Another chapter in Les Goff's WWII memoirs

 

Now, to get back to our move and my first experience at driving a gun tower partly loaded with men, arms, and a three ton gun behind. We started off in late afternoon, raining of course. Everything was going well until for some reason we had to take a dirt road which was pretty well ploughed up by the traffic and it was narrow and muddy with trees on each side resembling our fir trees. Darkness is coming on so this makes it hard to see with no lights. Just follow the gun ahead of you and that little red light in a funnel on the gun muzzle. After following this light for a while it becomes hard to tell how close or far you are from it. Our man in charge is Jimmy Erwin standing up on passenger side where there is a door opening in the roof for observation. Everything is going ok for a while . We are moving but slowly when suddenly there is a burst of machine gun fire which sounded pretty close. Jim starts to holler “everybody out” which we did with out hesitation with rifles and crouched beside our tower expecting more fire. Nothing happened. Suddenly I noticed our tower was starting to move. I had not applied the hand brake. I jumped in but it had gone toward the shallow ditch and there didn’t seem to be any return. As it seemed to have quietened down we unhitched the gun and I thought it wouldn’t be any trouble to drive out. I had it in four wheel drive but it just continued straight ahead and followed that ditch. Two wheels on the road , two in the ditch and it was real mud. We ran out the winch cable, tied on to a tree. I pulled out three trees before I managed to get free of that stubborn ditch. There were a lot of words said that I won’t repeat. After re-hooking the gun we went not so merrily on our way, but very cautious. After a while it got so dark that Jim walked ahead of me with a white rag. Jim had a loud voice which was good. He said, “Goff , if you hear me shout, stop”. We were traveling in a convoy made up of our battery. I do not know who was leading. It might have been some of the infantry, however, it was slow going on account of the darkness. The only light being the little red light in the gun muzzle.

We had not gone far when I hear Jim roaring for me to stop. 

Stopping is quite common in a convoy. Especially at night. 

There gets to be a sort of accordion effect . Sometimes we get 

too close packed and have to space out a little. We continued 

on for some time passing through a small village where we 

stopped for a while. Our gun sergeants were shown where to 

put each and every gun in a defensive position. Finally Jim 

comes back and informs us a position had been located not far 

from where we are sitting waiting. The ground rises up to the 

east of the village about two or three hundred yards ahead. 

Our objective is to put our gun in position on the high ground. 

This of course being dark we could not see much of anything so 

proceeded to spot with Jim leading on foot. We could not hear 

any shooting close by. There was a house near the top of the 

ridge and a little further along a big heap of fagots, small 

bundles of brush tied like a sheaf for heating. We decided to 

put our gun right next to it and use some of the bundles to 

camouflage the gun. Resting the gun muzzle on the ground, 

making it look like a part of the heap. While we were busy 

doing this there was a loud bang close by. Some one said that’s 

grenades. Knowing Jerry was close by made us work as fast as 

possible and dig a two man size trench beside the gun leaving 

two men on the gun. Jim and I took the tower back down to 

the village where it could be out of sight. Then back to the gun 

digging more trenches as there was six men in all. We 

managed to get one dug close to the house and by pulling

 some doors off 

the house to cover it. Four guys could squeeze into it. We threw 

dirt on top to make it a little more safe from air burst or 

mortars. We scrounged some bedding from the house. Nice and comfortable. Its nice and quiet for a change. The spud 

islander and myself go back to the gun to relieve our guard. We take our rifles and shovels.

 The soil was quite sandy, easy 

digging but also kept caving in . We decide to make it a little 

deeper. We take turns digging. Its starting to rain so we find 

some sticks in the pile of fagots, place them across the top, 

place some more fagots over our heads leaving the center 

open so as to be able to jump out. 

