All language subtitles for Tankies Tank Heroes of World War II 2of2 720p HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

The Second World War was
the ultimate conflict
of the machine age.

And this machine
was an iconic symbol,

the decisive weapon
of the war on land.

From North Africa
to the Russian front,

the tank ruled the battlefield

and if you didn't master armoured
warfare, you faced annihilation.

GUNFIRE

It's quite terrifying,
really, because

you can see these flashes
from the enemy's guns

in the distance and you think,

any minute,
one of them is going to hit me.

'Tanks were at the beginning
of the war and the end,

'giving their crews a unique view
of the entire conflict,

'from the fall of France
to North Africa, D-Day

'and final victory in Germany.'

As a trainee officer
in the Royal Tank Regiment,

I was indoctrinated
in their exploits.

And who could fail to have been
awe-inspired

by the way those men faced death,
time and time again,

in these iron-clad monsters?

When I first went in,

I thought it was going to be
great fun and all that,

'but I realised it wasn't.

'This tank near me,
I saw it just blown to bits...

'A couple of my mates
were in that.'

It was terrible.

'This is the story
of six remarkable men

'from one armoured unit,

'The 5th Royal Tank Regiment,
5RTR,

'or to those who really
knew them really well,

'The Filthy 5th.

'Their war is brought to life,

'not only by the last
surviving veterans,

'but also by previously
unseen letters and diaries,

'that give us a real insight
into the visceral reality

'of tank warfare.'

Each man had his own story.

Some were wounded, some captured,
and some were killed.

A few, very few, made it
all the way through.

Taken together, those accounts
form a unique picture of the war.

EXPLOSIONS

'For three long years,

'the men of the 5th Tanks
had been fighting

'in the deserts of North Africa,

'as part of 7th Armoured Division,
The Desert Rats.

'Inside their tanks,
facing a sudden, fiery death,

'the crews formed
close friendships,

'like the one
between Bill Chorley and Bob Lay.

'They'd joined the 5th
at the same time in 1942.

'The bond you established,

'was not the normal relationships
of friends.'

You were a partnership,

it was closer than friendship.
And, er...

..that crew, um...

..were friends for life.

'The Allied victory at Alamein
in November 1942,

'was a turning point in the war.

'The Desert Rats became
celebrated heroes

'and the 5th Tanks
returned home to Britain

'expecting a well-earned rest.'

'Instead, Montgomery,
architect of that desert victory,

'sent them in secret
to a run-down camp in Norfolk

'called Shakers Wood
to prepare for a new fight,

'one that would require
very different skills

'to the ones they'd learned
in North Africa.'

'The 5th Tanks were now going
to spearhead

'the invasion of Europe, D-Day.

'Sergeant Gerry Solomon,
a former greengrocer,

'had survived the last three years
of combat in the desert.

'He didn't relish the prospect

'of a murderous, close-quarters
fight in Normandy.'

We thought we'd had enough.
Let somebody else have a go.

But you see,
they wanted seasoned troops

and there weren't many
seasoned troops.

'What I find extraordinary is
that even by this stage in 1944,

'after nearly five years of war,'

less than half of the British army
had seen active combat.

They were people in support units,
garrisons and training bases.

The 5th Tanks
on the other hand,

had fought all the way
through North Africa and Italy.

They felt they'd done their bit
and who can blame them?

But the army had other ideas.

They were tried and tested

and Monty knew he could rely
on them to deliver.

'Before D-Day, the 5th Tanks
received hundreds of new recruits.

'The first was
19-year-old Roy Dixon,

'a 2nd Lieutenant
fresh from officer training,

'making him the only man without
the Africa Star campaign medal,

'yet expected to lead veterans.'

'Fitting into 5RTR
was a little bit of a problem,

'because they had had
so much more experience

'and they all knew each other well'

and it didn't help that they spoke

in a sort of special language
of their own, partly Arabic.

And so one did feel
a bit of an outsider,

but they were all
extremely friendly.

'The battalion didn't just get new
men as it was re-built for D-Day.

'The 5th Tanks and their
fellow Desert Rats

'also took delivery of a brand new
fighting machine.'

When the soldiers saw their new
British made Cromwell tanks,

they were aghast.
There was so much wrong with it.

The first thing, obvious to the eye,
is that so much of the armour,

unlike many other tanks around
by that time,

is flat on towards the enemy.

And that meant that
a shell striking it

was much less likely to glance off.

There was a serious problem
with the gun too.

The 75mm gun performed
well enough against Mark IIIs

and Mark IVs in the desert,

but it simply lacked the punch

to defeat the latest
German heavy Tiger tanks.

'29-year-old Scotsman,
Sergeant Jake Wardrop,

'one of The Fifth's hardened
Tank Commanders,

'was all too aware
of the differences

'between the new British
and German tanks.

'In a remarkably candid diary
he kept throughout the war,

'he was scathing...'

"The big difference
between the Cromwell and the Tiger

"made it possible for the Boche
to stand back at 2000 metres

"and pick the Cromwells off
like a rifle range.

