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An End of War
Fatal Final Days to VE Day, 1945
By Ken Tout The History Press
Copyright © 2011 Ken Tout
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-6397-1
CHAPTER 1
BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE
Wheresoever ye place us, 'twill be our endeavour to behave always as brave men.
(Herodotus, 440 BC)
An important theme which runs throughout this book is that some of the most bitter and costly fighting of the Second World War took place in the last months. This period needs to be written about more fully, and remembered.
It was a time when the determined German defences might well have been overwhelmed by the massed Allied armies and the road to Berlin opened without much more blood being spilt. It is an era which has largely escaped the attention of the influential Hollywood cinema moguls. Even for serious historians surveying the vast panorama of six years of total world war, it has often been relegated to a brief paragraph or a footnote. Ask a person in the street about El Alamein, D-Day, Dunkirk or 'A Bridge too Far', and a positive response might be expected. Ask about Reichswald or Hochwald and a blank stare results.
Some of these last battles were of minor strategic significance, but immensely important at a local level. Battle conditions were among the worst encountered anywhere. At battalion, company and individual level each action called for commitment as intense and sacrifice as horrific as at any time since September 1939. If this statement appears to be exaggerated then one simple fact underlines its truth. Four days and a few anonymous square miles of earth saw unsurpassed acts of heroism performed by the bravest of the brave.
In two world wars Canadian frontline soldiers had gained a high reputation for bravery. Since D-Day the Canadian Army in North-West Europe had been thrown again and again into virtually impossible missions and had responded with continuing valour at ground level. Over the whole of the war sixteen Canadians had been awarded the highest of honours, the Victoria Cross, 'for Valour'. That might be said to represent rather less than three such awards per year. Now in the brief space of four days, two acts of outstanding self-sacrifice gained the award, and a third should also have been rewarded in the same way. These examples of exceptional service demonstrate the perilous situations in which those brave men found themselves.
* * *
Major Frederick Albert Tilston, Essex Scottish Regiment, led his company across flat, open countryside under constant enemy fire. Three-quarters of his men fell as casualties and he was also badly wounded in the hip. He continued to lead, crossing and re-crossing open ground to carry ammunition and organise platoons. Eventually he fell having lost one leg and with the other leg so badly damaged that it had to be amputated. In between losses of consciousness he shouted orders from a prone position, refusing to be evacuated until another officer could come up, be briefed and take over.
Four days earlier and not far away, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens, the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, had displayed similar disregard for personal safety during an undertaking with rather different physical demands. Taking command of his platoon when it was reduced to four men he, like Tilston, had to cross open ground on foot under such intense fire that every step forward was something of a miracle. Finding one surviving tank from the initial attack, he climbed up and placed himself outside and in front of the turret, totally exposed to the enemy. From there he proceeded to direct the tank crew verbally and his surviving infantrymen via hand signals. After the tank had crashed into the first farm building, Cosens continued to lead his men into further buildings on foot. He was at last shot by a sniper having captured a vital objective, leaving many enemy dead and taking more than twenty prisoners.
In virtually the same place, the same day, and at almost the same time, Maj. David Rodgers performed similar acts of bravery. His citation for the Victoria Cross was approved at battalion, brigade, division, corps and army levels, but was left suspended beneath the strangely hesitant pen of Field Marshal Montgomery himself. There were surely very few examples of such bravery and heroism during the entire war.
* * *
To clearly understand the unique conditions which required this outstanding commitment, it is necessary to explain a little more about the history of those soldiers involved, the geography of the battleground and the supreme efficiency of the enemy.
Like so many Victoria Cross heroes, Fred Tilston was not the prototype 'tough guy' mercenary who is so often featured on the cinema or television screen, or depicted in the more lurid war novels. He has been described as a 'mild-mannered, affable, 34-year-old University of Toronto Pharmacy graduate ... not perhaps the firebrand the forces were looking for. For one thing, he was too old.' He managed to join up by 'adjusting his age backwards'. He had twice been wounded badly enough to be able to opt out of frontline service and take a 'cushy' job.
The Essex Scots had already rendered service which might be thought to excuse them from any further exposure to ferocious combat. They had suffered badly during the abortive landing at Dieppe in 1942, and in Normandy they had been thrown into the battles around Tilly-le-Campagne and the Verrieres Ridge; later described as the 'worst fighting of the whole war' by captured German SS troopers. As adjutant of the battalion at the time, Tilston would have been aware of this. The battalion ended the war with the highest casualties of any similar unit in the Canadian Army. Before the battalion could go into the action again, it had to be reconstructed by combining the relatively few remaining veterans with large numbers of raw recruits and transfers from other arms.