After a couple of hours we are relieved by two others of the 

crew. Its getting daylight and seems to be quiet for the time so 

we run back under the crest of the hill to our main diggings for 

a bit to eat. That is when I notice quite a concentration of 

Shermans behind us in the village. About this same time our 

officer Dave Heaps came along in a jeep, stopped behind a 

house and came running over to where we were. He had his 

thirty eight drawn and looked quite concerned as if he 

expected to find us in a grim situation. We assured him there 

wasn’t much happening , however he decided to leave his jeep 

in case we had to leave in a hurry. However, we were to learn a 

little later that Dave had reason to be alarmed. There was 

German infantry not more than a hundred yards away. Also our own infantry, the Essex Scottish were dug in on our right and 

the Jerries on the left. This was something we didn’t know 

until 

we had made our way back to the gun again about noon. Still 

raining, we settle into our trench again by the gun not 

expecting much to happen when suddenly we are getting some 

shelling all around. Not a heavy concentration so we try to see 

where its coming from. We can not see much for fine rain. I 

saw a couple of infantry trenches get direct hits close by so we 

decide to keep our heads down. The spud is digging out more 

sand when suddenly something cleans my little shelter from 

over my head. It would seem to me that it was a dud as the

 others were all High Explosive. 

The Sixth Of June

June 6 always means "D Day" to me as it did to my dad. He missed out on it by about a month but did get over there in time to see the devastation left of the battle. Burned out Sherman tanks and dead bodies of animals (and a few humans) were quite the shock. He said he did not have much hope of ever getting out of there alive. Somehow they fought their way through the next months til the war ended in May of the next year.
I've posted some of his memoirs here over the years but have been pretty slow at posting the rest of them. I am lucky he wrote down his account of his journey and saved photos of the places he was and the people he saw along the way. This photo was taken on Wangerooge island after the war ended. Dad at centre and Alec Abel on the left. I got to meet Alec in later years.

In other news, last fall's harvest is done as of a week ago today. That dry dead straw just disintegrated going through the combine and the wheat was the driest I've ever combined. It won't be worth much, just a little less loss in a poor crop year. And here is the video.

Probably not news that the wind is still blowing like a hurricane trying to tear everything loose. We did get one nice quiet day this week and it was yesterday. I went at it as hard as I could and managed to get two fields of chem fallow sprayed. Might have done more but heavy fog made for a late morning start and the 30 miles of road driving, at 14 mph, used up a lot of time.

Les Goff WWII, -The Continuing Story

L Goff at right (Camp Shilo)

Valentine/Archer tank

One day a couple of guys we thought to be Germans came running toward us trying to impress on us that they wanted to surrender at the same time bringing their Spandau with them. They turned out to be Poles who wanted out. As they were left by the Germans they decided to give up when they found they were on their own. They had been dug in not far from us and I think it was them that used to give us a burst every once in a while. Sort of playing games with us.

Things quieted down some what after that. I guess Jerry was moving back and of course we became more bold leaving the safety of our slit trenches, taking a hurried look around the farm yard. There was a lot of dead Germans in and out of their trenches. I think they probably came under heavy tank fire and air burst from 25 pounder artillery. Around the 20th of August we got word that a move forward was in the works, an offensive code named “Tractable” was aimed at a drive for Falaise. At this time we had no idea of the name if the offensive was or what our what our objective was. We were told to be loaded and ready to move out by midnight and there was going to be artificial moon light afforded by a number of search light batteries In the process of getting ready the Germans fired a few air bursts at out location killing men on one of our Bren carriers.
We got rolling at the prescribed time on our way to Falaise. Everyone tense, not knowing what is in store but expecting the worst as most moves from past experiences meant a hot reception. I mention at this move our gun crew was given a new Sergeant , I can not remember his name but I do recall he was from an anti aircraft battery. His knowledge of anti-tank was very limited , however we went forth it seemed a snail’s pace. The artificial light proved fairly good for us. It was very dusty from the tanks etc. I imagine it was about a ten mile trek which turned out to be uneventful. It was getting daylight by the time we came in sight of Falaise. There were a lot of buildings on fire and we were told there were snipers about so keep your eyes open. We were led around the out skirts of the town and ended up in a great expanse of open country. It didn’t seem like there was a war on . We set our gun in position and as assumed did everything necessary for what might come. As usual we did not knew what role we were playing. I finally assumed we were in a flanking position. Most of the firing seemed to be north and east of us and quite a ways off. I remember we spent a very uneventful day in this position. Our newly acquired Sergeant had a jerrican full of cider which he quite enjoyed. By mid-afternoon he was very much out of the war. Luckily, we did not need any help from him.

