalows, the rear section searching each one quickly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while they're searching these little bungalows as they're on patrol, they find this. Back to the book. During one of these hurried searches, one section found a Dutch family. The Wittiges. Father, mother, son, and daughter. Riddled by Schmeitzer fire. That's a German machine gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They lay in awkward postures of death amid their ransacked home. A visit from the SS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No tears came, nor did they come a half an hour later when we came upon the charred wreckage of an American Dakota. It had carried US parachute troops of the 82nd Airborne Division and their torn and burnt bodies littered the orchard like charred and mutilated ragdolls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a further irony. Attached to the front window in what remained of the Dakota's cockpit was a tiny teddy bear untouched by flames.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two months before, a lonely teddy bear and an impersonal pool of blood had brought forth tears.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Got a dead guy, soldier in it, and there's a little teddy bear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and for some reason, you know, he's young, he's inexperienced and it gets, gets, makes him super emotional. He starts crying and, and now he's a little further in the war. He sees, you know, this horrible murdered family and these tragically, you know, burned and killed paratroopers and he's able to detach emotionally from it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, the enemy decided to make life unpleasant for us as possible by sudden, unpredictable concentrations of heavy artillery right in the middle of our company area. We called them stonks. So he's gonna use that word, it just means we're getting bombed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of these shells unfortunately fell right into one of 16 platoon slit trenches.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No trace remained of the two men that were manning, in it manning a Bren.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In my platoon, Lance Corporal Jack Lee and Private Peter Filmer were buried in the trench they shared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other members of their section quickly dug them out unharmed, very dirty, and remarkably cheerful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The self-propelled guns increased their activities, filling the sky above the company with ugly black air bursts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They could place these with uncanny accuracy to burst about 25 feet above the road junction outside company headquarters. The casualties mounted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Company Sergeant Major Sammy Jones and Spot Martin, the Jeep driver, were both hit outside Company HQ.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was Sammy Jones who committed the battalion's only atrocity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the shadows from high trees and hedges fell across a small field in Normandy, we took some young Waffen SS soldiers prisoner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of them, a short, stocky, and fair youth of about 18, proved insultingly truculent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seizing the young lout by the scruff of his neck, Samary roared, You can take that glint out of your eyes, my boy. And, putting the wretched youth across his knees, he gave his backside a sound whacking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's again, uh, you know, Sydney Jerry, and he talks about how proud he is that his men, his men's behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is so upstanding throughout this whole miserable experience. And even when they see atrocities committed like by the SS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They still maintain their discipline and their character. And this is, this is what he does. Oh, you're a little punk kid? I'm gonna spank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tough little SS soldier getting put over the knee and spanked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After the attack so now this is again this is happening after one of these attacks and and the whole the whole Basic premise of this book is attack


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rest, attack, rest, attack, rest. So as I'm reading I'm kind of picking out some of the attacks that they're going on and they're just moving through France and then through Germany. That's what it is. I should have explained that earlier. Uh, but this is after one of the attacks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's interesting, he says this, smiling faces vanished and the grey look returned once more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Men walked with one ear cocked in the air for approaching shells and with a slight stoop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They go into like JP mode, they're standing up straight, they're ready to get some, but then once they're on the defense and they're just waiting to get shelled, they start to stoop, they start to crouch a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He continues, back to the book, the jokes began to peter out and the cheerful good morning sir ceased. When I went around the platoons at stand two. Morale was always higher during an attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sitting around and being shelled is not an occupation to be recommended. So, there's a good lesson there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause you're waiting to get hit. So go out and hit somebody. You know? Go on the attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't wait around. Don't let your morale drown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, scrambling out of the culvert, we set a fast pace up the side of the road to A company's positions. This immediately brought small arms fired down on us, but by then we were then 200 yards of their slit trenches. So on we ran as fast as we could.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being soaked, I began to steam. My boots squelched and seemed to drag me back, clawing at my feet as in a bad dream and stopping me from reaching the inviting cover of the slit trenches.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A company was dug in with two platoons forward in an orchard face to face with the enemy who were in dykes only a few yards beyond.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The third platoon was to the right rear protecting the open flank and company headquarters to the left rear centered on some farm buildings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was to these farm buildings that we ran.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hurling ourselves onto the straw on the barn floor, we lay panting and gasping for breath.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John Aycock, a company commander, appeared round the door of the barn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He looked haggard and worn. I doubt he had slept for a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole company area was covered by the most intense spandale fire and defensive, and the defensive battle here was one of fire supremacy which the Germans had undoubtedly won. A company's morale was low.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had just lost Harry Barnes, one of the platoon commanders who, refusing to take cover, strutted about in his usual manner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He took a complete burst of spando fire under the arm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Harry was an amazing and fearless fellow who didn't care a damn for anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even after the burst hit him, he still lived for about three hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men respected Harry and with their idols shot down in front of them, they were very jumpy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another time you have to watch out for morale. Obviously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you remember, this book started in the summertime and now we're starting to get towards fall. And this was something I'd never thought about before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When fall comes, you know, the sun is up for a shorter period of time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So here we go, back to the book. The nights became longer and the dawns gray and chilly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sunsets were red and vivid and the days, though beautiful, shortened rapidly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the nights lengthened, the hours of stag lengthened, and with them the mental and physical fatigue of the company. