With Pennants Flying: The Immortal Deeds of the Royal Armoured Corps

By David Masters

Originally published in 1943, this book tells the story of the battles and campaigns of the Armoured regiments of the British Army in the early period of WWII.

It includes BEF operations in France, 1940, the Western Desert fighting the Italians and later the Germans, Siege of Tobruk, the ill-fated Greek Campaign and battle for Crete, and the early battles in Burma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787204454

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Text originally published in 1943 under the same title.

© Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

WITH PENNANTS FLYING:

THE IMMORTAL DEEDS OF THE ROYAL ARMOURED CORPS

BY

DAVID MASTERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 5

FOREWORD 6

CHAPTER I—THE FIRST TANK CLASH 14

CHAPTER II—THE CALAIS EPIC 26

CHAPTER III—MATILDA MEETS MARSHAL GRAZIANI 34

CHAPTER IV—THE MAN WHO LOST HIS TEMPER 49

CHAPTER V—VICTORY AT BEDA FOMM 56

CHAPTER VI—RETREAT AND ESCAPE 69

CHAPTER VII—GLORIOUS GREECE 79

CHAPTER VIII—GALLANT NURSES AND ESCAPING MEN 97

CHAPTER IX—INVASION OF CRETE 105

CHAPTER X—THE KEY TO KEREN 115

CHAPTER XI—THE LAST STAND 122

CHAPTER XII—SIEGE OF TOBRUK 126

CHAPTER XIII—TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY 138

CHAPTER XIV—BRIGADIER JOCK CAMPBELL, V.C., D.S.O., M.C. 150

CHAPTER XV—THE ROAD TO MANDALAY 160

CHAPTER XVI—THE TANKS AT DIEPPE 173

CHAPTER XVII—CRUSADERS 183

CHAPTER XVIII—THE LEFT HOOK AT MARETH 192

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 210

DEDICATION

DEDICATED

TO THE

COURAGEOUS MEN & GRAND SOLDIERS

OF THE

ROYAL ARMOURED CORPS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TANKS ON PATROL AT TOBRUK

TANK TRANSPORTERS IN THE DESERT

KNOCKED-OUT GERMAN TANKS

CRUSADER TANKS MOVING UP

GENERAL VON ARNIM ARRIVING IN BRITAIN

BREN GUN CARRIERS IN GREECE

BOOTY CAPTURED AT BARDIA

GERMAN ARMOUR DESTROYED AT SIDI RASEGH

GENERAL FREYBERG NEAR SIDI BARRANI

OIL STORES BURNING IN RANGOON

CHURCHILL TANKS AT DIEPPE

FOREWORD

OUT of his fertile imagination Mr. H. G. Wells equipped an army at the opening of the 20th century with new and terrifying engines of war, which he named land ironclads, that were invulnerable to shot and shell and able to move forward over the open country until the enemy, faced with these fearsome steel monsters which could neither be halted nor harmed, was panic-stricken, overwhelmed and destroyed.

Had anyone in those days of 1903 suggested to the War Office or the Royal Military College at Sandhurst that the famous author was presenting them with a blue print of the invention to win the wars of the future, he would have been considered insane. Indeed, in 1912 the War Office actually rejected the idea of a tank submitted by Mr. L. E. de Mole. In bygone years some of the greatest inventions were rejected by the Admiralty; but happily in 1914 the Admiralty realized the possibilities of the landship and may rightly claim the major credit for the production of the first tank, for Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty, used his dynamic energy to further this project to which Rear-Admiral Sir Murray Sueter devoted so much time and ability until the inventors, known to history as Sir William Tritton and Major W. G. Wilson, produced the first tank. Quite unaware of this work being carried on by the Admiralty, Colonel Swinton of the Royal Engineers, now Major-General Sir Ernest Swinton, realized what was wanted and used his energy and influence to drive the War Office to develop the tank—a name he used to mislead the Germans if they heard of it, so the tank was merely the land ironclad of Mr. H. G. Wells masquerading under another name.

