Fighting Hitler from Dunkirk to D-Day

The Story of Die Hard Jeff Haward

Jeff Haward, Neil Barber

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473855274
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Segunda Guerra Mundial

"From the Battle of France through to the German unconditional surrender... A very welcome addition to the available direct accounts of WWII" ( Firetrench ). Fighting Hitler from Dunkirk to D-Day is the compelling story of a man belonging to a group of which there are now very few survivors. Jeff Haward MM was a pre-war Territorial Army soldier who enlisted and fought throughout the entirety of the Second World War. He became a "Die Hard, " the historic name given to men of the famous Middlesex Regiment. He joined the 1/7th Battalion, equipped with the British Army's iconic Vickers medium machine gun. Following evacuation from Dunkirk, the 1/7th, while refitting and re-equipping, carried out coastal defense duties in preparation for the German invasion. In 1941, they were attached to the famous 51st Highland Division. The less than enthusiastic welcome from the Jocks gradually evolved into respect following the Middlesex's performance at El Alamein and the subsequent campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and northwest Europe. After the Reichswald battle in March 1945, Jeff was surprised to hear that he had been awarded the Military Medal for bravery and was subsequently awarded the ribbon by none other than Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. Jeff Haward's experiences, those of a normal soldier, make fascinating reading and throw new light on the use of such Vickers gun battalions during the war. "Lets the reader inside the mind of a solider who was present at the forefront of several pivotal events, which without doubt shaped the successful outcome of the Second World War." — World War Two

Chapter One

Upbringing

On 16 November 1937, at the age of eighteen, I walked down to the local Army Drill Hall in Hornsey, North London. After passing the medical and filling out various forms, a former Guards Regimental Sergeant Major called Coulsden, held out a shilling. I took it and from that moment there was no way back. I had joined a Territorial Machine-Gun battalion, the 1/7th Middlesex. I was now a ‘Die Hard’!

* * *

We were a small family and during my growing up I never knew exactly why, not that I thought about it too much. Jeanne Catherine Elise Favez, my mother, was born in Lausanne, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Her family wanted her to learn English, but without wealth the only way it could be done was to go ‘into service’. Therefore, at around the turn of the twentieth century while in her late teens, she came across to England and found such employment in a large house in Finchley, North London.

My father, Arthur Haward, worked for R. Whites Mineral Waters, delivering lemonade around the area on a horse and cart and it was through these calls that they actually met. When they eventually decided to get married, my mother’s parents told her that if she married this Englishman, they would have nothing further to do with her. My father’s parents said exactly the same thing! They were married in 1911, but both families kept to their word and neither ever had the slightest thing to do with us.

I was born at 24 Beaconsfield Cottages, Long Lane, Finchley on 28 July 1919. This address was one in a row of small houses owned by my mother’s employer in-service and when she got married, let it to my parents.

I had a brother and two sisters. Arthur was the eldest, being about eight years older, Marie was next in line and then Joan who was four years older than me.

My father had fought in The Great War, initially in the Royal Fusiliers, but then transferring to the Buffs. He lost a leg at Passchendaele and was invalided out. After recovering from his amputation, he was given a false leg and went back to work for R. Whites. This was fine while they used the horse and cart, particularly as the horse knew where to stop and start! Unfortunately, he had to give it up when the Company became mechanized and employed lorries.

There was an incident that occurred one summer when he was sitting in an old rocking chair. A fly had settled on his head and I decided to knock it off with a hammer! I don’t recall the repercussions, but they must have been a bit violent because that is my only real memory of him. In 1927, he died from Hodgkin’s disease, aged forty-six.

For a few years after this, things must have been tough for my mother, when life was hard anyway, because the owner of the house would come around for the weekly rent, and I often recall him saying, ‘Put that back in your pocket. Don’t tell anyone.’

The money situation would not have improved when just after leaving school, Arthur was caught scrumping and went before the magistrate who informed him that he could either go to prison or join the Army. He joined the Army and went into the 1st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery. They were subsequently sent to India and stationed at Peshawar on the Khyber Pass, a strange posting considering the distinct lack of aircraft in the vicinity.¹

However, some time after, my mother became involved with a door-to-door salesman whose wife had passed away. He sold tea towels, items of clothing and suchlike. Arthur was obviously away but Marie and Joan were dead against this chap. Anyway, eventually a younger brother, Norman, arrived!

