Graham Stevenson – El Alamein – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
Graham Stevenson joined when he was 16 and served in Africa, including El Alamein, from ages 17 – 19. On their return to England, his unit was trained in the Sherman DD swimming tanks. He came in on Gold Beach and was wounded in hedgerow fighting on his first day in Normandy.
Dates of Interview: April 12, 2012; June 7, 2012; ongoing.
Transcribed: Mostly
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Mix of Standard and High Definition Video
Length: 200+ minutes
Captain David Render – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
David Render served in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry Tank Regiment during the European campaign.
This interview is currently being transcribed.
Dates of Interview: April 29, 2012; May 3, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 148 minutes
Major John Semken- El Alamein – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
John Semken was a tank commander in the Sherwood Rangers Tank Regiment and served in the African and European campaigns. He came in on Gold Beach on D-Day, and earned Britain’s Military Cross.
This interview has been transcribed.
Date of Interview: May 2, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 114 minutes
Stan Cox – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
by Zoe Hume
Stan Cox served with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, landing with his squadron on Gold Beach, one of five beaches the Allies stormed during the Normandy landings of June 6th, 1944.
After joining the Army in 1943, Stan trained on Cromwell tanks before receiving instruction on the M4 Sherman tank, which had just started to pour into Europe from America. The Shermans had more speed and a faster rate of fire than German tanks, but the Panzers had better accuracy, range, and armoring. Particularly distressing, the Shermans had a tendency to catch on fire easily, earning them the nickname “Ronson lighters.” Still, the Sherman tanks were reliable, and, with well-trained crews manning them, they could hold their own in a fight. Following six weeks of training on the Sherman, Stan joined A Squadron of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.
Stan found life with the Sherwood Rangers to be almost the polar opposite of his previous experience with Army life. Everyone, even the Sergeant Major, went by their first name, and the Regiment seemed like one big happy family. Just returned from Africa where they had left their equipment, the Sherwood Rangers had no tanks to work with initially, so Stan and the rest of his new mates spent a lot of time playing different sports and sleeping in.
Once the tanks arrived from America activity ratcheted up quickly, and the Regiment was kept busy with unpacking weapons and tools while the tanks were readied for service. The moment the tanks were ready, the Sherwood Rangers conducted training exercises in them until their orders came through. Stan’s A Squadron was sent to the village of Sway to waterproof their tanks and practice beach landings.
At the beginning of June 1944, A Squadron was moved to Southampton where they boarded their Landing Craft Tanks (LCT), which carried their three tanks and two supply trucks. On June 4th, they anchored off the off coast of the Isle of Wight ready to head to France, but due to bad weather the landings were cancelled. The men were forced to wait aboard their LCTs for the weather to clear.
They set sail late June 5th. As Stan and the others sailed through the night in the open LCT, they sought shelter wherever they could, some in the tanks themselves and others on the bow of the LCT, but the harsh rain and constant rocking was exhausting. The deck became covered in water and vomit as soldiers succumbed to seasickness. Sleep was virtually impossible.
When the dawn broke, they found themselves surrounded by dozens of ships of every kind imaginable, and the sky was filled with Allied aircraft. As they neared the coast, the Sherwood Rangers prepared to land. Stan could see the fighting on the beach and knew he would soon be in the thick of it.
To get the tanks onto the beach, they had to lay out coconut matting in front of the LCT so the tanks could gain traction on the sand. Stan was chosen to help roll out the matting, but a strong tide and heavy sea pulled the matting and the attached LCT back out to sea. Stan landed in the rough water and was forced to swim towards shore along with the others who had been trying to get the matting straight. While the LCT made a second attempt at landing, Stan and his mates crawled up Gold Beach under fire and quickly sought the cover of the seawall.
The LCT’s second attempt was successful, and as soon as his tank was firmly on the beach Stan ran to join the rest of his crew. Their tank was taken over by their officer, and they then began pressing inland toward Bayeux in the lead. Instead of capturing the city during the night, the Sherwood Rangers lost their infantry support and were forced to pull back to an apple orchard for the night.
After taking the town the next morning, they moved out towards Tilly-sur-Seulles. A few days later while near Tilly, Stan’s tank was hit by German artillery and caught fire. As the gunner, Stan worked the Sherman’s cannon around so that all the other crew members could bail out of their hatches. Once they had, he was the last out of the flaming tank. Just outside, by the tracks, Stan had a narrow miss with another round and was sprayed with shrapnel, throwing him to the ground. As Stan lay next to the tank and watched it moving at an angle, giving the impression of wanting to roll over on him. Luckily, it stopped, and Stan was carried to shelter by other crew members. The abandoned tank soon was consumed by the flames.
Stan was sent back to hospital in England, where he spent nine months recovering from his injuries. In March of 1945, Stan was discharged with paralyzed left arm and a brace on one of his legs. Eventually, he recovered fully but carried the heavy scars as reminders of his short, but eventful, time in combat.
Date of Interview: April 29, 2012
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 54 minutes
Bert Jenkins – Swimming DD Tanks Gold Beach – Sherwood Rangers
Bert came in to Gold Beach on a Sherman swimming DD tank that didn’t swim very well.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: May 6, 2012
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 174 minutes
Wing Commander Ken Wallis – Wellington Bomber Pilot and Autogyro Inventor
by Zoe Hume and Heather Steele
Wing Commander Ken Wallis was a skilled inventor and passionate aviator, who flew well into his 90’s. From a young age, he was determined to fly despite being turned down by the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve due to a defect in his right eye. Ken’s impaired vision did not stop him from earning his private pilot’s license in a quick 12 hours and 10 minutes. In 1939, he succeeded in successfully joined the Royal Air Force after cheating on his eye exam, reading the letters off the chart with his left eye while the doctor’s back was turned.