How those early tanks of the Tank Corps shocked and surprised the Germans and broke the hitherto invincible Hindenburg Line at Cambrai on November 20, 1917, is a glowing page of British history; less well-known except to their kith and kin is how those gallant young tank crews trained in secret in England and went to France to endure a terrible ordeal by fire in which so many perished and others suffered such mental strain that they were affected for the rest of their lives. One of them was a connection of mine who became a captain at the age of twenty. They won a triumph and gladly paid the cost. Those tanks were one more proof of the engineering genius of the British race; their heroic crews were the forebears of the boys in the black berets who man the tanks today.

Much in those days that was hidden in the future is now revealed by the past. Fused together by the fires of war to pursue a common purpose, the British people were shaken apart by the disruptive forces of Peace into a conglomeration of individuals bent on pursuing their own material aims. The high endeavour which led to the defeat of the foe was swept away by a flood of self-interest that engulfed many who had fought and suffered in the war while leaving others in possession of immense fortunes accumulated during the conflict. To talk in Parliament about equality of sacrifice when war heroes tramped the streets looking for work and army captains stood in the King’s uniform upon the kerbstones of London selling lucky charms and turning the handles of barrel organs to ward off starvation was an insult to the dead and to the intelligence of those who survived.

National cohesion was lost. Each class struggled for its own interests. One or two statesmen like A. G. Balfour, with vision wide enough to view the problem whole, were wise enough to propound the solution; but they went unheeded and the United States, which might have maintained the balance of the world, withdrew the support that would have prevented the nations from slumping into chaos.

During those years when statesmenship was most necessary it seemed to be most lacking. Posterity will mark clearly how Ramsay MacDonald in disarming this nation gave Hitler his opportunity; Lord Baldwin’s continuation of that policy made the German onslaught more certain; the failure of Great Britain to back France in stopping Hitler’s march into the Rhineland clinched the matter. The politicians whom the people had elected to guard their interests failed to ensure the security of this nation. There were exceptions, among them Mr. Winston Churchill, who risked the disapproval of party and people in order to trumpet the truth abroad that Germany was again on the war-path.

The people and politicians were alike to blame. There was no unity in the nation. People pursued their own selfish ends. Miners and shipbuilders and sailors and soldiers walked the streets and starved on the dole, while those in work sought a false anodyne in the picture palaces and dance halls. The British people behaved as though they were decadent. Anyone listening to the wireless programmes with their imbecile crooners and raucous sounds made by the jazz bands might be forgiven for thinking they were a people who were not worth saving. The generosity of the nation was mistaken for weakness. The helping hand held out to the defeated Germans was misunderstood. My own faith was placed on record in 1930 when we seemed most supine, because I refused to believe that a nation with such fine traditions and such a great heritage could decay in one generation. That, to me, was a physical impossibility. And the war has proved me right.

But the Germans and Italians had some basis for considering that we were effete. And one of our strongest national characteristics, that of understatement, probably helped to bring about this war, for the man who means more than he says may sadly mislead the man who says more than he means.

In days when disarmament was regarded as the passport to paradise and senseless people lavished money on their pleasures and were parsimonious about defending what their forefathers had won so hardly for them, the fighting services were starved until they became mere skeletons. Some military men were so hide-bound by tradition that they imagined, if another war ever came, that it would be fought as of old, and that tanks were a passing phase which, having achieved their purpose, would no longer be of service. At one time there was grave danger of the Tank Corps being entirely disbanded, and it survived only because a few officers, who remain practically unknown outside military circles and who deserve the thanks of the nation, were keen enough to devote their technical knowledge and lives to the subject in which they believed.

About this inner war which was fought over tanks in the War Office in the post-war years, I know little. It was a battle of ideas, the men with new ideas opposing those with the old. The fact that the Tank Corps was on the verge of being disbanded suggests that the men with the old ideas nearly won. It was significant, too, that Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, the Chief of Staff of the Tank Corps in the first brilliant battle of tanks at Cambrai, left the service and was not recalled to give the nation the benefit of his experience and knowledge. Instead he used his pen to guide military thought and goad the War Office along the right road, while another outstanding tank man, General Martel whose enthusiasm drove him to build a small tank with his own hands in his back garden, remained in the army to work and fight for the development of the tank.

