Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War. James Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ two ‘armies’ were pitched against one another. They were designed to test staffs and the logistical system as much as anything, but having seen the National Guard divisions still carrying wooden rifles and lorries with logs on that were supposed to simulate tanks, both Dee and Tom began to realize just how unprepared America was for war.

      They were both on leave when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. There had been talk of war for some months, but now they were in it for sure. They also knew that since the First Division was one of the few pre-war regular army units, they were likely to be among the first in action – although they didn’t have the faintest idea when or where that might be. And for the first half of 1942, they remained in the US, moving from camp to camp, practising amphibious landings, carrying out more marches and exercises, sometimes on sand, sometimes in the snow. ‘All we were doing was moving from one location to another and getting ready to fight,’ says Dee.

      Not until 2 August 1942 did the twins finally find themselves steaming out of New York en route to Britain. Like most young men heading off to war, it was the first time they had ever left home shores. The entire First Division was crammed onto the Queen Mary, one of the great pre-war transatlantic liners, but as Tom and Dee discovered, there was little that was luxurious about the great ship now. It had been designed to carry two thousand passengers, but on 2 August 1942, the Queen Mary was carrying 15,125 troops and 863 mostly British crew. ‘It sure was crowded,’ admits Tom. They were given hammocks, four banked on top of each other along each wall of a cabin. Although still in different regiments and in different cabins, they managed to see plenty of each other, and despite being packed like sardines, they didn’t find it too much of a hardship. ‘Well, to us it was rather like being on a vacation,’ says Dee. They were given plenty of hot meals, each eaten at a table and served by waiters. The threat of U-boats was ever-present, and there were not nearly enough lifeboats for the number on board, but it didn’t worry the Bowles twins too much: the ship was fast, and it continually zigzagged all the way to avoid the German submarines. As they approached the British Isles, aircraft arrived to escort them over the final part of the journey into Gourock in Scotland.

      They docked on the morning of 7 August, beneath the dull-grey barrage balloons that floated above the harbour. The division was quickly ushered off the ship past a line of women handing out cups of tea and then led straight onto waiting trains. The Bowles twins, separated once more into their respective regiments, still had no idea where they were heading, but it soon became clear the final leg of their journey was not a short ride. British officers appeared, demonstrating in each compartment how to pull down the blinds; the blackout was something new to the American troops. The train chugged on through the night, past nameless towns and villages, until at around seven the following morning they finally reached their destination. Tidworth Barracks, some ten miles north of Salisbury in southern England, was shrouded in early morning mist as the soldiers stepped down onto English soil for the first time. On Salisbury Plain, one of the British Army’s largest training areas, the Bowles twins and the rest of the division would begin preparing for the largest seaborne invasion the world had ever known – not D-Day, but the Allied landing in Northwest Africa.

      

      Shortly before the TORCH operations in Africa, Dee had managed to transfer regiments and was now with his brother Tom in the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry, although he had joined Headquarters Company, while Tom remained with his mortar crew in Company G. As a result they both landed on African soil at around the same time, on a sandy beach just east of the port of Arzew in Algeria, on 8 November 1942. They would find themselves up against stiffer opposition in the months and years to come, but in fighting the Vichy French – at that time still collaborating with the Axis powers – they faced their first time in action. It was on that first day, whilst taking cover in a cemetery near the town of St Cloud, seven miles inland, that Tom saw his first dead body. ‘I saw him lying there,’ he says, ‘and that made a big impression on me. I thought, this is for real now.’ Of all the horrors they would witness before the war was over, this first corpse affected Tom the most.

      Both agree that war makes a man harden up pretty quickly. French resistance quickly crumbled and French North Africa – all those troops in Algeria, French Morocco and Tunisia – joined the Allies. While the British Eighth Army advanced from the east after their victory at El Alamein, the joint US and British force that had landed in Northwest Africa advanced from the west. The joint German and Italian Armies were slowly being caught in the vice of Tunisia.

      But North Africa was no Axis sideshow. Hitler insisted on pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into Tunisia, as well as equipment: in Tunisia, the Allies came face-to-face with the superb Focke-Wulf 190 fighter and also the monstrous Tiger Tank. So well protected was the Tiger, there was nothing in the Allied armament at that time that could penetrate its body armour. Furthermore, Tunisia was extremely mountainous and hilly, difficult terrain in which to fight. And to make matters worse, it was now winter and there was so much rain, the battleground soon resembled something out of the Western Front of the First World War. Everyone and everything became bogged down in the mud.

      It was also the first time American and British forces had fought side by side, shoulder to shoulder, under one unified command. The British were the old enemy, but now the differences of the colonial era were behind them and they were allies as never before. The 18th Infantry spent forty-seven days detached from the Big Red One, fighting alongside the British Guards Division. ‘We wore their uniforms,’ says Dee, ‘and ate their food, and drank tea instead of coffee. That tea they had was beautiful.’ He even preferred British rations to the C-rations they had been eating.

      The front line was fairly static during this period, but it taught the 18th a lot. Tom learnt how to dig in with his mortar team and how to get the best from the lie of the land. Dee, on the other hand, was a wire-man. He and a buddy had the task of setting up and maintaining the field telephone system. This meant running lines of wire from battalion headquarters to the various companies, and then making any repairs if the wire was broken by enemy fire. It could be pretty dangerous work, and during this time in the front line, both brothers gained valuable experience of what it was like to operate under enemy shellfire, and what it was like to be dive-bombed by the dreaded Stukas, and strafed by the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. And what they learnt was that there was still of a lot of ground and air all around them, and that it was the unlucky or careless who got themselves killed.

      In February, Field Marshal Rommel launched his last offensive in North Africa, and although the Allied forces were initially heavily defeated and pushed back almost into Algeria, reinforcements from northern Tunisia were hurried south, including the 18th Infantry. Hastily digging in alongside their British Guardsman comrades, they found themselves coming under attack from the full force of the veteran 21st Panzer Division, one of the most experienced German units in North Africa. ‘We saw those tanks coming across the valley straight at us,’ says Dee, ‘and all hell let loose.’ The 18th held their line, however, and with a number of German tanks left in flames, the Panzers were forced to retreat. ‘It was several days before I could hear good again,’ adds Dee.

      A month later, with the Allies back on the offensive, the 18th Infantry had rejoined US II Corps along with the rest of the Big Red One, and under the command of General George S. Patton, Tom and Dee found themselves dug in along the El Guettar massif, a long and imposingly jagged range of red mountains in southern Tunisia. But it was here that German forces counter-attacked, and Tom’s Company G found themselves isolated on a rocky outcrop on a mountain known as the Djebel Berda. ‘We were on a peak about a quarter of a mile ahead of everyone else,’ says Tom. From his position he could see German tanks in the valley beneath him. ‘We couldn’t go nowhere,’ he says, and they were beginning to run short of supplies. It was now afternoon on 24 March 1943. The enemy had been mortaring them ever since their counter-attack had begun earlier in the day, but German troops were now moving into positions to the right of them on the Djebel Berda. The Company’s situation was becoming more and more precarious. ‘They were looking down on us,’ says Tom, ‘picking us off one at a time.’

      His СКАЧАТЬ