Little wonder then that, as adjutants were routinely 'Left out of Battle' (L.O.B.), Capt. Tilston felt that he was not getting involved in frontline action as much as he should, or as he would wish. For some time he had pestered his colonel for a move. At last, in the reconstruction of the battalion, he was promoted to major and given command of the lead company for the forthcoming battle. It was to be a very brief but remarkable command.
Whilst the immediate objective of Tilston's company was a mundane border farm set well back over open country, it was an integral part of Germany's great defence line set up to protect the Fatherland. Known in Britain as the Siegfried Line it had been the focus of many feeble jokes, such as the popular song 'We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line'. In fact it was a masterpiece of German planning, engineering and military efficiency. The Germans had already proven their ability to turn humble Normandy farmhouses into fiercely defended strong points. Here on the frontier, the defences were the result of longer planning and even greater determination to resist. Tilston's farm was like the jutting barbican of some medieval fortress.
In amongst the normal farms and dwellings the German engineers had constructed specially designed linking pillboxes from thick, reinforced concrete. Capt. Ernest Egli, a REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) expert, had the opportunity to examine one such miniature fort. For siting guns there were three slits or embrasures (slits narrow on the outside and wider inside):
... each embrasure sited to cover together 360°. Each embrasure was made of steel 3" to 4" thick and mounted in concrete approximately 2 feet thick. Behind each one was a concrete room with a steel door leading into a passage with sleeping quarters in the centre of the pillbox. Each room contained a ... fast firing m-g (machine-gun) on a mounting. ... The outside walls and roof of the pillbox were covered with earth and grass sods for further protection and concealment. A belt of trip wire and mines circled each pillbox in a radius of 50–80 yards. Pillboxes were sited to support each other and between each two gun pillboxes was another for control.
As Egli indicates, the ground in front of the pillboxes was treacherous for troops who were involved in many aspects of action: watching for enemy movement, firing, diving for cover, giving orders, liaising with comrades, checking the wounded and so on. But for every walking solider the great fear was of the anti-personnel mine. An anti-tank mine produced a massive explosion, but would not normally detonate under the pressure of a single human body. The more sensitively fused anti-personnel device generated a terrifying blast and a cloud of iron shards. Again Capt. Egli was an eyewitness:
I saw a group of men at the road verge. Suddenly there was an explosion and a column of debris shot up into the air, a typical land mine explosion. We drove up and saw a soldier with a foot blown off. He had fallen back with his injured leg in the air. You could see the white end of the splintered leg bone, with the sinew hanging down. He was quietly moaning to himself.
If circumstances permitted, the infantry could crawl forward and probe in the ground for mines. Men carrying mine detectors could clear the ground, but only in the absence of enemy gunfire. There were also specialist tanks with chains which beat the ground and set off hidden mines. However, on Tilston's vital day there were neither mine-clearing tanks nor gun support tanks available because continual rain had turned the ground into a bog in which the tanks sank and were unable to get sufficient grip. The timing of the battle and the open nature of the area meant that a quick advance might be more successful than a very slow crawl with men down on their stomachs searching for mines.
As the preliminary artillery barrage ceased, Tilston's company broke through a protective hedge and began to walk forward. The distance to travel was too far to permit even a jogging advance. The major followed his two forward platoons and for a while was able to control them in good order. Seeing one of the platoons held up by a machine-gun at close quarters, Tilston walked forward and threw a grenade, destroying the gun. In doing so he was hit in the ear and the hip. Gradually Essex Scots fell dead or wounded and the major found himself leading the advance. By now the enemy were counterattacking and the Canadians had to switch quickly from attack to defence. After the counter-attack had been beaten off, they continued to advance. Ammunition was running low.
Reduced now to a few men from the two front platoons, Tilston had nobody to send back for more ammunition. So he walked across a hundred yards of exposed ground to obtain a supply of ammunition from a following platoon. Men were also searching fallen comrades to supplement their own stock of bullets. The crisis was exacerbated because the three signallers who were carrying the wireless sets had all been hit, rendering communication extremely problematic. Rescue services for the wounded at this forward point were limited, so Tilston also supervised the movement of fallen comrades into a captured enemy command post where a German medical orderly tended wounds.
Ammunition within the company was now virtually exhausted so, whilst his survivors lay firing off their final rounds at the slowly withdrawing enemy, the major set out on another quest for supplies from a neighbouring company. As he did so a shell landed at his feet and shattered both his legs. As he lay, between bouts of unconsciousness, he refused to be moved and instead gave himself a shot of morphine and waited for another officer to arrive. Only then, having briefed the new man, did he consent to be carried away. His physical condition was so bad that one of the stretcher-bearers pulled a blanket over his face, thinking he was dead. Fortunately the efficient military evacuation system, by aeroplane directly back to an English specialist hospital, saved his life against all the odds. The quiet, affable man had not been too old for the task in hand.