Both Great Britain and France, to their sorrow and shame, neglected the brilliant men who indicated clearly in their published works and lectures that the tank was destined to be the weapon of the future. A prophet has no honour in his own country. But the German staff were not so blind. They saw that the invention which sprang from British brains might indeed, if properly developed, bring the world under German domination. The books of De Gaulle and Fuller were studied and acted upon by the Germans.

Meanwhile the few men in Great Britain who realized the value of the tank were refused the necessary money with which to develop it. All they could do was to work out their plans on paper, and instead of being able to manœuvre with real tanks they were reduced to manœuvring with symbols. They were like little boys playing at soldiers. Sometimes they were forced to the pitiful expediency of marking boards with the words: This is a tank. To attain anything like perfection, theoretical training must be wedded to practical experience and it was no more possible to train fine tank crews without giving them tanks in which to manœuvre than it is possible to train fine sailors without sending them to sea in ships. Those officers who sensed the true value of this invention were compelled to fall back on the obsolete tanks of the last war, or a few tanks produced in 1923-25. The enthusiasm of most men would have been crushed by the meanness of the Treasury, but neither lack of money nor military opposition sufficed to lessen the resolve of the technical officers of the Royal Tank Corps which evolved into the Royal Tank Regiment of today. To their credit and the glory of the British Army they held tenaciously to their convictions and the world must now pay tribute to their foresight.

Directly the revolutionary plan for mechanizing the British Army was adopted and blessed by the House of Commons in 1938, the men who had fought for tanks had won their fight on principle, but the enlightenment of their opponents came too late for the effective mechanization of the British Army to be attained by the outbreak of this war. Things were in a state of transition. Our paucity of tanks at the outbreak of war was revealed by Mr. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons during a debate in which the former Minister of War, Mr. Hore-Belisha, implied that the fault lay with the Premier—which stung the Premier to retort that Mr. Hore-Belisha during his term of office as Minister of War had only managed to equip the British Army with some 250 tanks.

That was the state of Great Britain’s unpreparedness. And it may shock the people to know now, when the information can no longer help the enemy or injure the national cause, that the 1st Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment disembarked in Egypt before the outbreak of war with armour consisting entirely of light tanks that were quite obsolescent. Their armour was so light that it could not stand up against German guns or anti-tank rifles. It gave no protection against shell splinters, and however imposing the tanks looked, they were little less than death-traps in which the flower of the trained officers and men of the Royal Tank Regiment died in fighting desperately against impossible odds. They stood no chance against the German armour, and in some squadrons hardly any officers or men survived. They paid with their lives for the mistaken policy of Ramsay MacDonald, Lord Baldwin and all those politicians and people who burked their responsibilities in the past.

Even the tanks rushed into production in this war were far from perfect, as was admitted in the House of Commons; but the overriding necessity for producing them to stem the German Panzers made it impossible to wait on perfection. Stark experience on the battlefield taught a lesson that was translated into the tanks now rolling out of the factories, tanks that are relatively as far ahead of the tanks of 1939 as the Spitfire was ahead of the fighter of 1915. Some of these tanks like the Matilda and Valentine which served democracy well are already ageing. Others like the Crusader and Churchill were hammered out on the anvil of war and, good as they are, better ones are in the making.

Some of the latest monsters cover the ground at an astonishing speed. Not until I had ridden inside did I realize the conditions under which the tank crews fight. Shut up in their metal hull, they are cut off from the outside world rather like the stokers in the hold of a ship or the crew of a submarine. Directly the commanding officer closes the turret his field of vision is restricted to what he can see through the periscope. A slit serves as look-out for the driver who, when the visor is closed in action, drives under the direction of his officer. His right foot manipulates the accelerator, his left foot operates the gear-changing pedal, while the gear selector jutting between his legs is operated by hand. The crew are linked by telephone, and orders have been standardized and reduced to the fewest number of words. A tank cannot turn round at top speed, so the driver must push the gear-changing pedal to drop into lower gear every time he turns. The revolution counter which tells him the rate at which the engine is ticking over is as necessary to him as to the pilot of a Lancaster bomber, while the compass, which the earlier tanks lacked, is just as essential, for out in the desert or open country he sets his course by it. Except for the commander, the men in some types of tank are oblivious of what is happening behind them or on either side, for they have no periscope to give them an all-round view. They fight solely by faith—faith in their tank, faith in their commander and in themselves.