At this point my memory fails me as to how long a time we spent in this position. The cider did not affect my memory as I had very little use for it. To me it tasted like vinegar. I suppose we were there a couple of days waiting for the pocket to be cleared and then it was a move that took us to the river Seine near a place called Elbouf. On the way I remember seeing hordes of German prisoners being loaded into trucks headed for POW areas. I do know the river had to be bridged and withal the traffic we had to wait a while as the armor and infantry had to get across first so we had little to do for part of a day so we parked in an orchard under trees. As it seemed the war had moved on we did not dig trenches but made our supper and rolled out our blankets to bed down for the night. All was peaceful until about midnight. We heard some planes flying over . Somebody said those are Jerry planes and sure enough, they started dropping flares. Lit everything up like day. As the old saying goes, we were all caught napping literally. It was pretty scary. There were not many planes but the bombs sounded like they were coming straight for us. We laid flat on the ground wishing we had a slit trench to drop in. However, it was all over in a matter of minutes. We had no casualties in our troop. I heard a lot of shouting from an infantry unit near by. They had one or two men slightly injured when the bombs dropped. There was a very loud sort of thump and flame and sparks , dirt and dust all over the place. But as usual when it cleared ole lucky me was still standing.

The next day our battery crossed the river on a Bailey Bridge and proceeded on in. We passed through Rouen and carried on toward Belgium. We were told that there was pockets of resistance along the way and we did come under mortar fire at one point and Sergeant Laing caught a piece of shrapnel. I was laying in the ditch beside him and a piece went through the back of my shirt just missing my hide. From here on to Antwerp we just seemed to roll along taking up a position which seemed to me north of Antwerp, a small town. We put our gun into firing position and found everything quite sodden and water logged. Tried to dig a trench without much success as the water was there about a foot below the surface. However, at this time we did not come under much fire, luckily for us as there was no protection except for a house that was vacated by its owner. We had a little protection from the weather. We set up house-keeping in the basement and also slept there. The basements in that area were very shallow being low land and at this time it was much worse due to the flooding of the country by the enemy who very systematically made travel by any other means but by highways or cross country impossible.
We took a defensive position covering a road. We spent a few days in a fairly quiet location except for the odd shell toward nightfall. We were told it was a self propelled gun that would move up at dusk, fire a few rounds and back out before someone drew a bead on him. I’m glad to say we were not one of his targets and we were not able to spot him. He was probably a half mile away and firing from some well concealed position.
The weather continues heavy overcast , some rain and about forty degrees above . At this time there were six of us. We slept in the basement, put all our blankets together. We only carried one so keeping warm was not always possible. Of course you never took your clothes off so we pulled on all we had and some times scrounged a blanket from a deserted house as there was seldom anyone living around the area where the war had passed through.
I can not remember how many days we spent at this location nor the name of the little town but it was some where north of Antwerp. We finally got the order that a move was coming shortly as the port of Antwerp was secure. I was not normally glad to hear of a move but this time anything seemed better so we packed up and moved out. We joined up with the rest of the battery and the rest of 4th brigade infantry, field artillery, etc. We were to proceed on to Nijmegen and take up positions now held by the airborne. British, American and Canadian and various units of the British armoured corp. We were supposed to get there as quickly as possible but things didn’t work that way. I , being the spare driver of our crew now had to take the wheel of our tower as our driver was hit in the hand by a piece of shrapnel. I was very new at driving and as green as they come. Before coming to France I was given a three day course on how to drive these towers. They were Ford or Chevy four wheel drives with a built in winch . Well the gears took a lot of filing by the time I got on to shifting. That was my first introduction to becoming a driver so I was given a license and felt proud of the fact that I was the only spare driver in our gun crew. It seems strange but true that like myself not many of the men had much previous experience at driving.

D Day Repost

This is a re-run but seeing as we have just passed the 72nd anniversary of D Day (June 6) I thought I'd repost this blog entry from my dad's memoirs of WWII.

