A few days ago
BBC2 screened a two part series fronted by Mark Urban on the part played by the
Fifth Royal Tanks of The Royal Tank Regiment.
Among the first armoured troops to go to North Africa they were part of
an elite who went on to be in the Normandy Landings in 1944 and then to
northern Germany at the very end in 1945 (picture above in Hamburg).
In the desert
smartness was a low priority because of other needs and demands. Given the conditions, the nickname "The
Filthy Fifth" reflects typical squaddie humour of the period. It may come as a surprise to some that the
men of that time in the services had their own ideas about a lot of things.
The
Regimental March is the old
song "My Boy Willie" and words I recall were "It wasn't the
Yanks who won the war, it was my boy Willie, never been in a tank
before.......". It is a fine tune
to march to, been there, done that, a few years after the war with a divisional
parade.
It was a
squadron of The Filthy Filth who were there to march to it, then one of the
units in the 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) stationed in Northern Germany
as Cold War Warriors. They had joined
the Division before El Alamein and were with it until the end, the Division
being disbanded in 1958.
The two
programmes in the series are mercifully quite straight forward avoiding all the
usual bank crash wallop favoured by documentary makers these days. The horrors are the realities of tank warfare
and there was more than enough of that in the various campaigns involving 5RTR.
One part that
was discomforting to say the least was at the very beginning in the first years
of the war. The regiment, like all the
other tank units, was equipped with tanks that were grossly inadequate, under
powered, under gunned, unsafe and unreliable.
If Willie had not been given American tanks later we would not have had
an armoured force left to fight.
How was it
that the mighty intellectuals of the civil service, the generals of the high
command, presumably the intelligence services and not least the politicians,
were unaware of the capability of the German tanks and anti-tank artillery? If they were aware why did the Army finish up
with tanks that were a liability? Later
there were better tanks and guns, but still inferior to the German.
Even the tanks
that were produced it seems were poorly made, more being lost in breakdowns
often than were destroyed by enemy action.
Was it simply bad workmanship and if so how was it in the chain of
production that such unreliable products were sent out for men to die in?
This is before
you have the outlandish tactics at first adopted by a general staff who did not
understand armoured warfare. What were
pseudo cavalry charges must have made easy targets for the superior power of
the German guns.
It seems that
for the first British tanks to have a chance of knocking out a German one, they
had to get a to a couple of tanks length for their shells to impact on the
German armour. Typically, it was the men
who were blamed and not the failures of supply or command.
What worries
me is looking at the government of the present and for that matter the
opposition, the situation today seems to be just as bad, if not a great deal worse.
We are being
given cheap propaganda, lies a plenty, seriously substandard services and no
effective planning for the future in a dangerous and demanding world.
As in 1940 and
1941 we could have to pay a heavy price for this.
Imagine my surprise, when on the east end of Princes St, just under the statue of the Iron Duke himself, I saw a wee trailer with a sign saying 'Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, Scotland's cavalry'.
ReplyDeleteApparently 'Snatch' Land Rovers have replaced Main Battle Tanks in Cameron's army; much cheapness...