Before I began school Scarlet Fever was prevalent and very contagious. My sister caught it and had to go into an isolation hospital at a place called Coney Hatch. When she came out, of course I caught it and suffered red blotches, so it was my turn for a spell in an isolation hospital, this being at Coppetts Wood, in the area of Friern Barnet. I spent about three weeks in there and during the morning on which I was to be discharged, my left ear clicked and felt peculiar. I noticed a discharge on the pillow, but really wanted to go home so I just turned it over. The two nurses who came to change the bed never saw it. I went home, but still had to be in quarantine for another three weeks after being discharged. A few days later the area behind my ear began to swell, very quickly leaving me with a lump the size of a chicken’s egg that pushed my ear down and back. My mother decided to go and see a doctor who went around visiting schools. Squire’s Lane School was close by, on a lane that led up to the old Squire’s House itself. She described the symptoms and he told her that it could be very serious. Mum had Norman in a pushchair and had to walk back home, but the doctor did not want to wait, so he asked for the key to our house and immediately drove there. When I heard the lock go I thought it was my mother, but he called out for me and I hid behind the settee. Eventually of course, I was found and told that he was taking me to hospital in his car. On the way, as soon as he could, the doctor stopped and telephoned ahead because I still needed to be in quarantine, so I ended up back in the isolation hospital. My problem was very serious. I was suffering from mastoiditis, an infection that affected the air cells behind the ear. If not treated very quickly, it would be fatal. A special surgeon had to be brought in and he operated on me that night. I was put out with ether. A type of cage was laid over my face and a sponge squeezed against it from which dripped the ether. The surgeon said, ‘Can you count to ten? I want you to count from ten backwards.’ I started counting and got less than halfway when everything started to get hot and go red. And then it exploded in my head and I felt myself sinking down.

The operation was successful but left me with a big scar behind the ear. The doctor told me that if I had left it much longer, it would have indeed been fatal.

When I reached five years of age, I attended Squire’s Lane School.² The Headmaster was a Mr North, a strict disciplinarian, but very fair. He taught me a lot and I particularly enjoyed Geography. Another very strict teacher, Mr Hackett, had been in the Machine-Gun Corps during The Great War. The teachers had to be called Mister and Miss, and you were not allowed to do anything wrong. If you did, the result was a whack with a ruler or something similar. Things like not paying attention, in any way, brought a slap across the hand with a cane. In the woodwork class the teacher, who always said to us, ‘Remember, you’ve only got one set of hands. Be careful. If you damage a hand, you’ll never get another one,’ would not tolerate slacking or doing anything you should not have been. If anyone did, he would pick up a small piece of wood and throw it at the culprit! They were good teachers though.

I had a small group of friends. My best friend, John Suddes, also lived in the lane, while two others were around the corner. Another mate, Charlie Howard, was further up Long Lane. We would all meet, then go to Charlie’s, and taking his family dog, walk across country all the way to Whetstone and go right the way around in a circle. There was also a bit of ground at the bottom of Squire’s Lane called The Rough Lots, and we had a bit of a time chasing the girls around there, or really them chasing us! Nothing serious. There was little to do really, you had to make your own entertainment.

I had a paper round at a well-known shop called Straker’s. This was done before I went to school and on foot, as I did not have a bike. You just had to be strong enough to carry the bag containing all the papers. It did not pay much but I still gave Mum half of it.

People from local businesses used to visit the school to interview the leavers, but as I neared school leaving age there was not a lot of work about, so I was lucky to be offered something. And so, at fourteen years of age I left school on the Friday and started work the following Monday in a factory in East Finchley. The company was called Sims Bakelite and they made all sorts of items, as Bakelite was all the rage. My job was working on cigarette holders. After manufacture there was a seam where the two moulds met and I had to remove the seam so that it was smooth. The place had such a horrible, oppressive smell that I left after a fortnight and got another job in an electrical factory in Whetstone called Sildon Radio. In all electrical plugs there are three screws and it was my task was to fit the screws by turning them two or three threads so that they would not fall out! It was so monotonous that I did not stay there for long either. Just up the road from home was a family plumbing firm called Kilners, so I applied there and was told that I would be taken on if I entered a seven-year apprenticeship, with the last of those years being spent as what they called an ‘Improver’, working under supervision. I also had to go to Willesden Technical College for one night a week to learn the theory side. However, when things in the country got bad and there was not a lot of work coming in, I left and got another job with Charlie Howard at a firm building Council flats all over London. I spent most of my time in the East End, mainly the Hackney area. The houses were very basic. None had plaster on the walls, just the rendering.

There was a bloke who lived up the road who I had met at Sildon Radio called Sid Young. He persuaded me to join the Territorials.³ I thought it would be something to do in the evenings and of course to go away on a fortnight’s camp once a year was very attractive. The Hornsey Drill Hall in Priory Road was actually the home of ‘C’ Company and Company Headquarters of the 1/7th Middlesex. The other Companies that comprised the battalion were located in Highgate, Wood Green and Edmonton.

The first night that I went home after receiving my uniform, I could see from the look on my mother’s face that she was uncomfortable with it, and said that it was something she did not really want to see. Obviously what had happened to my father had affected her deeply.

Training took place every Friday evening. There was no pay, only travelling expenses from Finchley to the Drill Hall.