Memories of WWII

Les Goff’s WW II Memories
July 6, 1944, 2nd Canadian Anti Tank Regiment of the 2nd infantry division left Tilbury Docks at London, England bound for France. We arrived on a beach near the town of Bayeux, Normandy where we were able to disembark without having to wade or drive through water which we were grateful for. However our trucks and towers were water proofed up to a point, possibly 3 or 4 feet of water. We arrived without incident
We had 17 pounder anti-tank guns which were towed by either Ford or Chevy towers carrying six to seven men. All kit, 40 rounds of 17 pounder ammo, five thousand rounds of 303, also each man carried a rifle. One bren machine gun per gun crew. A number of grenades , two mortars and various other pieces of equipment. So we were rather squeezed in. The ammo and packs were carried on the roof of the tower which was built for that purpose.
On going ashore there was plenty of evidence that there had been a lot of shelling. There were a lot of knocked out tanks and I regret to say that they were mostly Shermans which fell victim to the deadly German 88 mm. It was a very capable and versatile artillery gun which we would soon learn was better than anything we had and we better respect it. However the 17 pounder proved to be a good gun and came close to matching the 88's power.
We spent our first day and night somewhere in the vicinity between Bayeux and Caen, just out of range of the firing which we could hear. We were very concerned about where , when and what our next move would be. We did not have to wait long. Towards evening of the second day we were informed that we would be moving into position after dark taking over from the British 51 Division which was coming out for a rest. Our officer informed us it was pretty grim up there. That remark was very sobering. I realized later that he was not exaggerating. So, come darkness we started our move to the front. There are no lights, no cigarettes, just slowly moving with officer beside driver to show the route, a narrow dirt road. As much as I could see it was a fair amount of trees and hedges alongside the road. All went well for awhile when suddenly there was a burst of machine gun fire that sounded very close. We came to a very sudden stop. Our officer ordered everybody out. We piled out double quick, rifle in hand and hit the ditch. After laying there for 2 or 3 minutes all was quiet so Armstrong, our officer says quietly,"Unhook the gun, we have come too far, turn around and head back a ways.".........................

Remembrance Day 2015

Nice sized crowd showed up for the Remembrance Day service today. Every year they read off the list of veterans and legion members who have passed on and it grows a little longer every time. Here is a photo of 4 who have been on that list for a while. My dad, Les Goff at left was a veteran of WWII and his experiences as a gunner in the 18th anti tank battery of the Canadian army have been written about on the blog previously. Memories of WWII
Next, a good neighbour, Phil Fisher, also a veteran of WWII. Next, my grandfather , Horace Nevard, who served in the Canadian Army in WWI.
His experiences have been mentioned on the "Nevardblog" more than a few times.

Finally , at extreme right is Caleb Fisher who served in the Boer war as well as WWI. They all got together for this photo sometime in the mid 1960s.

More From WWII

I have been neglecting my dad's WWII memoirs lately and it is about time to add a few more pages. The previous entry was Nov. 28, 2011 so here is another.
As the days went by I wondered how much longer we could survive. I often think the jerry must have known our position because they sure spent a lot of ammo around us. I also found out the Essex Scottish infantry were also in our area. This indicates how little we knew.

XIII. There was a small village,,Etterville, close by and quite a big area of trees and orchard leading from the village to where we were. Nearly every night a jerry sniper would get amongst the trees and give short bursts with what I assumed was a sub machine pistol. The infantry machine gunned the trees one night after dark. A few minutes later we would hearhim again. A day or so later some infantry men flushed him out . The first jerry I saw. He looked like about 15 or 16 years old, dressed in camouflage clothing.