The gunner is also a slave of the instrument, altering range and direction under the orders of the commander, frequently firing at a target which is hidden from him. In the rack beside him are stacked such shells as battered Rommel’s Panzers and every time the gun fires the cordite fumes and smoke blow back into his eyes and nostrils.

In his own little niche, surrounded by secret wireless apparatus, sits the operator with his wireless set that can be switched over from sending to receiving like the sets in aeroplanes. And above all in the turret sits or stands the commander who controls the steel monster.

Infantry tanks, such as the ageing Matilda and Valentine, consume rivers of petrol. For instance, the Matilda, which weighs 26 tons does only a mile to a gallon. She is a mobile fort, nineteen feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet six inches high. At top speed she rocks like a ship in a storm and the crew get many a bump and bruise, especially if the going is bad. But top speed is for emergencies, and usually she travels at a cruising speed of ten miles an hour. Three inches of armour protect her turret, while the body has a belt of armour two and a half inches thick. A watertight hull up to the half-way mark enables her to charge through water four feet deep without wetting the crew inside her. As for crossing ditches, she can take an eight-foot trench in her stride.

The Valentine infantry tank weighs only seventeen tons, but is faster than the Matilda, with a top speed of about eighteen miles an hour and a cruising speed of thirteen. The heavy tanks were designed to flatten out defensive positions and open a way for the infantry, while the fast cruisers rushed round the flanks to cut communications and the lines of retreat. The Western Desert provided ideal conditions for tank operations, with vast spaces in which tanks could be handled and manœuvred as though they were fleets of ships.

As a counter to the sudden swoop of tanks, the land mine proved increasingly effective, while the German guns proved better than the British armour, with the result that tactics were modified by experience. Positions which tanks would have overrun in the earlier days, giving the infantry little to do but round up the survivors, were so strongly defended with mines that the loss of armour grew too costly for the attackers to pay the price. In the end, at the Battle of El Alamein, Generals Alexander and Montgomery defeated the Germans by putting the cart before the horse. Instead of using the tanks to crush a way through the defences for the infantry, they put over a blasting barrage which was followed up by the infantry who, winkled the shaken survivors out of their trenches and strong points with the bayonet, while the sappers followed to clear the mines from a gap through which the tanks could pass to work havoc on the flanks and rear of the Germans and turn the retreat into a rout. The way the tanks were handled was a fine tribute to the training schools in Britain as well as a triumph for the improved tanks with their bigger guns which are being produced by the workers of Britain and America.

The latest tanks which were put through their paces to let me see what they could do resembled some antediluvian monsters, brutish and insensate, seeking their prey about the countryside. Their track plates worked like the feet of a giant centipede. Their insides are packed with fuel tanks and engines and pipes and instruments of many kinds, with the big gun and machine-guns and ammunition; stowed away in their appointed places during actual operations would be the food and water rations for the crew, the sleeping blankets and great coats and camouflage net and tarpaulin, unditching tools, chain, ropes and spares, and particularly the cooking stove, a thing beyond price in the desert, for it yielded the warriors their thrice-blessed cup of tea at the end of a hard trek or a bitter battle. Not even a tank enthusiast would dare to assert that the crew’s quarters inside the tank were commodious—there was just room for them to do their duty, and none to spare.

You must find it a tight fit, I said to one officer who was six feet three inches tall.

I manage all right, he replied with a grin.