Fred Tilston's experiences have been extremely well documented thanks to his own conversations in later days with Denis and Shelagh Whitaker. Sadly Sgt Aubrey Cosens did not survive to recount his actions. Much of what Tilston experienced would also have been true in Cosens' case and need not be repeated. That being said, Cosens' activities did require exceptional physical agility and mental determination, and deserve further explanation. It was also an example of how a low-ranking foot soldier could adapt to tank action in a way which was not regarded by higher authority as normal or desirable, nor was it detailed in training manuals. The Germans had perfected the tactic of integrating infantry with tanks; the Americans had gone some way in the same direction. However, the British landed in Normandy with a rigid distinction between infantry and armoured units, and very little training in the combination of the two. Canadians also tended to conform to the British system as dictated by Montgomery, within whose overall command the Canadians served.
Cosens, aged twenty-three, had a much tougher background than Tilston and had grown up and developed his physique in a wild forest region. This preparation was essential for his final acts of bravery. Cosens' battalion, the Queen's Own Rifles, aiming for a tiny hamlet called Mooshof, was quickly shattered by intense fire from well-placed strong points. Supporting tanks of the Canadian 1st Hussars were exposed to the heavier enemy guns. Sgt Cosens soon found himself without an officer and in charge of a pitiful force of four disenchanted survivors. Something spectacular was required to turn rout into achievement. Five men trying to walk the final yards towards steadily firing enemy machine-guns could expect to live for a only few seconds more.
One Sherman tank, commanded by Sgt Andy Anderson, remained in action. Leaving his four survivors lying inert on the ground, Cosens ran through the visible patterns of tracer rounds to the tank. One of his riflemen described the enemy bullets as 'just like bloody rain bouncing off that tank'. Jumping on to the tank, Cosens yelled at Anderson to advance. This required an equal amount of bravery and determination from the tank commander, putting himself and crew at grave risk and also endangering the last of the armoured support.
Now, instead of returning to the ground to present a lower profile and lead his men from there, Cosens remained on the tank and stood up outside the turret. Despite attracting enemy fire he was able to direct the tank commander's aiming as well as encourage his riflemen by hand signals to follow behind the 30 ton armoured vehicle. This required Cosens'unique blend of mental obduracy and physical agility.
Standing on the turret of a tank places a man's eyes about ten feet above ground level. A ground level where nothing could move without being shot at. A tank commander would sometimes be closed down inside the turret and restricted to a periscope view of the battlefield or, more commonly, would only have his skull and eyes visible above the turret opening. Casualties among tank commanders were of a very high ratio. In one instance, the drain on officers and higher NCOs was such that a lance-corporal was left in command of a captain's tank for three weeks before reinforcements could be found.
How much more exposed, then, was a man standing outside the turret and firing his Sten gun at targets whilst waving on his comrades? A tank is not a car on a tarmac road and has an erratic rock and roll motion. Crossing ditches or mounting tree trunks can cause violent crashes. Boots slide dangerously on the armoured surface. When the massive turret swings to traverse at targets a man can be swept off and under the grinding tracks. No infantryman normally chooses to stand anywhere near the deafening, blazing muzzle flash of a large tank gun. Sharp, pointed and polished bullets, which can sometimes pass through a man's body without causing fatal damage, are transformed when ricocheting off a tank's armour into twisted, lethal slugs. At any time, riding on the turret requires at least one hand to grasp some odd projection of the tank for safety.
Sgt Cosens, the tank and the following foot soldiers all miraculously reached the first building. Over the last yards of advance, the very apparition of a small force manoeuvring in such an unexpected way may have caused the defenders to lose aim. The attackers were not behaving in the way in which an enemy marksman's brain might automatically be calculating. Surprise is always a significant element in attack.
At the first farm building, Anderson commanded his driver to continue at full speed and his gunner to fire into the house. As the wall collapsed under the impact, Cosens jumped down, rushed through the door and led his men in a burst of fire; the enemy surrendered instantly. Very quickly the Canadians cleared the complex of build-ings, taking many astonished and petrified prisoners. It was a moment of high triumph as Cosens ordered, 'Take up defensive positions'. At that moment an unseen sniper, with time to concentrate, fired a shot and killed Cosens instantly.
Yet more evidence of extreme bravery was found only a mile away. Maj. David Rodgers, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, and like Tilston newly promoted, was clearing another farm complex of almost the same size in a manner strikingly similar to the attack by Tilston. Some time later, the fully authenticated and approved citations for three Victoria Cross awards lay waiting under the pen of the final authority, Montgomery. For no other apparent reason than a fear of devaluing the award, Montgomery signed off only two awards. On Rodgers' document he scratched out Victoria Cross and amended it to 'Immediate Award of the Distinguished Service Order'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from An End of War by Ken Tout. Copyright © 2011 Ken Tout. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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