"At that distance,
the 75 on the Cromwell

"would not look at the four inch
armour of a Tiger,

"while the long barrelled 88

"tore through the Cromwell,
like a knife through butter."

Getting into the Cromwell, typical
British tank, is a tight fit.

But of course, for the men,
it was getting out

that was more important,
because many had escaped

with seconds to spare from
burning tanks in the desert.

And more generally, they'd got used
to the bigger American tanks,

they were roomier inside,

and coming back to this
was like coming back to a tiny flat.

'Hadn't they listened
to our experiences in the desert?

'Hadn't they learned anything?'

I expressed my views very forcefully

and eventually I was told
that if I said any more

I'd be court marshalled.

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

'1944, on June 6th,

'136,000 US, British
and Canadian troops

'land on the beaches of Normandy.'

'It's the biggest amphibious
landing ever attempted.

'D-Day has dawned at last.

'On Gold Beach,

'the 50th Northumbrian Division,
led the assault

'and captured it
after a fierce fight

'during which over 400 were
killed, wounded or missing.'

'The 5th tanks were still
out at sea.

'They had been delayed
by bad weather.'

And it wasn't until 3pm
the next day, June 7th,

that they came thundering
across these sands.

'80 tanks and 730 men,
all keyed-up...

'only to find the battle for
the beach was already over.'

'It wasn't what I expected at all.'

I imagined fighting my way up the
beach, but it didn't happen to me.

'The invasion had taken the Germans
completely by surprise.

'In command was the 5th Tank's
old foe, Erwin Rommel.

'In 1940, he'd chased them
out of France. They, in turn,

'had beaten the so-called
Desert Fox in North Africa.

'Rushing back from his wife's
birthday in Germany,

'Rommel was now to meet with
Montgomery and the 5th Tanks

'for the decisive battle.'

Rommel knew he had
to contain the British

and other landing forces, before
throwing them back into the sea.

He feared that unless he managed
that quickly,

Allied air superiority would be
so overwhelming

that his own armoured forces
would be destroyed

before they could come into action

and that would make Germany's
defeat inevitable.

'Both Montgomery and Rommel
knew the city of Caen

'was central to the battle
for Normandy.

'The Allies had to capture
this important road hub.

'Doing so would mean
breaking out of the bridgehead

'and through the German defences.'

'Montgomery had nurtured some
hope of capturing Caen on D-Day.

'But it proved much tougher
than that,

'and the city's fate became central
to the Normandy campaign.

'Three days on,

'the Allies only had
a toe-hold a few miles deep,

'having failed to break out through
German lines containing them,

'or advance inland
as far as planned.'

'New boy, Roy Dixon, was one of the
first in 5th Tanks to see action.'

'The first encounter
we had was about a mile,'

a mile and a half away from the
beach, where a party of Germans,

or a group of Germans had been,
sort of bypassed

by the initial infantry and they
were holding out for themselves.

And we had to attack them.

DISTANT GUNFIRE

'We came to this great big chateaux,
there were Germans in there

'and they were rattling away
with them machine guns.'

Well, I...I badly wanted
to fire a shot into the...

into the chateaux, but no,
they wouldn't let me do that.

They said, "Oh, no,
you can't do that."

HE LAUGHS
Not cricket, I suppose!

DISTANT GUNFIRE

'They put up, actually,
quite a good fight,

'including climbing
onto one of the tanks.'

So, a little fear, not very bad,

but a nice little action just
to get us used to it really,

so we knew what was going on.

'The Normandy terrain came
as a real shock

'to desert veterans in the 5th.'

Out in North Africa, if the enemy
got within 500 metres of you,

that was getting too near.

Whereas with these hedges, there
could be Germans on the other side

'and you wouldn't even
know about it.'

GUNFIRE

'This close terrain was
a frightening new experience

'for many of the 5th Tank's
old sweats,

'and some were simply
unable to cope.'

'Corporal Bridges,
he was a desert veteran...'

he came to me and said,
"I'm terribly sorry about this,

"but I really can't go on,
I've had it in a big way.

"I was shaking like a leaf
and I can't face doing another day."

So I said -

this is one o'clock in the morning
of course by this time -

so I said, "Well, OK,

"but there's obviously nothing I can
do about it at this time of night.

"We're going to have to
go off in the morning.

"But I will do my best to see if we
can get you replaced the next day."

'The next day we moved off

'and the first shot that was fired
hit at the turret, ring level...

'and took half of him off,
killed instantly.

'And so I then ran across
to see what had happened,'

climbed up onto this tank
and looked down

and not a very good sight to see,
as you can imagine.

The whole place pouring in blood
and a headless body at the bottom...

Very nasty indeed.
That was my first initiation,

that's when I realised that this war
wasn't going to be so much fun.

Inside you are safer, but there is
a distinct limit to what you can see

through these vision blocks, so most
of the commanders kept their heads

out of the turret.