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have to stay up, you know, rotate through watches at night. You just don't get to sleep the whole time. So if it's dark for longer, you gotta stay awake longer at night. So it's starting to wear on the company itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, there was, there is one incident, small rumor when remembered by itself in a life of such incidents, but very, but to me, very vivid. In my platoon, there was a young lad aged 18 named Biddle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was of slight of build, fair, and looked a mere child. He had a pleasant personality and was liked by everyone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had joined the company at Le Mencel Milan after we had crossed the Seine at Vernon in August. One morning, there was a crack and a short interval of silence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the shout went out. Stretcher bearers echoed through the orchard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I ran towards the commotion and saw Biddle writhing in agony on the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At first he looked unhurt, but as I tore open his tunic, I saw a clear wound through his abdomen coming out by his spine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He soon became numb and was no longer in pain, but was very frightened and shivered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And applied field dressings to his stomach and his back in case the wound started to bleed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His young life, slowly ebbing from his body, our stretcher bearers, quietly and reverently carried him away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The scene is now too poignant to remember without shedding a tear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After Biddle had been evacuated, the morale of the platoon dropped. He had been hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While standing in a slit trench by a sniper at least 300 yards away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's interesting, and I didn't go into this part, but there's a part earlier in the book where he, he basically disparages somewhat the use of snipers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he talks about how they usually don't gain you anything. Tactically. But it's interesting what it does to the morale of a platoon, isn't it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he, you know, he doesn't completely, he, he, he explains that there's usage and there's, believe me, there's probably no bigger believer in the use of snipers in the world than me. But, it's interesting, you know, he, he basically, you can tell he's a very, uh, guy with, you know, this extremely high moral character.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't feel comfortable with sniping because people aren't expecting it. There's not a battle happening. He felt like it was a cheap shot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And remember this character from earlier, Dennis Clark. Dennis Clark was the, was the guy that pulled him aside and said, hey, you need to take command of this company. Well, like I said, Dennis Clark, or I, I thought I'd remembered and I was right. Dennis Clark was, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was an artillery guy that called in artillery. So here we go. Back to the book. I was saved by Captain Dennis Clark.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] MC, our tame gunner, Dennis had a virtuoso touch where 25 pounders were concerned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sniping with one gun. That should get the buggers out, he said with total confidence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Moving his 19 set into my- that's a radio. Moving his 19 set into my platoon position. No easy task in daylight. He gave us a display of the most brilliant professionalism we had come to expect from the 94th field regiment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By firing with only one gun and making his mean point of impact beyond the dike containing the Germans, he slowly decreased the range yard by yard until one shell exploded in the dike.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Out came five very wet and shaken Panzer Grenadiers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During this episode, all the platoon had to remain


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the bottom of their slit trenches because Dennis' shells came over our positions with minimum clearance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I doubt if any experienced infantry officer would deny that the Royal Artillery during the Second World War were the most professionally competent people in the British Army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So again, an interesting dichotomy, because in the beginning he talks about how the artillery can trap them, because it's being used in this broad plan that's locking in where there's no deviation, but here,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's talking about how brilliant it is because he's directly coordinating with it. He's explaining to the artillery officer where to put those rounds, what the problem is, and then letting the artillery officer solve it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, there's a dichotomy there. Just like there's a dichotomy with the snipers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. After a few more days in the orchard, we were becoming increasingly exhausted and our fighting efficiency deteriorated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This condition existed not only in my company, but throughout the battalion. Consequently, the news of a move back to rest came as a colossal relief to us all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we did not know who was going to take over our positions. The takeover was to be at night, and was to be carried out as quickly as possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the enemy discovered it, a determined attack could cause endless confusion and slaughter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the late afternoon of one particularly unpleasant day, Douglas appeared, that's the company commander, appeared with an American captain and two lieutenants from a parachute battalion of the 101st Airborne Division.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They padded around the company area in their rubber-soled boots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the eyes of the whole company following them. So the 101st is coming in to relieve them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having reconnoitered our area, the Americans returned to the company HQ to discuss administrative points for the takeover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The plan was for the American company commander to bring his company down the main road in single file along the edge of the ditch. When the head of the column reached our company HQ, they would be met by guides from each of our platoons to lead the American platoons to their positions. As soon as they were on the ground, our platoons would withdraw and assemble on the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This may sound simple in practice, but at night in close contact with the enemy, it certainly was not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This type of operation leaves two companies particularly vulnerable during the handover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A determined enemy could attack and turn the operation into a massacre. This is one of, and I've said this before on the podcast, one of the hardest things to do is link up with friendly forces on the battlefield. And if you're under fire, it's even harder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this one they're trying to do it not under fire, trying to sneak and make it happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. The rest of the day was spent packing, making sure the enemy noticed nothing of this anti-activity. We put our spare ammunition onto the carriers with great coats and blankets. The whole afternoon was strangely quiet. There was no activity from the enemy, and we in turn kept quiet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sun went down amid a fiery sky, looking east. The sky was threateningly grey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went around, I went around my position with Sergeant Kingston before the Americans arrived.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All my men looked tired and could hardly muster a smile as I went from slit to slit. Many had contained two men, and now contained only one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Together with some memento of his former mate, a mess tin or a bloodstained jacket, even a packet of cigarettes, wet and limp with dew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wondered how many more mementos would be there when the Americans were relieved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They loomed up in the darkness by the roadside, padding along in their rubber-soled boots without a whisper.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought at the time what splendid troops they were and how excellent their equipment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was particularly impressed by the silent and quick way they were led by their squad commanders to our section positions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There come the Americans who leave them. The 101st Airborne Division. Who's just outstanding soldiers. They're just awesome. And we worked with them. I mean one of my platoons in Ramadi worked with, lived with them. The first of the 506.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The reputation that the guys in Ramadi upheld that standard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In every possible way, but it's rooted all the way back to these soldiers right here. Sounds like this is what struck me when I read that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like, oh, this, this, that, that tradition of excellence in that unit has gone


