Description
Object description
British driver served with 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regt, Royal Artillery in GB, 1939-1944; served with 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regt, Royal Artillery, 8th Armoured Bde in North West Europe, 6/1944-5/1945
Content description
REEL 1 Background in Chiswick, London and Stanford le Hope, GB, 1919-1939: family; education; problems obtaining employment on leaving school; attitude to Nazi regime in Germany during 1930s. Aspects of enlistment and training with 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regt, Royal Artillery in GB, 1939-1944: attitude towards call up for military service, 1939; degree of racial prejudice encountered in army; pattern of training; preparations for amphibious landings in Normandy.
REEL 2 Continues: assembling in Bournemouth area. Recollections of operations as driver with 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regt, Royal Artillery, 8th Armoured Bde in Normandy, France, D-Day, 6/6/1944: embarking on landing craft; task of unit's Sexton self propelled guns; landing on Gold Beach; conditions on board landing craft; character of beachhead; casualties on landing; unit officers and NCOs. Recollections of operations as driver with 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regt, Royal Artillery, 8th Armoured Bde in North West Europe, 1944-1945: role of unit in Normandy; opinion of quality of German opposition; Waffen-SS booby trapping of corpses; attitude towards Germans; losses to infantry regiments the unit was supporting.
REEL 3 Continues: attitude of French civilians towards Allied troops; treatment of collaborators and German execution of French civilians; trapping of Germans in Falaise gap, France, 8/1944; air support from Royal Air Force; identification on vehicles; destruction of French countryside; German Air Force attacks; fighting in Tilly-sur-Seulles area, Normandy, France; river crossings during advance; role of unit during Operation Market Garden in Netherlands.
REEL 4 Continues: attempts to support Americans in Ardennes, Belgium, 12/1944; advance into Germany; introduction of non-fraternisation order in Germany; German looting in Normandy, France; opinion of non-fraternisation order; capture of young German Army troops in Germany; sight of bombed German cities; attitude to having served with British Army during Second World War; opinion of unit officers; comradeship in unit; operating inside Sexton Self-Propelled Gun during action.
REEL 5 Continues: driving tracked vehicles; threat to armoured vehicles during action; coping with damaged armoured vehicles; reliability of vehicles; impressions of German tanks; use of cavalry jargon in unit.