Now, that was more dangerous,
of course,

but it gave them a much better idea
of what was going on around them.

GUNFIRE

'And that was vital in these
narrow lanes and high hedgerows,

'called "bocage", because it was
ideal country to ambush tanks.'

EXPLOSIONS

Any hedgerow could be concealing
a Panzer or an infantryman,

armed with one of these,
the Panzerfaust.

It's a handheld anti-tank weapon.

Germany produced more than
six million of these during the war.

This variant has a range
of 60 metres.

Now, that would be pathetically
inadequate in the desert.

You'd be killed before
you could get that near.

But in the close country of Europe,

'it allowed the humble
infantryman the chance

'to take out any Allied
armoured vehicle.

'And for many in the 5th tanks,
it proved to be their undoing.'

EXPLOSIONS

The Panzefaust imploded
into the tank, blew it up.

You were all finished if that hit.

'So, you were virtually with
the infantry all the time,

'you needed infantry
to protect you.'

Breaking out of the bocage to the
open countryside beyond was vital

if the pent-up Allied armour was
to flow as an unstoppable torrent.

The alternative was unthinkable.

German containment
of the Allied bridgehead,

a war of attrition
in the hedgerows

and in the worst-case scenario,
failure.

'One week after D-Day,

the Americans forced a gap
in the German front line

'and an opportunity appeared to
break out towards the city of Caen.

'Montgomery seized his chance
to open up the battle

'and rout the Germans.

'The 7th Armoured Division,
including 5th Tanks,

'was ordered to push through
the gap as fast as possible.'

They advanced six miles
through the Norman countryside

and arrived along this
high street in Villers-Bocage.

The people of the town came to
their balconies and open windows

to cheer the British tanks
and throw flowers on them.

The Commander of that leading
battle group felt they'd done it

and ordered everybody to stop
while the men made tea.

The 5th Tanks meanwhile,
the second battle group

were on a nearby hillside,

oblivious to the fact that
a disaster was about to unfold.

'So far, the dreaded
German Tiger tank

'had failed to make
an appearance in Normandy,

'but now it was to make
its spectacular debut,

'confirming the worst fears about
the Cromwell tank's vulnerability

'and lack of fire power.'

'You knew very well that
if you came up against a Tiger,

'you weren't going to be able
to penetrate it.'

So you've got to blooming well avoid
it. That's all there was to it.

EXPLOSIONS

'A Tiger tank appeared,
commanded by Michael Wittmann,

'a Panzer ace with 137 kills
to his credit.

'With this talent for mayhem,
he was quick to seize his chance.'

It was along this road that Wittmann
sowed a trail of destruction.

Appearing here with
a couple of other Tigers,

he first engaged the rear-most tanks
of the leading British group,

who were up on that hill.

That was to stop them taking any
further part in what was to follow.

He then set off down this road,

engaging half-tracks and Cromwells
as he went.

Within minutes,
25 British vehicles were ablaze.

EXPLOSIONS

In this particular spot,

one of the British tanks managed
to stalk the German vehicle.

They came up to within 100 metres
of the back of Wittmann's tank

and fired twice at it.

They watched their own shells
bounce off,

and then in horror,

as the German tank traversed
its turret to the rear,

pointed its 88mm gun at them
and opened up,

destroying the Cromwell instantly.

EXPLOSION

'Almost single-handedly,
Wittmann had brought

'the British Army's advance
in Normandy to a halt.'

JAKE WARDROP: "I hold the design
of the Cromwell tank

"and the men who ordered its
production personally responsible

"for the death of hundreds of men

"who fought in those tanks and had
a lot more guts than common sense."

'British and German reinforcements,
including more Tiger tanks,

'now poured in to the village,
feeding the fierce fight there.

'The British decided to pull back.

'The 5th Tanks on the hillside

'waited nervously, as the sounds
of battle came closer.'

DISTANT GUNFIRE

'We just didn't quite know
what was going on.

'We knew there were
Tiger tanks there.

'That was all we knew about it.'

And we were unaware of what really
a serious situation it was.

We didn't realise that they were
being massacred in the town

and a whole regiment had gone.
We didn't realise that at all.

'Now it was the turn of 5th Tanks
to face the formidable Tiger.

'But, as well as Cromwells,

'they were equipped with another new
tank, the British Sherman Firefly.'

Now, this is an American copy,

but the Firefly combined
the proven Sherman hull

with a powerful 17 pounder
anti-tank gun.

It was such a beast of a weapon,

that it fired
its anti-tank projectile

at three times
the speed of sound.

And it could punch a hole
in any German tank of the time.

GUNFIRE

'The Sherman Firefly,
yes, very good tank...'

The 17 pounder, yeah.

That's...that was
an entirely new gun.

Muzzle velocity,
2,000 feet per second.

That's going some.

'That weapon produced
such a flash and bang'

that it could easily give away
the position of the tank.

And for the crew inside the turret,

they could be temporarily blinded
by that blast,

or even have their hair singed.
It all made it vital

to get that first round
on target accurately.