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From World War II, from these guys right here, and it's that same attitude that I saw with guys in Ramadi. The same attitude.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now he makes a statement here about this whole big operation which was called Market Garden. Which was this giant operation to try and cut off the Germans, seize multiple bridges. I think there was three bridges they were trying to seize.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it, it didn't reach its full effect. It wasn't like a complete mission success. They didn't achieve every objective that they wanted to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a stroke, the war in Europe could have been finished in 1944.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, in my experiences, in my experience, most battles are riddled with misfortunes and mistakes and the sort of the sort found in this operation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was not a failure because the ground was taken and a prerequisite to both Operation Veritable and the Rhine Crossing. So it wasn't like a total failure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, I'm convinced that had the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, given Market Garden the unqualified support that it justified, it would have totally succeeded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Despite its crop of tactical errors in planning and execution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I suppose it was just one more casualty of the American mania for dispersal of effort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, it was without a doubt the most exciting and imaginatively planned battle in which 18 platoon ever fought and I'm proud to have taken part. So he's talking about the focus of effort. He's talking about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you spread yourself out too thin, you're not gonna, you're not gonna make it happen. We call that prioritize and execute. What's the biggest priority? Let's put our resources there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you have that, you have no issues, right? You just crush problems with manpower.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so now they're moving beyond Market Garden and planning, actually planning, he's planning a patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through a village. Back to the battle school teaching at the time prescribed a strength of 12 to 20 for a fighting patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here again, my instincts and experience did not conform to their teaching. He's a rebel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How can you command and control that number of men in the dark, particularly in a skirmish?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Douglas, the company commander, tolerant of the abstin- abstinency of my opinions on these matters, left the planning to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So cool. Douglas' little decentralized command. You figure out your plan then. I like this. The composition of the patrol, I based on personalities and not on a battle school or day number. So imagine that. You're planning based on the personalities of the individuals you have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The countryside being comparatively open, I decided to take a Bren gun. Being steady, Williams and Filmer would fill the bill admirably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we ran into trouble, they could provide covering fire for any assault we might make or if things went badly, they could cover our withdrawal. Cover and move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously, the assault party required strengthening, so I decided to take a total patrol strength of six men, one Bren with seven magazines, and three armed with Stens with five magazines, and four thirty-six grenades each, plus a pair of wire cutters. I carried my Colt, four grenades, and an umbrella.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apart from keeping me dry, in or out of a slit trench, it was useful when prodding for mines and brought some fun and color to our lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jim Kingston and Doug Proctor fought otherwise, maintaining a disapproving silence which I failed to notice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now they're out on patrol, moving down the bank to the right we crawled forward in the mud and wet grass until we were almost past the orchard, from which came the sound of digging and voices. Suddenly a challenge came from our front, followed by a shower of stick grenades thrown from a trench just inside the orchard on our left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the grenades landed between my legs, which were stretched out and spread apart as I lay flat on the riverbank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no flash, its explosion seemed muffled, and more importantly, owing to the soft mud, I received not a scratch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ignominiously, we beat a retreat. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He gets a grenade throw on him, and I actually had this happen to you bruiser, some guys were out on a patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were in an open field. They had cover from one side, because they had pre-planned how they were going to cross this field. And while they were out there, they got hit with machine gun fire and then mortars. And they got mortars dating like on them. And luckily, because it was, they were in like a muddy field.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like almost rice paddy scenario. The mortars, when they hit, they went into the mud. And so they exploded, but there was no, all the, the shrapnel was all absorbed by the mud. That's a lucky day for D.U. Bruiser right there. Boys were a little fired up when they came back from that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember nights in defensive positions, like Gro's Beak, stretched out in a slit trench, trying to get an hour's sleep before going around the platoon positions to check that everything and everyone was alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One felt and was dirty. And in the small hours of the morning with bootlaces cutting into swollen feet, a foul-tasting mouth, and an aching stomach, life had little to commend it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The dirt and discomfort worried me more than the danger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Danger, for some reason that I've never understood, exhilarates. But despite every effort to keep clean, it did not always prove possible, and that was unbearable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never once since I, never once since have I not been grateful to sink into a hot bath or slide into a bed with clean sheets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We went to extraordinary lengths to keep the dirt at bay. Once, in Normandy, I washed and shaved in the rain water in the deep ruts made by carts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Afterwards, I discovered that 400 yards away, the opposition had been overlooking my ablutions. A decent lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who obviously approved of my personal hygiene so that they didn't kill him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. During the campaign, 18 Platoon carried out three types of patrols. Reconnaissance, standing, and fighting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first two were invariably useful because they provided information. If only negative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fighting patrols, of which I led many, were a different and contentious proposition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unlike the German and American armies, we had a vigorous policy regarding fighting patrols, particularly at night and when things were static on both sides on the defense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If, when detailed for a fighting patrol, young officers queried the wisdom of its given object, there was always the standard reply.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I quite agree with you, but it all helps to dominate no man's land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But was it worth the consequent loss of good young officers and NCOs? I doubt it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was able to briefly voice my reservations to my illustrious army group commander. That's Montgomery by the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After giving me my MC, that's military cross, ribbon, he stepped back and said crisply, patrolling is bloody, isn't it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I stammered that it seemed a bit hard, that it was always the same people chosen for patrols, he replied with a twinkle in his eye, one day you'll command a battalion and you'll understand the problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Little interaction. You know, he says patrolling is bloody work, isn't it? And, and Sydney, Jerry says, yeah. And the thing is, it seems like it's always the same platoons that get made to do the patrolling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This isn't interesting, they got another patrol that they're getting ready to have to go out on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the patrol was to probe between the roads and advance if possible as far as the forest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beyond this, its purpose was indeed vague. Douglas called me and another platoon commander to accompany HQ and explained it to us. He then suggested we should toss a coin for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An embarrassing situation arose. I thought that the winner would lead the patrol. The other officer anticipated that the loser would.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I lost the toss and got the job. So, so imagine that you and me are saying, alright, there's a dangerous patrol we're gonna have to do, let's flip for it. I'm thinking heads, if I win, I get to do the patrol. You're thinking if you win, you don't have to do the patrol. Right, right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they, they wrap up a relatively kind of uneventful patrol. Relatively uneventful patrol. And he returns and they're having a cup of tea and some biscuits. Sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In true British form. Back to the book, it was then that I suddenly realized that I had been commanding 18 platoon for three months. To be precise, three months and two days. Before I joined the battalion in mid-July, I had been warned that my life expectancy would be about three weeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seems strange to me, now, but at no time did I anticipate being either wounded or killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was just too busy for thoughts like these and I had become totally absorbed in my grim responsibilities. In July, I had been ridden by doubt about my ability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I now had no such doubts or illusions. Furthermore, I had discovered just how much soldiers resent and fear a young officer who sees battle as a means to win his spurs, possibly at the cost of their lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when you roll in and you're Mr. Beating your chest and you are, you're going to prove yourself to the world. Yeah. Don't be that guy because you're going to write checks with my life and we don't like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My duty had become clear to me. It was to command 18 platoon with quiet confidence. Providing I made them only once, my mistakes would be forgiven.