* * *

As with all battalions, the 1/7th Middlesex was commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel, who had a Major as his second-in-command. The battalion had five Companies, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ and HQ, each commanded at that time by a Captain (although this was to change to a Major as we reached our war establishment). The Company was equipped with the Vickers Medium machine gun and with the four Companies each having twelve such machine guns, the battalion possessed some formidable firepower.

Each Company was broken down into three platoons, ‘C’ Company’s being numbered 10, 11 and 12. I was in 12 Platoon. The Platoon Commander was a 2nd Lieutenant and there was also a Platoon Sergeant, a range-taker, a runner to take messages, a First-Aid man and a cook. The 12 Platoon Commander was Lieutenant Victor Scantlebury.⁴

Platoon transport consisted of six Morris Commercial 15cwt trucks, one each for the machine guns, one for the Platoon Commander and one for the Platoon Sergeant who had all the stores. This truck did not have a Vickers, but carried one Bren gun for anti-aircraft fire. The cook also travelled on this vehicle which always brought up the rear. These trucks had dedicated drivers.

Such a platoon consisted of two Sections, each having two Vickers guns. A Section had a Section Commander, this being a Corporal. In theory, a Gun Crew comprised five men; the Number 1, being a Corporal, fired the Vickers while the Number 2 fed the ammunition to the gun, and the Numbers 3, 4 and 5 maintained a constant supply of ammunition. However, due to the shortage of men a Gun Crew was fortunate to have three, let alone five men. Instead, we used the drivers.

Training on the machine guns was minimal because in reality our instructors knew nothing about the Vickers and the only way we could be taught how to use them was from the training manuals. Therefore, most of our time was spent discussing the availability of the local girls and drinking cheap beer in the canteen.

The first year’s camp was situated at Arundel in Sussex. Our time was spent wandering up and down hills following tapes that were put out for night attacks. A Colonel called Pringle who had won the Military Cross in the Great War was riding around on a horse, while even at that stage the Germans were driving about in tanks.

Although war was looming we never seriously discussed it or thought about the implications. The signs were there when Hitler took the Sudetenland and then Czechoslovakia, and Mussolini had invaded Abyssinia and Albania, but we believed ‘it couldn’t happen to us’.

* * *

On Friday 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. I was working in a house at Finsbury Park near the Arsenal football ground when the news came out. We were fixing a big water tank and I said to the foreman, ‘I don’t think I’ll be in tomorrow Joe.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t suppose you will!’ Sure enough, that same day the BBC announced general mobilisation and the order for all Reservists and Territorial Army Units to report to their respective barracks or depot. I went home and packed, but there was not any real goodbye scene between my mother and I. It was all a bit embarrassing so I thought ‘the sooner I get away the better’.

On the following Sunday, war was actually declared. Nobody knew quite what to think. For the previous few months, cinemas had been showing a weekly series in the Pathe News that explained the different armies and their armaments, and how smug the French were, sitting in their Maginot Line. Nothing could ever get past them. It also showed what people thought a Second World War would be like. The impression given by the film series was that the country was going to be wiped out almost immediately by mass air raids, so we all expected the worst.

The next three weeks were spent in the Drill Hall, sleeping on the hard floor with a solitary blanket. Trenches were dug outside on the tennis courts, we had our vaccinations, did indoor training on the machine guns, and carried out driving practice on the 15cwt trucks, all around the Alexandra Palace. Whenever we marched through the streets behind our band we were showered with kisses and free beer. I thought ‘this war can’t be too bad’. Mobilisation also meant that we actually got paid. As a Private I was given fourteen shillings a week and again, gave my mother half of that, but it was quite a drop in wages because previously I had been earning £5 a week.

On 14 October the Middlesex Companies marched from their respective Drill Halls to Wood Green Station where two special trains took us to the grim reality of the Victorian ‘Salamanca Barracks’ at Aldershot. The whole battalion of 27 officers and 609 other ranks concentrated here and shortly after, the arrival of 131 militiamen from the Machine-Gun Training Company, Mill Hill, brought the unit up to virtually full strength.⁵

Normal training plus weapons training began almost immediately and everyone suffered at the hands of a corporal, a Middlesex Reservist. He was one of the most objectionable, foul-mouthed people I had ever met. He went out of his way to make everyone’s life a misery. When referring to the war, he continually barracked us with his two favourite sayings; ‘This will sort the men from the boys’ and ‘When we get there, it will be the survival of the fittest.’

While here, we received sixteen vehicles that were meant to represent the 30cwt trucks stipulated on the war establishment, but were actually civilian vehicles impressed into use, ranging in size up to 5 Tons. Further 15cwt trucks were issued later in the month.⁶

Here I met a chap called Frank Dollin. He was slightly older than me, married, with a little girl. Frank was the Number 1 on the gun and we just clicked and became fi...