'When we received these new
Sherman 17-pounders, the Firefly,'

the decision was made

that troops would consist of
three Cromwells and one Sherman.

So that gave one a really good
hitting power within the troop.

'But of course,
that's all very well,'

but when tanks get
spread out in battle,

the Firefly's not where you want it
when you need it.

But it was a vast improvement
and it did knock out Tigers.

'And using the Sherman itself
also was a mixed blessing.

'The British Army knew
the tank very well,'

but it was in Normandy that it was
discovered just how easily

it set fire
when it was hit or brewed up,

leaving the British crews
to nickname them Ronsons

after the popular lighter

and the Germans to dub them
Tommy Cookers.

'The one dozen Sherman Fireflies
in the 5th Tanks

'were commanded by its most
experienced sergeants and corporals,

'all of them desert veterans,

'including Gerry Solomon
and Jake Wardrop.'

OK, movement spotted.
Use the AP rounds.

JAKE WARDROP: "Back on our front,
somebody had seen a couple of Tigers

"and we got ready to engage them.

"By sitting on top of the turret
and looking through the trees,

"I could see the thing
about 150 yards away.

"It was closer now
so I said, 'Well, fire anyhow,

"'or the bloody thing
will be alongside.'

"Like the stout lad he is,

"no sooner had the empty case
rattled on the floor,

"than Woody had slammed
another one up."

"The Tiger halted now,

"so I gave the gunner
aim little left and fire again.

"They had the wind up
on the Tiger by now

"and it was reversing
as fast as it could go.

"I was kicking myself
for not brewing it up,

"but we had twisted the tail
of the big brave Tiger

"and he had run away
and my morale was way up."

Well, whether or not 5th Tanks hit
any of the Tigers

moving up that valley,
German records show 16 of them

were put out of action
during the three days

of the Villers-Bocage battle.
Nine of those Tigers destroyed.

A couple of dozen other types of
German tanks were also knocked out.

'But it wasn't just Panzers
that the 5th Tanks had to face.

'The Germans also threw
their infantry into the battle.'

'I got out of the tank
to water the grass,'

Jock got out...

..and did the same,

and when he got back in
and was adjusting his overcoat,

he got a dum-dum bullet to his head.

There were snipers about.

So I count myself lucky.

'The battle raged for two days

'and as the death of Bob's
commander demonstrated,

'it was far too risky to leave
the protection of the tank.'

When you're closed down inside
for long periods,

it can be very tough mentally
as well as physically.

I remember doing it for 20 hours
on a Cold War exercise in Germany

and pretty soon, because I couldn't
stand up or stretch,

I was very uncomfortable.

My legs and the knee
were singing with pain

and there was a voice in my head,
pleading with me to get out.

In Normandy, because of the threat
of artillery and snipers,

they had to do it for long periods

and of course the smell must
have been pretty terrible,

people were getting on
one another's nerves

and having to urinate
into shell cases.

Must have been a nightmare.

'Bill Chorley had abandoned his tank
when it broke down.

'He'd seen Cromwell crews,
including his own commander,

'abandon their vehicles in panic
when the Tigers appeared.

'Now Bill, just 23 years old
that day,

'tried to sneak back to his own
lines with two other crew members.'

BILL: "We crept through the
hedgerows, which took a long time,

"until we came to the main road.

"It seemed all quiet, so I got up
and suddenly heard,

"Hande hoch, Englander!

"Followed by a burst
of machine gun fire.

"We had no weapons,
so had to surrender.

I heard a burst of mauser fire
and I thought, God, they've got him

and I firmly believed
that he'd been killed.

'Devastated, absolutely, he was...'

He was my best friend...
Marvellous chap as well.

Er, but...

..by the time we'd reached
the Seine,

I'd lost all my friends.

When that happens,
you're on your own.

'Allied aircraft dominated
the skies over Normandy,

'striking fear into the Germans.

'5th Tanks now witnessed a massive
air attack on Villers-Bocage,

'where earlier that day,

'French civilians had greeted
the triumphant British.'

EXPLOSIONS

'They just stonked the place,
flattened it altogether.

'You couldn't mess about
with things like that,

'you had to get on with it.
It was desperate times...'

We were in a bridgehead
and wanted to get out...

and, you know, you couldn't worry
about details like that.

'If the RAF came
and hit the target, well,

'so be it. As far as we were
concerned, it was a good thing.'

Because war is war
and there's no half measures.

'Allied air power
was a blunt instrument.

'Its bombs killed
about 70,000 French people.

'A third more killed by accident
than the British suffered

'from the Luftwaffe's deliberate
bombing during the blitz.'

'British Infantry divisions
had failed to link up

'with the 5th Tanks
and 7th Armoured Division.

'So on June 14th,
the order came to retreat,

'giving up all the ground
they'd captured over the past days.

'They'd inflicted
heavy casualties on the Germans,

'but they were isolated
six miles forward of Allied lines.