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If my soldiers were to go, were going to place their very lives in my hands, they in return were cried of me, a serious attitude to my profession.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I could achieve this with a light touch, so much the better. That's an interesting comment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, he's saying, look, what they require is I gotta be serious. I gotta be as serious as possible. And the, it's like, you ever heard the term minimum force required? Yes. Yeah, you probably use that as a bouncer, right? Yes. Hey, you gotta use the minimum force required. So what he's saying is that as a leader,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The lighter touch the better. The lightest touch you can use to lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How can you lead with minimum force? Every time you go and you use more than you, than you need, you're, you're over-exerting. Right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And who knows what kind of, you know, you're taking away initiative. You might be stamping out morale. So lead with that minimum touch. I like that. So at this point, they're in a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're in a position, and there's three of these Mark III 75mm self-propelled assault guns. So they kinda look like tanks, they got big tracks, they're Germans, they're German, and they're, and they're sitting out in front of them. They're in a, they're in a static position, the company's in a static position, and there's these,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's tanks sitting there. Three of them. And Douglas looks at them and he's thinking to himself, hey, I don't know what those, they look like they're functioning. They don't look damaged. And so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Douglas is saying okay. Well, we need to find out what's going on even if there's no one even if there's no one in them right now It could be a place where they use snipers later So someone's got to go check them out so


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sidney Jerry is the guy. He goes out alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of sneaks out there. He does stuff alone a little bit more often than he actually does stuff alone. There's another story I didn't mention, but at one point, there, he hears noise, like one of the guys reports, it's night time, and they hear noise in this field, they think there's enemy out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's like, well there's one way to find out. So he, I think he does grab another guy on this occasion, but he goes out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's trying to think of a reason to quit. He's like, I just want to go back. This isn't smart. And as he's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As this is taking place and his fear is climaxing, all of a sudden he hears...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, he's doing another solo operation here. Trying to find out what these tank-like assault guns are doing out there. Back to the book. Climbing up above the tracks, I put my head into the cupola, which was open.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A familiar and terrible stench hit me. Inside was a charnel house. Six inches away, a set of bared teeth, set in unrecognizable black and incinerated lump, grinned at me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beside it, a charred and bony arm reached up in agony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Spread on the floor like a pool of tar, lay the melted remains of the driver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My head reeled, and with my mouth, nose, and lungs filled with the stench of death, I fell back to the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Although unmarked by fire on our side, all three assault guns had brewed up and were blackened on their sides which faced the enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With no stomach to look further, I ran back to the company, forgetting to look for American minds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never again did I look into a knocked out tank or self propelled gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I reported to Douglas that nobody in their right mind would use them for an observation post or for any other purpose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He asked, that's Douglas, Douglas asked the commander of a Sherman tank to fire some armor piercing shells into each of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Positioning his tank hold down beside 16 platoon's positions, which were to our left. The tank commander's, the tank commander first selected the assault gun I had visited.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His first shell hit it slightly above the tracks like the hammer of Vulcan. A red glow blossomed on the armor plate around the point of entry and slowly faded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was followed by a second and third shell until a mirage of heat appeared above it. And for a second time, the funeral pyre blazed with an incandescent ferocity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Sherman gunner then turned his attention to the next assault gun, which, despite being penetrated by about six armor piercing rounds, failed to brew up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His first shot at the third caused a massive internal detonation, no doubt due to ammunition stacked within.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A volcano erupted from its coppola, sending a dense cloud of black smoke and red sparks into the air.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A truly Wagnerian end for the warriors entombed within, but it revolted me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This communicated itself to my NCOs and soldiers who stole mystified glances at my grief for an unknown enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the afternoon I wandered across the road to a lone house where Dennis Clark had his observation post. I was looking for solace from a wise and good friend.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The post was filled with gunner officers. There must have been a dozen of them setting up their equipment in preparation for an attack by 214 Brigade. This activity precluded any solace for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Immature and undisciplined, my imagination ran riot. What were they like? These men whose already incinerated remains had been blasted into oblivion by the 75 millimeter shells of our friend in the Sherman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Undoubtedly, I was part pacifist, but despite an abysmal record in mathematics, and particularly in geometry, I was moderately logical for my age.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This clearly ruled out total dedication to pacifism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had previously discussed the concept of Conscious Objection with clergy of all denominations, but none of them could give me constructive answers to my questions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An infantry subaltern is faced with a conflict which cannot be resolved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Few men will respond, and consequently, little can be achieved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, to win battles, decisions have to be taken and orders given, which at times may seem to be a betrayal of this trust.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A pretentious phrase, but there is nothing to be done about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Nicholas Montserrat's book, The Cruel Sea, poor commander Erickson makes the point with poignancy. It's the war. The whole bloody war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was another side possibly caused by adrenaline. Danger attracted and excited me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt elated and until the battle was over, I was impervious to exhaustion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Commanding a platoon in battle demands not only a clear mind, but also considerable emotional force.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I suspect it is the same transmitted force that exists between a conductor and orchestra.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 40 years later, the dilemma of my ambivalence is still unresolved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I find the suffering inflicted by war unacceptable, particularly amongst women, children, and animals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thank God I was spared the horrific sights at Feliz. On some days, I am a pacifist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yet I'm still attracted by the sounds of guns and, but for an extraordinarily happy marriage would have found it difficult to resist the lure of soldiering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And care about them more than anything else in the world. And with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where you are sending those men into a situation where they can be wounded or killed, and that's it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, a new officer arrived named Humphreys. He used to play cricket for Worcestershire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Douglas told him about Sergeant Oxlund and with great consideration, he went to 17 Platoon's position to offer his congratulations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While they talked, just one salvo of 105s straddled them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One shell fell into Second Lieutenant Oxlund's slit trench, and both were killed instantly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like me, Ken Oxlund has survived five months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Humphrey survived not a full day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is there a mathematical formula by which survival can be calculated?