XIV. We were on the outskirts of Etterville. Our crew never suffered any casualties at this location, however to me it seemed hard to believe as it was one position we endured some of the heaviest fire for days. Ten days in all at this location and we never had a chance to fire a shot. I don’t think there was a man there who could say he wasn’t mighty scared at times. I wondered how much longer we could possibly survive . On the sixteenth of July the air force made an early morning raid on Caen. It was reported to be a thousand bomber raid. We could see them quite clearly at 6 :00 am. B-17 bombers as far as I could see. I counted sixteen bombs dropped by each plane. The ground was vibrating steady. I can not remember how long it lasted. This was the prelude to an attack on Caen and across the Orne river which ran through Caen
.
XV. Prior to the air raid there was a very heavy artillery barrage laid down by our artillery and theBritish. Estimated to be between three and five thousand guns. I am not sure where this fire was directed but since then I assumed it must have been across the Orne where was a very heavy concentration of enemy armor and a number of small hamlets including If, . May sur Orne, etc.. After this, things quieted down some. We took advantage of the calm to look around at our immediate surroundings. There was a long barn close by. I remember looking inside and it was full of cattle and horses all dead and still tied up in their stalls. I presume they were killed by the shelling which took place before we arrived. The smell was pretty high. I should add at this time the weather remained quite dry and hot. I would guess around 80 degrees.

XVI. This pretty well covers our first ten days at the front. We still wore the same clothing that we wore when we took up this position. Results were we were a pretty dirty looking lot .Unshaven with dirt ground into our uniforms and skin but we were happy to be alive after what seemed certain anhilation. The order came to pack up our equipment and move to a rear area for clean up and refit anything that was lost or damaged. As we moved back in daylight we could see a lot of the results of the battle that must have taken place before we moved in. There were dead men who had laid there for something like two weeks. Their faces were black. Its something that makes you wonder will this be our fate . However, we finally arrived at the safety of rear area.

XVII. First off, a shower. It was a hurriedly set up system which was quite adequate. Tented in with steel pipes and valves. Hot and cold water. It was a sort of communal shower. Twenty or thirty men at a time and we were informed , “Make it fast, you get five minutes before the water is turned off so get the lead out”.
XVIII. Then a shave. Every thing is referred to as field shower, field kitchen, nothing fancy.
Our mess tins also were badly in need of a wash after a weeks accumulation of grime. They also had field latrines, a long trench had been dug, no comfortable seat, no flushing, just squat. Afterward it was filled in. I don’t know who had that job. I presume it was guys who couldn’t take it up front. Maybe some P.O.W.s. There was all kinds of work to be done after the battle moved on. Building roads, burying the dead, unloading equipment that was pouring in at the beachhead. Recovering knocked out equipment such as tanks, trucks, etc. And there were lots of them.

XIX. Getting back to our rest area, however, I remember much about that first meal. Supper I think. Everything seemed just fine until it started to rain. A real soaker. I don’t remember sleeping as there was no where to find a dry place to lay. The next afternoon we got ready to move up again as the tanks and infantry had battled through Caen and made it across the Orne on a Pontoon Bridge erected by the engineers battalion. It was not very wide at this place. It seemed to be still within the city of Caen and by the time we got there Jerry must have found out about it and their mortars were getting pretty close. I was glad when we got across and I imagine the rest of the crew were too. Our gun towers were thin skinned vehicles. Made you feel like a sitting duck. After getting across we waited around while our Sergeant and officer tried to go ahead and look for a suitable defensive position to deploy our four guns. While they were gone we hurriedly dug slit trenches which we soon learned were very essential if you were to survive. I might add at this time our Sergeant’s name was Jack Faibish and our troop officer was Jim Armstrong. Both very good men. Also our driver was Red Harrison. I do not remember the names of the rest of the crew. We kept getting new ones for one reason or another. I remained as the number 3 gunner all through. My job was to do the firing.

XX. Just before dark we were informed , “get ready to move”. I believe it was on this reconnaissance that our officer and colonel were both wounded by machine gun fire trying to get the first gun in position, which was a wheat field. It was quite wide open spaces, no trees. That gun was soon taken out by Jerry. One 88 through the shield . John Mucha was killed by machine gun. Walt Owens wounded. So it was decided to take our gun after dark pulled in by a Bren carrier and set it beside the knocked out gun in the wheat field. The carrier would give protection against small arms fire . There was only one hitch. There was not enough room for us all and ammo to get inside. So as we traveled slow in the dark, Fabish and myself decided to walk or run behind very close. The last couple of hundred yards was down hill on a sunken road and somewhere ahead there was a Jerry with a machine gun. I guess he could hear us. I’m sure he couldn’t see. It was pretty dark, however I remember seeing some tracers coming by. I stuck pretty close to the carrier as did Jack. I was hoping Jack knew where we were headed. We left the road and drove into the wheat field and unhitched the gun and set in firing position along side the knocked out 17 pounder gun and hoped for the best. We then exited about a hundred yards back across the road to some kind of a depression that looked like a pit of some kind. About six feet deep with fairly straight walls on three sides.