'It was feared only a matter of time

'before they'd run out of supplies.

'5th Tanks, acting as rearguard,
was the last to leave.'

'Captain Arthur Crickmay
was the 5th Tank's Adjutant,

'right-hand man of the battalion's
Commanding Officer.

'He'd been fighting since 1939

'and had won the military cross
for bravery.'

ARTHUR: "We moved off in pitch dark
and clouds of choking dust,

"to the steady clanking of tracks

"and the dull roar
of Rolls Royce engines.

"It seemed too much to expect of
the enemy to let us go unmolested.

"But they did. They'd had enough."

The true vision of Arthur

was somebody who was
absolutely immaculate.

We hadn't had any sleep
for about five nights,

we had tablets
to keep ourselves awake

and when we pulled out, most people
flopped out and went to sleep

and I was still on my feet.

So I was required to go
to Arthur's tank,

and Arthur was shaving.

And so there he goes,
Americans arrived.

And one wanted to know
what the position was.

And Arthur finished his shaving

and slowly told them,

quite quietly and slowly,
what was happening.

But he wasn't going to be rushed by
any Americans while he was shaving.

HE CHUCKLES

So what actually happened here?

Well, on the morning of the 13th,
no doubt about it,

the 7th Armoured Division
took a beating.

But later that day,
and on the 14th of June,

it was the Germans
who got the drubbing.

So in my view,
Villers-Bocage was a score draw.

The Germans quite understandably
made great propaganda play

out of Wittmann's actions,

and painted it as
a great British defeat.

Far less understandable
or forgivable was the fact that

certain British armchair critics
took the same line.

The commanders of the
7th Armoured Division were sacked,

despite the fact that it was
the infantry who failed to follow up

on their gains.

And some historians also
unforgivably have bought the line

that, after this battle, the 7th
Armoured Division was traumatised,

sticky, afraid to get
into a fight.

There are criticisms of the 5th
Tanks for being over-cautious.

But when you had the experience
that we had,

you know when to go
and when not to go.

And, er...

..that experience saved many lives.

We'd moved from a different type
of terrain for warfare.

It was open desert,
but here we were close country.

That was why we were cautious.

Stalking their enemies
through the Normandy countryside,

many of the tank soldiers were
struggling with inner demons.

Today we would call it
post-traumatic stress.

Jake Wardrop, in his diary,
mentions more than once

attacks of the jitters.

Mastering those feelings
of fear and panic

was one of the biggest challenges
facing the veteran tank commanders.

I think the general feeling
amongst most fighting men was

that people only have
a certain amount of stamina,

and when it's run out, that's it.

And you're lucky if you've got
the stamina to keep going.

So we didn't blame them, really,
when their nerves went.

Scared? Oh, yes.
Everybody was scared.

Eventually I got to the stage
where I was saying to myself,

"You keep getting away with it.

"God, you must have a charmed life."

And then I thought...

then later I thought to myself,

"Yeah, but my odds
are getting shorter, surely."

Having failed to surround
the city of Caen,

the 5th Tanks were pulled out of the
front line for rest and to resupply.

"There was a cinema and baths
in Bayeux which we visited,

"and in the improving weather we lay
around and started to get tanned.

"At night we just simply sat around
and read, wrote letters

"and took things easy."

GUNFIRE

Thirteen days after D-day,
on the 19th of June,

a devastating storm hit the Channel.

Supplies fell to a trickle.

And since the 5th Tanks alone needed
650 tonnes of fuel, ammunition

and rations each day in combat,
many operations had to be postponed.

While they rested, in the west,
American units,

some with just three days
of ammunition left,

were painfully grinding their way
south against fierce resistance.

In the east, Monty kept up the war
of attrition in the hedgerows,

trying to capture Caen
and break out of the bridgehead.

With losses continuing
day after day,

British infantry casualty rates
were approaching those

of the First World War.

After years of fighting
and worldwide commitments,

Britain was running out
of foot soldiers.

Pressure was on Montgomery
to get a move on.

On the 8th and 9th of July, he
ordered a massive aerial bombardment

that devastated Caen
and its civilian population.

After three major offensives

and 30 days of bloody fighting,

the city he'd hoped to take
on D-day itself finally fell.

One week later, the Germans suffered
another serious blow.

General Rommel had always feared
Allied air superiority

and now he became one of
its victims, seriously wounded

when his staff car was strafed
by British fighters.

His war was over,
but for the 5th Tanks

and others at the front,
it continued.

General Montgomery called forward
the Desert Rats

to play a key part
in a coming offensive.

Operation Goodwood
was to be a tank thrust across

the open countryside beyond Caen.

After weeks of suffering
by his infantry, Montgomery intended

to use all three
of his armoured divisions

to punch his way
out of the bridgehead.

Over 1,000 tanks,

more than 60,000 infantry

and 700 pieces of artillery

guided into position,
and then the rumble of thunder.

In the distance,
2,000 Allied bombers,

the largest number ever launched
in support of ground forces,

pummelled the Norman fields.