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the past 40 years, I've often pondered this, but still offer no real answer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I suspect however that is something to do with attitude. Attitude seems to me to be a parameter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which restricts not only our relationships but also our creative effort. Further comment is unwise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Humphries, one could argue, had little time to develop an attitude to our kind of existence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Undoubtedly, a self-fulfilling circle develops. Newcomers inexperienced in the perils of the battlefield suffered the highest casualties.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Knowledge of what can and what cannot be risked postpones the fatal reckoning for the soldier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, Junior, battlefield experience will not only protect himself, but also all those under his command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's the, that's why training is so important. So important. And that's why when I got done with, you know, deployment to Ramadi, that's why I went to training. Cause I knew that right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when the task unit came in and relieved us, man, they were getting after it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I didn't know how long that was gonna last. I mean it ended up not lasting that much longer, that kind of intense fighting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The 5th Duke of Cornwall's light infantry had attempted to attack Hoven Village through these ghastly woods and had taken heavy casualties.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their rain soaked bodies littered the paths and clearings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While carrying out a reconnaissance, I came across one of their sections lying across, lying along a small path facing the enemy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At first I fought them alive until I saw that the studs on their boots were rusty and their webbing equipment was bleached with rain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their battle dress was starched with mud and their hands and faces were green.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] German booby traps were on or near many of the tracks. And I was told by the company commander of the fourth Wilters from whom we took over the position that some of the bodies were also booby trapped. Don't try to bury them. He said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was temporarily commanding the company because Douglas had been given a well deserved leave in Brussels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Although militarily comparatively uneventful, Hoeven has a special place in my memories.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was without a doubt my most, the most grisly and horrifying position that we ever hold, held. But more importantly, it was the place of Private Charles Raven's triumph.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Raven had fought in all our battles since Hill 112, which to him was a yardstick of horror.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All subsequent experience was compared with that. His first battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I doubt if he influenced greatly any of the skirmishes, encounters or battles in which he took part.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes he was frightened, and he was so out of place on the battlefield that I often wondered how he became an infantry soldier. Before the war, he had been a clerk in North London.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure he was a conscientious and loyal employee and a considerate and loving husband for, unlike most of us, he was married.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once in Normandy during a nasty little platoon attack up a sunken lane, 18 platoon was held up by the inevitable, unlocated spandos.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Straining my eyes through binoculars, I was trying vainly to locate these guns when I was handed a steaming mug of tea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He should have been observing to his front, but judging the moment right, he had brewed a mess tin of tea on a solid fuel stove.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was considerate with our reinforcements. Pale, unsure men, some of whom until recently had served in the Royal Artillery and had been transferred to infantry regiments to replace the appalling losses incurred in the Normandy bocage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beside them, Raven looked bronzed and weather beaten. A hardened campaigner, complete with a German Luger pistol to prove it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of the platoon regaled the reinforcements with horrible tales from Normandy and Elst.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As little more than a schoolboy, I found these stories amusing. Raven did not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fear, for him, was horribly real and never to be joked about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He developed a paternal attitude toward the newer and younger soldiers, a relationship devoid of patronage, but essentially one of kindly understanding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He spoke to me about it when I thanked him for his help. I admit I'm dead windy, sir.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His extraordinary honesty with himself and the rest of the platoon forbade him to attempt to hide the fact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After two days in the position, he came to me late one evening and asked my permission to report sick the following morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I suppose I should emphatically have refused, but something made me hesitate and avoid dealing directly with the situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said simply, alright Raven, but do come see me before you leave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can only surmise the struggle which raged in his mind all that night while he crouched in his waterlogged slit, transparent into the sinister darkness of the wood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do know, however, that in Hoven Wood, a considerable moral triumph over stark horror was achieved by a good man, unequipped for nature, unequipped by nature for war. In my view, the bravest of the brave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That guy Raven had been through all this stuff and just barely held the line and finally he was gonna break.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It makes physical and emotional demands on participants that run contrary to all human instinct.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The strong minority must quietly help the weak majority.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To me, that is the essence of good teamwork. And that jewel in the crown of the British Army, the regimental system, is the strong foundation upon which we all, knowingly or unknowingly, relied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, there's gonna be some people that deal with it better than others. And you gotta help them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They set up early warning flares. So, little trip wires. In case, to, to notify them if the enemy's moving down one of their flanks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And here we go back to the book. After about 10 minutes had passed, we heard the popping of mortars behind Hoven Village and a concentration of bombs fell in the fields where we had laid the flares. Suddenly our left flank was vividly illuminated as flare after flare ignited.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Knowing little about these flares, we had laid them with the trip wires to top.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had we allowed a degree of slack, the flares would not have ignited. My fault. I should have known.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now he's talking about the attitudes of the soldiers and how soldiers


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there was a claim he read an article years after the war that said that people, you know, people became brutal from the, from the war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And here's what he says, back to the book, does war brutalize?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One can only speak from personal experience, but I think not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Certainly no soldier of mine was made brutal, rather the opposite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] War developed in 18 platoon, consideration for comrades and humanity towards civilians and prisoners of war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was proud of my soldiers then and this sentiment has increased with the passing of years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would not suggest that the naturally brutal might not find in war an outlet for their brutality. However, that war does not brutalize the type of decent men