XXI. So the first thing to do was dig trenches. It was the toughest digging I had ever done. It required a pick as there seemed to be more rock than anything. Luckily at this time we didn’t come under any fire, so we worked away furiously as we knew if the mortars started coming our way our only hope was to be below ground level. So we sweated away until we felt we were safely dug in and only a direct hit would be fatal.
There was an infantry man working away and having a terrible time to dig. He was almost in tears at the difficulty of trying to make his trench. Sometime before daylight our gun tower arrived. I can not remember the details as to wether Fabish went back for it but rather suspect he did as we needed some of the stuff that was packed in it. Such as small arms ammunition, grub, water, blankets, etc. They parked it in the pit along side our diggings. I don’t think I slept that night . When it got light enough to see we peered the edge of the pit directly to our front. It looked like a small village about two or three hundred yards distant .
While we were watching about a half dozen Germans appeared man-handling what looked like an anti tank gun , probably a 75. Faibish grabbed up the Bren and started firing. I don’t know if he hit any of them but they dropped what they were doing and disappeared very quickly. I don’t know if they managed to retrieve their gun or not. That burst of the Bren drew a lot of mortars so we didn’t do much looking over the rim of our pit. They were dropping mortars pretty close. One hit a box or rations, mostly canned food, so there wasn’t much left in that box. It wasn’t a direct hit but everything was full of holes.

Back in 1944

Been a while since I posted an excerpt from Les Goff's WWII memoirs so..
11.As the days went by I wondered how much longer we could survive. I often think the jerrys must have known our position because they sure spent a lot of ammo around us. I also found out the Essex Scottish infantry were also in our area. This indicates how little we knew.


12.There was a small village,,Etterville, close by and quite a big area of trees and orchard leading from the village to where we were. Nearly every night a jerry sniper would get amongst the trees and give short bursts with what I assumed was a sub machine pistol. The infantry machine gunned the trees one night after dark. A few minutes later we would hear him again. A day or so later some infantry men flushed him out . The first jerry I saw. He looked like about 15 or 16 years old, dressed in camouflage clothing.

13.We were on the outskirts of Etterville. Our crew never suffered any casualties at this location, however to me it seemed hard to believe as it was one position we endured some of the heaviest fire for days. Ten days in all at this location and we never had a chance to fire a shot. I don’t think there was a man there who could say he wasn’t mighty scared at times. I wondered how much longer we could possibly survive . On the sixteenth of July the air force made an early morning raid on Caen. It was reported to be a thousand bomber raid. We could see them quite clearly at 6 :00 am. B-17 bombers as far as I could see. I counted sixteen bombs dropped by each plane. The ground was vibrating steady. I can not remember how long it lasted. This was the prelude to an attack on Caen and across the Orne river which ran through Caen.

14.Prior to the air raid there was a very heavy artillery barrage laid down by our artillery and the British. Estimated to be between three and five thousand guns. I am not sure where this fire was directed but since then I assumed it must have been across the Orne where was a very heavy concentration of enemy armor and a number of small hamlets including If, . May sur Orne, etc.. After this, things quietened down some. We took advantage of the calm to look around at our immediate surroundings. There was a long barn close by. I remember looking inside and it was full of cattle and horses all dead and still tied up in their stalls. I presume they were killed by the shelling which took place before we arrived. The smell was pretty high. I should add at this time the weather remained quite dry and hot. I would guess around 80 degrees.