BOMBS WHIR

We saw the bombing raid
which preceded the Goodwood.

And that was enormous.

And you would have thought
nobody could have lived through it.

In places, 56-tonne Tigers
were hurled upside down.

German infantry went mad.

Some even committed suicide.

So began Operation Goodwood,

the biggest tank attack
in the history of the British Army.

SOUND OF EXPLOSIONS

Today, the ground over which
Goodwood was fought

is pretty much unchanged.

From this higher ground,
the Germans had a grandstand view

as all three British armoured
divisions in Normandy advanced,

from behind me, along an axis
in line with these rows of crops.

The Germans had prepared defences,
the villages had been fortified.

And the woods concealed scores
of the feared 88mm anti-tank guns.

An 88 can knock out a Cromwell
at 2,000 yards.

One 88 covers 4,000 yards.

They had lots of them together
with Panthers and Tigers.

We were really up against it.

EXPLOSIONS

You know it's a 88 because
you hear a tearing of paper.

And you move.

If you didn't hear it...

that was the end of you.

Despite the huge aerial bombardment,
the Germans had hardly been harmed.

They had been expecting
an attack for days

and had dug in
five lines of defence,

stretching nine miles deep.

When Goodwood started, it's been
likened to the French cavalry attack

at Agincourt or the Charge
of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

The British advanced down
a narrow corridor of death.

On the first day of Goodwood, nearly
200 Allied tanks were knocked out.

But 5th Tanks, along with
the rest of 7th Armoured Division,

the most experienced of the three
armoured divisions taking part,

was late getting to the fight.

They were stuck in a huge
traffic jam near the Orne River.

But on day two of the battle, it
was their turn to run the gauntlet

with 5th Tanks leading the way.

Going up a slope and looking down
the other side,

my main thing was horror,

seeing a whole squadron of Shermans,
in squadron formation, knocked out.

The place was littered with
burning tanks everywhere

and there were bodies
everywhere as well.

It was all very unpleasant indeed.

There were sort of half bodies
around the place,

where people had been blown up.
It was all very, very nasty.

As Jake Wardrop's troop approached
a village across open fields,

an anti-tank gun concealed
in woods opened fire.

"Then it happened.

"There was a loud thud behind,
the tank slowed and stopped

"and the turret was full of flames,

"so I yelled, 'Jump!'
and bailed for it.

"Poor Woody had been burned
on the face and hands,

"they were starting to blister.

"We had lost all our kit."

For its crew,
a tank is also a mobile home.

And when Jake Wardrop's Firefly
went up in flames in this field,

they lost all their possessions.
He was particularly upset

about losing a blue sweater he'd had
since the desert battles,

and some chapters from his diary.

And they weren't the only people
to get burnt out

of their vehicle that day.

The 5th lost three other tanks too,

and Roy Dixon had a close escape.

I had got out of my seat
and was sitting on the turret ring,

so that I was higher up,
so that I could see a bit better.

And an airburst went off above me.

And a bit of the shrapnel
came down straight between my legs

and straight into the gunner.

I was incredibly lucky,
it missed by about that much.

And the poor old gunner,
we had to get him out of the tank

and getting a wounded man out
of a tank is extremely difficult.

He subsequently died, regrettably.

You just had to accept it.

Everybody said, "Too bad, but, you
know, make way for the new man."

You had to do that.

You couldn't go round...

weeping about it all, really.

When the operation ended
on the 20th of July,

the British had advanced seven miles
and taken this high ground.

But the cost of Goodwood
had been high.

Critics made much of the fact the
British had 400 tanks knocked out,

never mind that only half of them
had actually been destroyed,

the rest could be repaired.

5th Tanks got off
relatively lightly.

Sergeant Wardrop had survived
being knocked out,

Gerry Solomon and Bob Lay
had come through unscathed.

But the fact was,
it wasn't the breakthrough
that many had hoped for.

Goodwood was seen
by many as a disaster

and Montgomery was nearly sacked.

But the Germans lost
thousands of troops here,

scores of anti-tank guns and around
80 tanks and self-propelled guns.

And whereas the Allies were able
to top up their tanks

to the original level
within 36 hours of Goodwood,

the Germans had only succeeded,
in all the weeks since D-day,

in replacing 17 out of 1,700
lost Panzers.

Two-thirds of the German Army
was tied up fighting the Soviets

on the Eastern Front.

In France, Allied airpower strafed
almost anything that moved.

As Rommel had feared, even though
German tank production

was at its height,
most were sent east,

while in France the resupply system
had broken down

under pressure of air attack.

The Germans were being ground down
and, bound by Hitler's orders

not to yield an inch of Normandy,

were becoming vulnerable
to break-out and encirclement.

Just five days after Goodwood,
on the 25th July,

the Americans launched
Operation Cobra to great success.

The British had sucked most
of Rommel's Panzer divisions

into the fight for Caen.

That helped the Americans
break into open country.

The dream of mobile armoured warfare
was now a reality.