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The type of decent and fair-minded young Englishmen whom I had the very great honor to command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were not an aggressive generation. A fact which may explain my failure to understand some present day attitudes in the armed services, particularly in the Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A degree of personal aggression is appropriate in troops who are committed to battle for comparatively short periods, like the Marines and the Paras.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the success of an operation depends on ultra rapid action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, in my experience, troops lose personal aggression after about two months in battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After three months, they acquire a mature compassion, which in no way detracts from their offensive capability. They simply know a lot more about war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would suggest that personal aggression should not be confused with offensive spirit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Based on professional competence and experience. Interesting take. That aggression that you can maintain. If you, it's not gonna last forever. And, and then you're gonna have to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dichotomy leadership. There's a dichotomy in everything. And, you know, obviously I'm a big proponent of being aggressive, and I also always talk about the fact that there is such a thing as being too aggressive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not a good idea, and there's probably a good chance that when he talks about people after two months of combat,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone starts to develop a different type of attitude. Also, the people that were ultra aggressive didn't make it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like the ca- like the leader that he talked about that was strutting around. The guy was ultra aggressive, didn't care about anything, and he's dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's a balance you gotta have. That's the dichotomy of leadership. That's why the dichotomy of leadership is so important and so hard to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. On the day after the battalion was relieved in Hoeven Woods, someone I suspect, I suspect it was the adjutant, Tim Watson, decided that I should enjoy 48 hours on leave in Antwerp. I was overjoyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The large hotel, although faded, was still plush and filled with officers, including women, ATS officers, from the various base units stationed in the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just as I had left the battlefield, I was both disheveled and soiled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Surrounded by the residents, many of whom were in service dress, I could not have felt more isolated and lonely. So he's getting some leave time, but he's showing up off the battlefield grimy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My first mi-visit was to a magnificent white marble gentleman's hairdressing salon in the basement of a hotel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Without a word, the barber washed and rinsed my hair twice before touching it with his precious scissors and clippers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember the feeling of well-being as climbing the stairs, I returned to my room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Next I took three very hot baths, one after the other, to rid myself of grime, both physical and emotional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I must have slept for 14 hours before I rose, shaved, took another bath, and decided to explore the city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A rather creased battle dress was my best suit, and in this I descended the main staircase into the lounge which was filled with the resident officers, all of whom seemed to be annoyingly self-assured.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had walked out of a world that I knew into one where I was desperately unsure of myself. Away from the battlefield, this world had no place for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did not go out to lunch, go to night clubs, or meet the girls who were everywhere, seemed to be canvassing for these establishments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had wandered too far into dark and smokey battlefields across the sticks to find solace or comfort in the bright lights behind the blackout curtains of Antwerp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to 18 platoon, which without my knowing it, had become my home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With a light heart, a clean body, freshly laundered clothes, and refreshed by hours of unbroken sleep, I gladly climbed into the three-ton truck that took me there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Years later I found the same problem after I left the army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Antwerp had been a small taste of the real world, and as anyone who has served with good soldiers on grim battlefields will confirm, afterwards, real life never seems real again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later, there was no 18 platoon to slink back to and without a loving wife, it would have proved intolerable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. On 11 January, we return to the south of Holland, this time to Gang- Ganglet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Snow lay on deeply frozen ground and life for the infantry manning their slit trenches became unbearable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, the battalion front was extensive. D company was in reserve close, close to battalion headquarters on the edge of town.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fortunately, gang out was on a reverse slope, which allowed us to move freely during daylight hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The cold was penetrating. The oil in our automatic weapons froze. And until antifreeze lubricants were issued, our brands were useless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Holding a wide front with large gaps between our company positions necessitated, putting out many standing patrols, particularly at night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The privations suffered by these small patrols, usually a corporal and three or four men, were harder than the rest of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some had hallucinations and a few were exact, evacuated, suffering from exposure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keeping fit, warm and clean became a great effort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Conversation dried up. The platoon became quiet but never morose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was quite unnecessary. I had wrongly judged their mood. They just wanted to be left alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And buy the book and read the book. There's a chaotic bottle battle at a pace place called cleave and after the battle of cleave he kind of debriefs here back to the book what instructors at the school of infantry would think about the fighting cleave I shudder to think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Looking back over the years, it seems military, the totally unprofessional, a real wild west shootout.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tactically, the Germans had every advantage. We were strung out in a long column amid shattered buildings and piles of rubbles with the groups of parachute troops attacking from both sides.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They could snipe at us and engage with our, with their spandows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From dozens of positions totally hidden by piles of rubble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had the opportunity to concentrate their counter attacks on the narrowest of fronts, but failed to do to do so. So they failed to focus their efforts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can only assume that we had the psychological advantage, the circumstances being so chaotic and disorganized. Perhaps being Germans, they could not overcome their instinct for organization and tidiness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the end they departed, possibly in disgust, leaving us undisputed victors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they can see that they're retreating. Fearing that the retreating parachute troops would make a stand on the edge of the wood, I increased the rate of advance, joining Lance Corporal Porteous in the forward section.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Running across the level crossing, I suddenly found myself face to face with a German platoon complete with MG34.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fortunately, the gun was mounted on a tripod, which was unusual and could not be traversed in our direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From a drainage channel on the left of the road, a parachutist leaped up, swathed in camouflage veil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pointing his Schmeiser at me from about 10 yards range, he fired a whole magazine of about 30 rounds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like watching a slow running silent movie. I didn't hear the chatter of the Smeiser, but I do remember seeing the stream of empty cartridge cases fly from the German machine gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Miracles do indeed happen. One nine millimeter bullet went through my beret. Missing my head, literally by a hair's width.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another went under the epaulette of my jacket, penetrating the webbing across brace, the webbing cross brace of my equipment and grazing my right shoulder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A third bullet ricocheted off the surface of the road and disintegrated, the jacket finally lodging in the palm of my right hand. Then came the anticlimax.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The German looked at me in amazement, threw away his Schmeiser, and I, with a shrug of the shoulders, he surrendered. My natural elation was short-lived.