15.This pretty well covers our first ten days at the front. We still wore the same clothing that we wore when we took up this position. Results were we were a pretty dirty looking lot . Unshaven with dirt ground into our uniforms and skin but we were happy to be alive after what seemed certain annihilation. The order came to pack up our equipment and move to a rear area for clean up and refit anything that was lost or damaged. As we moved back in daylight we could see a lot of the results of the battle that must have taken place before we moved in. There were dead men who had laid there for something like two weeks. Their faces were black. Its something that makes you wonder will this be our fate . However, we finally arrived at the safety of rear area.

16.First off, a shower. It was a hurriedly set up system which was quite adequate. Tented in with steel pipes and valves. Hot and cold water. It was a sort of communal shower. Twenty or thirty men at a time and we were informed , “Make it fast, you get five minutes before the water is turned off so get the lead out”.

17.Then a shave. Every thing is referred to as field shower, field kitchen, nothing fancy. Our mess tins also were badly in need of a wash after a weeks accumulation of grime. They also had field latrines, a long trench had been dug, no comfortable seat, no flushing, just squat. Afterward it was filled in. I don’t know who had that job. I presume it was guys who couldn’t take it up front. Maybe some P.O.W.s. There was all kinds of work to be done after the battle moved on. Building roads, burying the dead, unloading equipment that was pouring in at the beachhead. Recovering knocked out equipment such as tanks, trucks, etc. And there were lots of them.

18.Getting back to our rest area, however, I remember much about that first meal. Supper I think. Everything seemed just fine until it started to rain. A real soaker. I don’t remember sleeping as there was no where to find a dry place to lay. The next afternoon we got ready to move up again as the tanks and infantry had battled through Caen and made it across the Orne on a Pontoon Bridge erected by the engineers battalion. It was not very wide at this place. It seemed to be still within the city of Caen and by the time we got there Jerry must have found out about it and their mortars were getting pretty close. I was glad when we got across and I imagine the rest of the crew were too. Our gun towers were thin skinned vehicles. Made you feel like a sitting duck. After getting across we waited around while our Sergeant and officer tried to go ahead and look for a suitable defensive position to deploy our four guns. While they were gone we hurriedly dug slit trenches which we soon learned were very essential if you were to survive. I might add at this time our Sergeant’s name was Jack Faibish and our troop officer was Jim Armstrong. Both very good men. Also our driver was Red Harrison. I do not remember the names of the rest of the crew. We kept getting new ones for one reason or another. I remained as the number 3 gunner all through. My job was to do the firing.

19.Just before dark we were informed , “get ready to move”. I believe it was on this reconnaissance that our officer and colonel were both wounded by machine gun fire trying to get the first gun in position, which was a wheat field. It was quite wide open spaces, no trees. That gun was soon taken out by Jerry. One 88 through the shield . John Mucha was killed by machine gun. Walt Owens wounded. So it was decided to take our gun after dark pulled in by a Bren carrier and set it beside the knocked out gun in the wheat field. The carrier would give protection against small arms fire . There was only one hitch. There was not enough room for us all and ammo to get inside. So as we traveled slow in the dark, Faibish and myself decided to walk or run behind very close. The last couple of hundred yards was down hill on a sunken road and somewhere ahead there was a Jerry with a machine gun. I guess he could hear us. I’m sure he couldn’t see. It was pretty dark, however I remember seeing some tracers coming by. I stuck pretty close to the carrier as did Jack. I was hoping Jack knew where we were headed. We left the road and drove into the wheat field and unhitched the gun and set in firing position along side the knocked out 17 pounder gun and hoped for the best. We then exited about a hundred yards back across the road to some kind of a depression that looked like a pit of some kind. About six feet deep with fairly straight walls on three sides.

20. So the first thing to do was dig trenches. It was the toughest digging I had ever done. It required a pick as there seemed to be more rock than anything. Luckily at this time we didn’t come under any fire, so we worked away furiously as we knew if the mortars started coming our way our only hope was to be below ground level. So we sweated away until we felt we were safely dug in and only a direct hit would be fatal. There was an infantry man working away and having a terrible time to dig. He was almost in tears at the difficulty of trying to make his trench. Sometime before daylight our gun tower arrived. I can not remember the details as to whether Faibish went back

Les Goff in Sussex, England before going into action across the channel