Just Finished Reading: The Tank War – The British ‘band of brothers’: one tank regiment’s World War II by Mark Urban (FP: 2013)

5RTR (the 5th Royal Tank Regiment) was one of those rare units who fought throughout WW2 from the ignominious retreat across France – complete with demanding petrol at gun point on their way to the coast – to the capture of Hamburg in 1945. They fought in all temperatures from the boiling deserts of North Africa to the freezing central European plain and against a variety of enemies from the Italians and Rommel’s Afrika Corp to hard-line SS Panzer divisions in France and on German soil who gave neither ground nor quarter. It was, as you can imagine, one hell of a war for all concerned.

As explained in the opening chapter this history is ‘warts and all’ complete with disregarding stupid orders, openly defying officers, refusing to be deployed, shooting prisoners and those surrendering under a white flag, looting, and much else besides. In other words war as it really was rather than the sanitised picture we usually get from most historians. War is, by its very nature, a horrible, dirty and thankless activity taking place in (at best) a moral grey zone where casual death lives alongside casual brutality. When you see friends killed in an underhand and undeserving manner you can’t help but sympathise with the hard-line, hardnosed reply. It may not be cricket but it’s certainly war – learnt the hard way through bloody experience.

Not surprisingly one of the defining things about 5RTR, and indeed all tank units on all sides, are the vehicles they are given to fight in. Cooped up with 3-4 other people in an often uncomfortable confined space where misunderstanding or a lack of almost instinctive co-operation can mean a rather unpleasant death can’t help but build strong bonds that last a lifetime. Much more than the ‘poor bloody infantry’ the bonds between tanks crews was intense. The tanks themselves often left much to be desired. Early British tanks where, it seems, crafted rather than mass produced leading to problems with maintenance and lack of numbers. Only when American built tanks began appearing did things improve until, that is, they came up against Rommel’s forces and they learnt to their cost just how inadequate early Allied tanks where. But once the early years where behind them and much battle experience absorbed things began to turn in the Allies direction with the arrival of the Sherman, the Cromwell and the invasion of Italy. But 5RTR was going home – kind of.

Early in 1944 the Allies had something else on their minds apart from slogging up the Italian coast roads – the Second Front and the invasion of mainland Europe. 5RTR where to be in the second wave and were used time and again – often with inadequate infantry support due to lack of resources – to breakout and breakthrough into open countryside. The fighting was intense especially as they began to meet the formidable Tiger and Panther tanks in ever increasing numbers in the difficult ‘bocage’ country. Once the long fought for breakout finally arrived 5RTR once again began advancing 50, 100, 150 miles a day towards what they hoped would be a swift end to the war. Unfortunately as they approached the German heartland fighting intensified still further as stubborn resistance from sometimes hastily thrown together units and conscripted civilians took their toll on both man and machine.

Told with an eye to detail and with a great storytellers ability to let the reader feel the impact of shell on armour, to smell the cordite, farts and fear inside the tanks turret, to hear the voices of the men involved as they go about the dirty business of killing and dying this was a fascinating insight to what it was really like to fight your way across Europe with an intimate band of brothers. If you want to know what tank war was like you could do a lot worse than start here. Recommended.