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Behind me, lay Lance Corporal Portius. Shot through the heart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of the German platoon ran away across the open fields to our left and were cut down by rapid fire, Bren gun, by Sergeant Kingston's section, which now wind the railway track to the left of the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The remainder of the enemy came towards us over the level crossing with their hands raised. We took 57 prisoners.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only fanatical German paratrooper we encountered the entire battle. A large man, he sees Jack around the throat in an attempt to strangle him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Private Flude rose to the challenge. In a bound, he was down the steps and, with a mighty lunge, transfixed the German on his bayonet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A brave lad, he undoubtedly saved Lance Corpoli's life just eight days before losing his own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The German was indeed unlucky, as it was the only occasion throughout the campaign on which 18 platoons bayonets were bloodied. We usually used them to open food cans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having checked the platoon positions and arcs of fire for the Bren's exhaustion hit me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I fell into a deep sleep. During the evening, a senior officer, I understand it was either brigade or divisional commander, came up to my company position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure that Jim was the most diplomatic about it, but it says much for our visitors humanity that he let it go by.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A and C companies were unleashed and passing B company secured their objectives against some opposition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was now our turn. D company advanced across the flat open fields down the left hand side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of their shells exploded on the hard surface of the road with ear splitting detonations and frightening fragmentation. Pieces of shell casing hummed and whined around us. One twirling piece embedded itself with a thud into the trunk of a tree a few inches from my right ear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a pathetic sight, and to everyone's credit, he was quietly removed from the battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had passed his limit and nothing more can be said.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you don't know, these guys are brave at one moment and then a week, a month, two months, four months, they can't do it anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They get across the Rhine, now they're fully in Germany. There's a little bit of a lull in the fighting. Back to the book. Early one morning while we were waiting for our supporting armor to arrive, our padre, John Williams, drove over to see us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After wandering around the platoon for a chat, he suggested, he suggested that we should go for a short stroll. I had now been commanding 18 platoon for over 8 months, and I suspect that our adjutant, Tim Watson, a kindly soul, had asked him to find out what shape I was in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had not gone far into the next field when we came across some grizzly remnants. One of our artillery shells must have exploded right at the feet of a German soldier who had been digging a slit trench.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His splintered and twisted spade lay beside, laid by the side of that half dug trench, beside which was a small old shell hole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had I been on my own, I would no doubt have shuttered and quickly departed from this horror.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Draped over a wire fence nearby lay a parachute which our extraordinarily brave Padre spread out as a shroud on the cold and damp grass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, stooping, he walked around the field, a lonely figure, reverently picking up every piece of that poor soldier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somewhere beneath those flat, damp fields just north of the Rhine, that pathetic bundle must still lie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it seems like things are going their way. And we're going, he's kinda giving a brief to his, to his runner. When all of a sudden he hears yelling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. Sir, they're charging us. Sure enough, from about 150 yards ahead, a well spread out line of about 20 Germans were putting in a bayonet charge. Brave lads, they didn't stand a chance. I gave no orders, except cease fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few minutes later, a possession of Germans with stretchers and a huge red flag emerged from the village behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they were close to their casualties, they hesitated, so I stood up and waved them on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All were unarmed stretcher bearers and they moved across our front collecting their dead and wounded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they had finished their task of mercy, one of them, I think he must have been a German medical officer, turned and saluted in our direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I returned the salute, and with that gesture, the tiny battle of Sindarin ended.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Bremen, little over a month later, one of our stretcher bearers, Lance Corporal J. Stevens, was killed by a German grenade as he went to tend a wounded German soldier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 18 platoon remembering Sindarin were justifiably outraged by such unsoldierly behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Aggression increases the further one goes behind the lines. Opposing infantry, with few exceptions, like the SS, are joined by a natural bond of mutual compassion which few but the aristocracy of the battlefield can understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The public, influenced no doubt by writers with little or no experience of battle, have strange and sometimes silly ideas about what makes a good soldier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ill informed television programs have added to this misunderstanding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Few professions can be, have been so misleadingly caricatured.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, had I been asked at the time before August 1944 to list the personal characteristics which go to make a good infantry soldier, my reply would indeed have been wide of the mark. Wide of the mark.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like most, I no doubt would have suggested only masculine ones like aggression, physical stamina, a hunting instinct, instinct, and competitive nature. How wrong I would have been.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would now suggest the following. Firstly, sufferance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which one could not survive. So he's listing what he thinks the most important characteristics for an infantry soldier are and the first one is sufferance, the ability to suffer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Secondly, a quiet mind, which enables a soldier to live in harmony with his fellows through all sorts of difficulties and sometimes under dreadful conditions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As in a closed monastic existence, there is simply no room for the assertive or acrimonious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thirdly, below no less important, a sense of the ridiculous, which helps a soldier surmount the unacceptable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Add to these a reasonable standard of physical fitness and a dedicated professional competence and you have a soldier for all seasons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] None of the soldiers or NCOs who made 18 platoon what it was resembled the characters portrayed in most books and films about war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I now had to select a team for a dangerous mission and my choice was restricted to stars of the sports field or poets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would unhesitatingly recruit from the latter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you get a sports star, especially these days. Those guys that are getting paid 20, 30, 40 million dollars a year to play a game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're probably not going to be the best at suffering in a trench.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think the key point of that is what he's going back to what he talks about earlier. Is he someone that can think?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Someone that can think. Someone that is not trapped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In, in thinking the same thoughts as everyone else. Which certainly, an artist or a poet has to be outside the box of normal thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Otherwise they become, they don't become that. Right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he doesn't know who's in the shelter. Here we go, back to the- Look, who else was in the shelter? Women and children sheltering?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More enemy soldiers with more panzerfaust and spandos?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were in a vulnerable situation and it was no good pushing forward and ignoring the menace lurking inside that shelter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could have sent two or three men to clear it. However, experience had taught me that when clearing cellars, that the first man sent in is invariably killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead, concentrated fire was poured into the entrance, including a peat bomb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Around us the battle still raged and no opportunity arose for me to inspect the consequences of an awful decision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nevertheless, my duty was to win battles and not to gamble with the lives of my soldiers by fussing over too sensitive a conscience. So, there you go, there's dichotomy for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the one hand he's looking at this shelter thinking there might be women and kids in there. But at this moment in time he doesn't have time to find out. He doesn't have time to take the most cautious route. So they hammer it with machine gun fire and some anti-tank rounds. He never even goes to look. But he knows that he can't. His duty is to win battles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was 5th of May, 1945, 19 days before my 21st birthday. Think about what you were doing when you were 20.