My experience in a Crusader gave me more sympathy than ever for the big man cooped up in a tank. The Crusader can take the road at thirty miles an hour and relies upon her speed to escape damage, so her armour plating is quite light, and her commander keeps her on the move to dodge the enemy gunners. Low-built, to make her a poor target, she clears the ground by about sixteen inches and carries a crew of three, a driver in front, and the gunner along with the commander, who operates the wireless, up in the turret. It is a tight fit, for the centre of the turret is occupied by the breach of the big six-pounder gun. To the right of the gun facing the breach and a few inches away from it sits the gunner on a little padded seat about the size of a man’s hand; on the left, facing the gunner across the gun, sits the commander on a similar seat. The shells are stowed in racks behind the gunner, who can reach them easily with his right hand; the wireless apparatus is stowed away in the body at the back and left side, and the wireless pole can be extended like a fishing rod to sixteen feet to receive and send at a distance. The whole turret can revolve in a complete circle to enable the gun to fire in any direction—if the hydraulic system is cut, the turret can be turned by hand, but it is a tough job, as I saw for myself.

Donning a borrowed leather jerkin, a beret and goggles, I climbed into the turret and the Crusader moved off until it came to the road, where it halted, swivelled on one track to turn right and began moving along the road uphill at a spanking pace.

Suddenly we turned off the road on to the training ground. Never was a heath so blasted, never a greater scene of desolation. The whole countryside was churned up as though by giant concrete-mixers; there were big pot-holes full of water, vast waves of mud undulating as far as the eye could see. Here and there a pine tree stood with a little ring of grass or heather round its base, which only increased the sense of desolation. The tank drivers had spared the trees, although the tanks could have uprooted them or snapped them off in their stride. Let us hope that when the war is won the heather and herbage will spread from these little oases in the desert until they cover the countryside and make it bloom again.

As our tank sped forward, it left behind a permanent wake in the mud. The trails of other tanks criss-crossed in all directions. It was an amazing scene. We shot into a pot-hole, throwing up a wave of water as we passed, and then slowed down to drive diagonally across the steep slope of a hill which threw us over at such an angle that every minute I thought we would overturn and roll over and over to the bottom of the gully. But the brilliant young driver knew just what the Crusader could do, and although he flirted with danger he always had a margin of safety in hand. We jolted, swayed and bumped about as we raced down the hillside to cross the gulley at the bottom and climb the other side. Flung about in the turret, I had to hang on grimly as we hit the other side of the gulley with a big jolt that brought us to a standstill. The tank was bellied in the mud in which her tracks could get no grip to take her up the hill. Quickly reversing, the driver went back for a yard or so before he swivelled to the left to climb the hill at an angle.

Then the other driver took over to show what he could do, and I found that the initial rush was a mere warming-up process such as a runner may make before he starts to race properly. The first driver took his place beside me in the turret while the sergeant who acted as my guide squatted outside on the front of the tank to direct the driver where to go. He certainly knew all the spectacular spots. We plunged down a steep hillside at a terrifying pace, flinging up waves of black mud that plastered my face until I looked like a sweep. Once or twice as we charged the incline we stuck and had to reverse and try again. But nothing could stop the Crusader. Up we climbed, to take the downward plunge more swiftly than ever, while the wind whistled past my ears and the mud bombarded my face. Suddenly as we dropped into a pot-hole there was a great jolt that hurled me against the side of the turret and I saw the sergeant slither down the side of the tank and suddenly throw out his right hand and grab something to save himself from being flung off. For a moment I thought that our mad ride was to end in tragedy and that the sergeant would be pulped under the tank tracks, but he saved himself in time. His face, like mine, was smothered in mud. He wore no goggles and I saw blood streaming from an eye as he strove to clear the mud from it, while we rocked and swayed and dived downwards. I thought at first that his eye had been injured, but the blood came from a nasty gash he had given his finger when he made that grab to save himself from being thrown off.

We stopped awhile to get our breaths and clear some of the mud from our faces. Then the Crusader began to waltz left and right and plough through indescribable mud that flowed away behind us in a big wave. All this time I had been standing in the turret.