In four days,
they advanced 30 miles.

Meanwhile, 5th Tanks found
themselves in their fiercest battle

of the Normandy campaign so far,

fighting to keep the Germans
tied down in their sector.

So the Americans could exploit
their break-out,

the 5th found themselves
surrounded.

British infantry and tanks had to
operate closely together as a team.

But this time it broke down,
and the British infantry bugged out,

leaving the 5th Tanks to the mercy
of SS Panzer grenadiers.

We were clustered there in a group
and we were told we were going

to wait until the moon got a bit
higher, give us a bit more light.

Then we were going to break out.

But, unfortunately,
the enemy beat us to it.

I knew the tank had been hit.

I felt my right-hand side go numb.

Come on. Stand up.

Gerry Solomon had got through
all the North Africa battles,

from Crusader to El Alamein,

and he'd been one of
the first men into Tunis.

He'd been in Italy,
in Villers-Bocage
and on Operation Goodwood, too.

He knew he was living
on borrowed time.

But true to the honour code of
the 5th's sergeants and corporals,

the key tank commanders, he refused
to put in for a cushier job.

Being seriously wounded had
given him an honourable way out.

When I was injured,
I wasn't sorry to be going home

because I'd been there
for two months and, you know,

I thought all I'd done in the war,
I'd done my bit anyway.

The British succeeded in holding
the German Army in place.

For Gerry and the 5th,
that came at quite a price.

They lost seven tanks
and 25 casualties in one day.

But the bigger picture was
the German Army was now trapped

and annihilated.

On the 25th of August, the Battle
of Normandy was declared over.

The cost had been high.

In 80 days of fighting, the Allies
had over 200,000 casualties,

the Germans around 300,000
out of a smaller force.

Of the 2,300 German tanks
committed to the battle,

less than 120 were brought back
across the Seine.

The Allies lost many more tanks -
4,000.

But all of them
were rapidly replaced.

Jake Wardrop, Bob Lay, Arthur
Crickmay and Roy Dixon had all

come through relatively unscathed.

On the 31st of August, after nearly
three months of fighting

in the hedgerows,
they crossed the River Seine,

about here, and left behind
the horrors of Normandy.

The tanks now sped across France,

driving in hours across the Flanders
fields their fathers had contested

for years during
the First World War.

In just five days,

they travelled 200 miles,
the 5th Tanks being the first

Allied unit to liberate
the Belgian city of Ghent.

DISTANT CHEERING

When we got to Ghent, it was
tremendous, it was a big city.

Everybody turned out.

Girls leaping on your tank
and, you know, embracing you.

And it was good stuff.

Parts of Ghent were still
occupied by the Germans,

so Arthur Crickmay, now a major,
came here to their headquarters,

in an attempt to persuade
the German commander to surrender.

After five days on the road, though,
Crickmay was painfully aware

that his usually immaculate
standards had slipped

and that he was living up to
the nickname of the Filthy 5th.

"To describe my kit - overalls
tanked in, slept in,

"non-stop for a week - as a mess,
would be understating a condition

"that compared most unfavourably
with that of General Bruhn.

"He took this in and, being
appraised of my meagre rank,

"immediately took off on his thesis,
often repeated, that surrender

"could only be made to a British
officer of equal rank to himself."

The 5th Tanks had advanced
so rapidly, though,

that there were no generals to hand.

So Major Crickmay persuaded
his boss, the commanding officer

of the battalion, Lieutenant Colonel
Holliman, to act the part.

Unfortunately, the German general
guessed what was going on

and still refused to surrender.
But he did agree to pull his troops

back to the north of the city,
and so the 5th Tanks played

their part in saving the historic
centre of Ghent from destruction.

EXPLOSIONS

It was now September, and fighting
raged to the north of the city.

The tide of war had moved decisively
against Germany,

but they fought on,
much to the frustration
of many British soldiers.

"The stupid, pig-headed Boches
infantry came at us,

"marching across the open fields.
When they were good and close

"we went to town
with the machine guns.

"There was no cover and we kept
firing and firing.

"It was great.

"One was waving a white flag
so we didn't fire

"but they didn't come in.
Perhaps they were wounded.

"At any rate, I nipped down
to pick them up

"when just then the Boche started
to lob over more mortar.

"They dropped quite close
and I picked up a small splinter

"in my face. That settled it.

"I got back on the tank,
gave Jimmy the word

"and he chopped them down."

Jake's attitude to war
was very belligerent.

He wanted to get at them
and knock them out

and that may have been
great satisfaction.

Not everybody felt that way.

Jake Wardrop testified to
the bitterness of the fighting.

Near here he saw two wounded Germans
being finished off with head shots,

after they'd surrendered,
by a British soldier.

It wasn't a good thing to do,
he wrote, but at least it saved

the danger of sending a British
stretcher party to get them.

The 5th, by this stage of the war,
contained some very hard men,

many of whom fought
according to their own rules.