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 129 brigades order was stand down and splice the main brace. Which is a military, it's actually a navy term. Splice the main brace means like drinking light is lit. You can drink. The war is over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had just given orders for our small partner brigades move forward against 15 Panzer Division, one of the famous Afrika Korps formations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1983, Jim Kingston gave me his copy of those orders, which he had kept all those years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Reaction to the end of the war, like aggression, increased further behind the lines one went.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The natural aristocracy of the battlefield, the infantry, having fired a photojoy of very lights, curled up, and slept.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had learned too much to indulge in shallow demonstrations. So everyone's all fireworks and getting crazy. These guys are like, cool, I'm going to sleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After July 31st, 1944, no member of 18 platoon was put on a charge. No one went absent or deserted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of the original 36 NCOs and soldiers who had landed in Normandy, only Corporal Cheeseman remained.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many came after them and lasted a few days, weeks, or months. Few I was able to thank adequately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I doubt if any of them realized how much I personally owed 18 platoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I joined them on 31st of July, I was naive and gauch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Due to a narrow upbringing, except for a passionate love of music, my intellect and emotions were unstimulated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My achievement at school had been abysmal, my mind was undisciplined, and confidence in myself, nil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was rapidly swept away probably within three weeks, certainly before we crossed the CN on the 28th of August.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Discovering an ability to command a group of men, some frightened and bewildered, produced a newfound confidence, particularly since I seemed to be able to achieve it quietly and without acrimony or fuss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It proved to me that in some circumstances, older and more experienced than I, others older and more experienced than I could be wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A new world had opened before me. Forethought and planning were demanded. Imagination and instinct too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was that apparently quiet Normandy lane lethal? The intense Spandau fire and mortaring along a dike. Was it a prelude to an enemy's withdrawal? Did the orchard in front of the village hide 88s?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My judgment in these things had proved equal to better than most of, than the most, and it was the making of me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It also brought a few problems. I'm now only able to plan and run things in my way. As a result, I'm probably unemployable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] However, I would never wish to change places with the shy, hesitant boy, whom circumstances put in command of 18 Platoon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After careful reflection, I doubt that at any time since the war have I carried the burden of responsibility that I bore as a subaltern in battle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When an army, corps, division or brigade was committed to battle, it was the battalion company and platoon commanders who took over the mantle of responsibility from the generals, from the generals and brigadiers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only the company and platoon commanders, particularly the latter, were able to have close relationship with their soldiers, which is a prerequisite for having above average success.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Failure by one infantry company could wreck a divisional battle plan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Conversely, Gallant's success, like B Company at Zantan, underwrote the battalion's victory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, I would emphasize the analog with the bond of professional respect between a great conductor and the members of a symphony orchestra, without which a truly great performance is not possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Outstanding performances cannot be arranged in a concert promoter's office. They are created by some magic by the conductor and players in rehearsal and performance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Similarly, while senior commanders appreciated the strengths and weaknesses of their battalions and brigades, they could not extract a great performance from the riflemen upon whom victory depended.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get considerable satisfaction from 18 platoon successes, more so than I got at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, go to the book. After cholera inoculations, we were conducted into the world of Frankenstein.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing had prepared us for what we now experienced. Not Hill 112, not Mount Pinchon. Elst or Hoven could compete with this horror.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before the incredulous eyes of 18 platoon spread over acres of delightfully wooded countryside was a factory of death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Emaciated bodies resembling wax effigies of an alien race from a strange and distant planet filled many pits.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The stench of death and the sight of such highly industrialized human degradation left my soldiers speechless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Private Macy D company's jeep driver aptly summed it up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is now no doubt that we have fought a just war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. Within a month of the war ending, 21st Army Group was required to supply junior officers for the 14th Army in Burma.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lippy, the commanding officer, decided that I should be one of them, and by then being intent on a military career, I was not inclined to argue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would gain useful experience of jungle warfare, of which I knew nothing about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they're getting orders. Still a war going on in the Pacific. Oh, you wrapped up pushing from Normandy through Germany through their surrender. Guess what? We need, we need people to go to fight in Asia. We need people in Burma.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was totally unprepared for the platoons, for the emotions that were unleashed immediately after I was deprived of 18 platoons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt like a small boy on his way to a grim and unknown boarding school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pleasures of commanding 18 platoon in peacetime were being denied me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he gets pulled away from his platoon and he goes in to talk about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What happened to the guys that survived?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How these people went back to normal life. Back to the book. Jim Kingston.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doug Proctor returned home to his wife and baby son in Nottingham in March of 1946. Found the transition from army to civilian life painless, returning to his accounting post in the coal industry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, and Cheeseman during the first few days of his demobilization, his wife died.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Miserable and forlorn, he returned to his old job in Covent Garden, and a few years later, he met and married Bella, who in his own words, was a comfort and inspiration to him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charles Raven joined the London Transport as a bus conductor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later transferring to the clerical staff and rose by hard work and study to be a garage inspector.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Joe Thomas and George Harris went into the building trade industry in Bridgewater.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Surprisingly, just incredibly normal paths after this incredibly not normal life. And, and what happened to Sydney Jerry?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So here's what happened to Sydney Jerry. Back to the book. Arriving in England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On 9th July 1945, I reported to the holding battalion of the Hampshire regiment at Westgate-on-Sea and was immediately sent on 28 days leave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a night out in London with three friends, also Burma bound, I telephoned my parents and found them away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trapping them to Bogna Regis, I caught a train from Waterloo and went to see them.