Close the flaps, I said, and the trooper in the turret pulled down the flaps and we were shut in tight. We sped along and up and down, getting stuck sometimes and reversing before we could surmount some of the obstacles. I watched that desolation of mud racing toward me through the periscope. As soon as the turret was closed I tasted the fumes from the exhaust. They got worse, and after about ten minutes I could stand them no more.

Open the turret, I said, and was thankful to get the sweet, clean air into my lungs again.

It must be pretty bad in the turret when the gun is being fired, I ventured.

The trooper laughed. We get used to it, he replied.

The tank charged on like some primeval monster wallowing in the primordial slime. It was as though the gods, tiring of man’s folly, had turned the clock of the world back for a million years.

Coming to the hard road again, we dropped down it and were soon back at the starting point.

How did you get on, an officer asked, when I entered his office.

I’ve never been so knocked about in my life! I answered.

What did you ride in? he queried.

A Crusader!

That’s the most comfortable tank of the lot, he rejoined.

It made me wonder what the most uncomfortable tank was like and quickened my admiration of the crews who man them.

Although the jolting and bumping of the tank going at speed was not unexpected, I was often taken by surprise; but the way the giant suspension springs took up the shock of the immense weight was wonderful.

What most affected me, however, was the noise. I was prepared for a shaking. I even anticipated the noise and concluded that it could not be worse than the pandemonium in a cotton mill or bomber. But I was wrong. Outside in the open it sounded like a sullen roar. But when we were shut down it played around and pressed down on my senses until I felt pulverized. The sudden cessation of the din when the tank stopped and the flaps were pushed up was like a taste of paradise.

I couldn’t stand the noise, I remarked to an officer.

I think it’s even worse after you have been wearing the headphones for hours. They amplify so much. Many a time when I have taken them off I have been completely deaf, he said.

Young though it be, the Royal Armoured Corps is rich in great traditions, for incorporated in it are some of the famous cavalry regiments such as the Hussars and Lancers as well as many yeomanry regiments who have fought the world over and have many historic victories emblazoned on their colours.

Owing to their modesty, tank crews were very reluctant to talk. Officers and men alike were generous in their praise of the other man who had done something fine, but they were indeed absent minded beggars when it came to talking about themselves and would generally refer to the most desperate tank battles as A nice party.

In these pages will be found some of the outstanding deeds of the Royal Armoured Corps as described by fighters who took part in the actions. The fact that Colonel Jock Campbell, V.C., worked so closely with tanks and actually led them in the critical phase at Sidi Rasegh, which won for him the Victoria Cross, is the reason why he takes his place in this book although he was a gunner.

To the War Office for the facilities granted to me, and to those officers and men who stood up so gallantly to my barrage of questions—sometimes for hours on end—I must express my thanks. This book is the result of their co-operation.

DAVID MASTERS.

CHAPTER I—THE FIRST TANK CLASH

AN uneasy feeling swept the British Isles when Hitler began his long-premeditated rape of Poland without receiving that instant declaration of war which the pronouncements of the British Government after Munich had led the people to expect. As the hours passed, with the British Government striving at the last moment to save the peace of Europe, and the German hordes started to bomb and blast Poland into subjection, the British people asked themselves whether the same Government which strove to appease Hitler by sacrificing Czechoslovakia was going to keep its solemn pledge to Poland. Relief was the dominant note among the people when war was declared on September 3, 1939. They were neither appeasers nor warmongers. They hated war. But they felt instinctively that the German challenge must be met, that the day of expedients was done. Even the most inarticulate of them was convinced that German aggression could only be stopped by war. But this time there was an unspoken determination to settle Prussianism for good.

By Sunday, September 10, 1939, the British Expeditionary Force was mobilized and moving. Trains packed with troops pounded along the rails to the ports of embarkation where the men boarded the vessels that carried them unhindered in safety to France. Convoys of lorries full of men and stores and equipment sped along the English roads down to the waiting ships that conveyed them to Brest and Nantes and St. Nazaire.

From the time that the first light tanks—the Vicker’s Mark VI—were lifted from the holds and swung ashore at St. Nazaire on Monday, September 11, 1939, the black berets of the Royal Armoured Corps were like a magic passport to the hearts and homes of the