Another sergeant in the battalion
wrote that he had become

"a bloodthirsty fighter who just
longed for the next battle".

They wanted to get home
too, of course,

but that just added to their anger
with the Germans who fought on.

By the 14th of September,
the whole of Belgium

and Luxembourg was in Allied hands.

Now they crept into Holland,
nearer the German border.

Progress was slow.

There were simply not enough
supplies coming through

to an Allied Army that now
numbered three million men.

For the 5th Tanks,
the war now came to a pause.

The battalion's casualty record
for November shows just how inactive

they were at that stage of the war.
It records just two deaths.

One from artillery fire,
the other from a heart attack.

And it was that second one
that shocked the men.

For them,
natural death had become unnatural.

MORTAR AND GUNFIRE

While war raged elsewhere in Europe,
over the winter months

the 5th Tanks' biggest battle
was keeping warm.

After months of inactivity,
the 5th Tanks crossed the Rhine

on the 27th of March.

I can only imagine how hard
it must have been for the likes

of Arthur Crickmay or Jake Wardrop,
who had been at war for five years

and had so many close escapes,

to steel themselves
for battle once more,

knowing they had probably used up
their nine lives.

The 5th Tanks was now fighting
in the last desperate battles

against a crumbling Third Reich,

their objective, Hamburg,
200 miles away.

For 5th Tanks, the last major
engagement of the war

was at a place called Rethem.

Small in the overall
scheme of things perhaps,

but for the battalion it was
a place of huge significance.

Jake Wardrop was advancing through
woods just south of Rethem

when all hell broke loose.

CACOPHONY OF GUNFIRE

HE GROANS

Jake was found, pistol in hand.

Wounded in the legs,
he had fought to the last

but finally succumbed
to a bullet in the heart.

When Jake was shot,
the regiment was really upset.

Because he was such a very widely
respected guy in the regiment.

Everybody in the regiment
knew about him

so his loss was
particularly badly felt.

When Jake's tank was knocked out
and another one shortly afterwards,

we had lost great characters
who were a great treasure

to the regiment.

And nine people altogether

out of 75 crew members of C Squadron

just at the end of the war.

And that...that hurt.

It was very...

..very tragic.

Jake Wardrop's precious diary
was recovered from his tank

and eventually made its way home.

His best epitaph perhaps comes
in his own words to his mother,

explaining, in a letter,
why he wouldn't take a safer job.

"I am a tank commander
and I shall continue to be one

"until the end. Should it be
the wrong one, don't worry.

"I've played the game as it seemed
to me the right way to play it.

"I have respected the women
and given my rations to the little

"children because they were hungry,
and I've shot the Germans down

"and laughed because of friends lost
and, in any case, they started it."

Wardrop had been killed less than
a month before the end of the war.

The 5th Tanks, in their drive
to Hamburg,

now encountered
Allied prisoner of war camps.

By an amazing coincidence,

Bill Chorley, captured
eight months earlier in Normandy,

was liberated by his own division.

He was lucky to be alive.

Used for slave labour in Poland,
when Russian forces approached

his captors forced him
on a death march west.

It was the depths of winter.
Many prisoners never made it.

MEN CHEER

By God, I was delighted.

He weighed six-and-a-half stone.

On the 3rd of May, the 5th Tanks
crossed the Elbe into Hamburg.

There was no resistance
at this moment of triumph.

In 11 months since
landing at Normandy,

they'd suffered 84 killed
and two dozen tanks destroyed.

Driving into Hamburg
was an amazing experience.

The war hadn't technically finished

but in all senses fighting had
stopped, and we drove through

what was a completely
shattered city.

It was an appalling sight, really.

On the 4th of May,

General Montgomery accepted
the unconditional surrender

of all German forces in Holland
and Northwest Germany.

Four days later,
Victory in Europe was declared.

We knew. We'd made it.

And we didn't know what to do.

And we just hugged each other
and we threw our berets in the air,

never got our own berets again.
But that was it.

That was the end of the war for us.

A marvellous moment.

The war had been an extraordinarily
hard experience

for the men of 5th Tanks.

By VE Day there were just a few
dozen, less than 50 serving

in its ranks, who had been there
at the outbreak of the conflict.

Their odyssey had lasted six years,
carrying them across thousands

of miles and costing the lives
of 240 of their men.

Their advances across North Africa
and France

equalled the achievement
of Hitler's Panzer divisions.

But our tank soldiers were
citizens in a democracy

and modest with it, their
achievements even now understated

and distinctly British.

It is a terrible thing, in a way,
to admit one was taking part

in a sort of war of destruction,

but from a personal point of view,
as a very young man,

it was some of the happiest
days of my life

because you were living in a little
compact group, in this case

the troop, who were great
sort of pals.

You had no responsibilities
other than keeping yourself alive

and doing the job.

CHEERING

The people in the services
had a job to do.

It had to be done.

And we'd done it.

It wasn't a matter of rejoicing.

I didn't go to the parade in Berlin.

I didn't see anything
to rejoice about.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd