About the Author

I fought in Operation Blockbuster in early March 1945 as a Troop Leader in an armoured half-track leading a troop of four 31-ton Sexton SPs with 25-pounder guns. The regiment then moved to the Buderich area, a village two miles from the Rhine, SW of Wesel. The area is clearly shown on the map Operation Varsity with all the gun positions (page 187). The Americans were almost next door to us. Fox Troop had 4 Sextons, 2 tanks and 2 armoured half-tracks. Christopher Studdert-Kennedy was the Gun Position Officer (GPO), a lieutenant aged 23. I was 21 and a veteran of a dozen battles since Normandy. I was wounded in Holland, awarded the Bronze Cross of Orange- Nassau for all sorts of skulduggery in the Dutch Peel country and polders. During Plunder we fired almost non-stop for nearly 10 hours supporting the 15th Scottish in Operation Torchlight around Wesel and on the many German AA batteries east of the Rhine, identified by aerial photos. We 'commanded' one hour on, one hour off. No problem, we were fit and knew what we were doing. The ranges varied from 6,500 yards to 9,500 yards and usually 25 rounds per gun per target. In the year's campaign we fired just over 1,000 rounds per gun. In Plunder probably about 250 per gun. The rest of 11th Armoured-265 brand new Comet tanks-crossed near Wesel a couple of days later, heading for the four great German river battles: Dortmund-Ems, Wesel, Aller and the Elbe via Bergen-Belsen-first battlegroup in.