Despite his bad eye, Ken was an excellent pilot and flew 36 missions over Germany and Italy during the war. He flew in Wellingtons – the twin-engine, medium-range bomber with the unique spiral geodesic airframe structure designed by his cousin, Barnes Wallis. Its ability to withstand a great deal of punishment was to save Ken’s life on multiple occasions
Ken flew his first tour of duty with No. 103 Squadron, a night bomber unit which carried out missions over Germany and other areas of German-occupied Europe for the entire war. After completing one tour of duty, Ken returned to front-line duty with No. 37 Squadron in Italy, also flying Wellingtons. Both units suffered terrible losses through the war. Although Ken’s luck and skill as a pilot saw him through several potentially fatal plane crashes, his first captain and five of his subsequent second pilots were killed in action.
In his first brush with death, Ken was returning from a mission when a massive fog bank rolled in over England. All returning planes were ordered to Scotland, but as Ken’s Wellington did not have enough fuel to make it there, he and his crew bailed out. As the last one out, Ken was about to lower himself through the escape hatch when he found his parachute snagged on a lever on the pilot’s seat. If he had jumped then, he would have been caught dangling under the doomed bomber. Luckily, he was able to untangle the parachute and jump with just enough height to unfurl it before hitting the ground and injuring his back. While he languished in pain until morning in a noble estate in the area, left both hungry and thirsty, his crew were entertained heartily by local workers in their cottages until the sun came up and they returned to their base.
During his next close call, Ken flew his Wellington into one of the many barrage balloons tethered above English towns to protect them from enemy bombers, but which instead, in the typically British miserable weather and low visibility, managed to bring down more British planes than German ones. Already down one engine at the end of their mission, the Wellington’s wing and fuel lines were cut by balloon’s steel cable, nearly causing the plane to stall. The cable miraculously released just in time to allow Ken to crash his bomber feet from the edge a convenient nearby cliff. Fortunately, the plane did not catch fire. During the herculean efforts to land his plane safely in the blacked-out darkness, Ken’s fingers were sliced by the throttle cables and his face smashed into the windshield, adding significant lifelong hand injuries to his permanent back and eye problems.
In another hair-raising escape, a stray reconnaissance flare meant to lay a path for following bombers on a mission to Bremen became trapped inside his Wellington, which was carrying an incendiary bomb load. Ken’s crew quickly advised him to jettison the load, which had started to burn. Although he quickly pulled the release lever, sending the bombs through his bomb bay doors, the resulting flames ate away at the body of the plane on the return trip to England. The fire burned the skin of the plane and melted many integral parts of its skeleton, but the unique geodesic design of the Wellington provided enough structural integrity for Ken and his crew to return safely over the Channel.
During his RAF career, Ken also worked in weapons testing and development, an area of fascination for him. For a short while, he shared an office with Harold J. Turpin, one of the men who had designed the STEN gun, a crude but effective British submachine gun that was easy and inexpensive to make. Ken took the opportunity to show Turpin his pride and joy, three tiny miniature working pistols he had fashioned by hand, along with the near-microscopic ammunition that accompanied them.
After the war, Ken spent two years in America with the U.S. Strategic Air Command flying B-36’s, the largest piston-fired plane ever made . He completed his service in the Royal Air Force in 1964, though his career as both a pilot and an inventor was far from over.
In his retirement, Wallis turned his attention to inventing a new sort of open-air, personal aircraft in 1961, the Wallis autogyro. The aircraft featured in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, and Ken was pleased to fly it on set as a stunt double for Sean Connery., He then went on to set 34 world records for speed in the autogryo (17 of which he still held at the time of his death).
When interviewed for the World War II History Project at the age of 96, he was still flying his “harem” of autogyros around his estate and neighborhood. He passed away a little over a year later on September 1st, 2013.
Date of Interview: May 12, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 53 minutes
John “Jack” Squires – MGB 503 – Shelburn Escape Line
Jack Squires served on MGB 503, which as part of the Royal Navy’s 15th Flotilla brought weapons, arms, and agents to occupied France, and took away Allied aviators who evaded capture through the Shelburn escape line.
Date of Interview: May 5, 2012
Interviewer: Richard Hellyer (and Heather Steele)
Transcribed: Yes
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 138 minutes
Jeff Watkins – RAF Pilot – Lancasters – Bombing of the Tirpitz
Flight Lieutenant Jeff Watkins flew Halifax bombers during the war, completing one tour of duty, before volunteering for a second tour of duty. He was assigned to Lancasters, and took part in the bombing and sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz in Norway on November 12, 1944.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: August 26, 2014
Interviewer: Heather Steele (and Andy Keech)
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 206 minutes
Bernard “Ben” Beilby – MGB 501 – Shelburn Escape Line
Ben Beilby served on MGB 501, one of the Motor Gun Boats of the Royal Navy earmarked for clandestine trips to occupied territory in the service of MI9’s Shelburn escape line.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: October 29, 2012
Interviewers: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 77 minutes