sandy saunders bashed at the keyboard and came up with:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Apparently if you line up the ponds they point towards London. The
Germans were using them as pointers in WW2. One of them was drained by
the war office(small pond I guess). Apparently too the ridge which
separates the ponds was used extensively for testing Spitfire machine
guns which in the early days misfired and ejected live rounds onto the
ridge. I went to a now closed local school there over 30 yrs ago and my
English teacher said you could go and pick them up in a cordoned off
area. Never investigated it myself.
I did notice a memorial on the way down from Frensham Common back to the
pond. (http://www.thewalkzone.co.uk/today/slide/pages/231005l.htm)
Wonder if that is associated with the war years?
?The British tank regiments came first?, said Tom Grisdale. ?They were all
up on Ludshott Common ? it was just a sea of mud.? Jim Clark remembers
these being light tank regiments, with ?Matildas? he thinks. But it is the
Canadians who the villagers remember most vividly.
?The first lot of Canadians came without tanks ? we thought that was bad
enough, but then we had Canadians plus tanks?, said Joyce Stevens, echoing
the feelings of many residents at the time. The squadrons which were parked
in the village and in Lindford had to drive through the village to take
part in exercises on Ludshott, Frensham and Thursley Commons. Katie Warner
remembers: ?It was nothing to go up and find a line of tanks all down the
High Street, some of them with their tracks off being repaired.?
Pat Lewis recalls driving tanks from Headley to Aldershot when they had to
do repairs, and going through the lanes to Farnham. ?They specialised in
tanks at Aldershot, while Bordon was more for the other vehicles?, he said.
Katie Warner recalls: ?They widened our roads for us considerably ?
especially Mill Lane ? it?s difficult to imagine it now, but it used to
have quite high banks each side going down the hill. But when two tanks met
on the hill, nobody was going to stop and go back ? and so they each carved
into the bank.? She remembers the resulting mud at the top of Mill Lane, by
the chestnut tree. It was so bad that when her six year-old son slipped and
fell there on their way to church, she had to take him straight home to
clean him up, and missed the service.
?If you look around the area now you?ll find concrete in the oddest spots?,
she continues, ?maybe in somebody?s garden ? and there?s a bit along the
Liphook Road just outside Littlecote, where they used to turn to go into
the field, in what is now Hilland Estate. Where they were turning on this
same spot all the time, they scooped out the road blocking the ditch ? so
they had to put in this big slab of concrete which allowed them to turn
more easily.?
Concrete slabs put down to assist tank movements can still be seen in many
other parts of the village: for example, at the sharp corner of Churt Road
at Hearn Vale, by the scout hut up Beech Hill Road, at various places along
Headley Hill Road (see photo), and at the entrance to Headley Fields.
According to David Whittle, parts of Carlton Road (as far as the dip) and
Seymour Road were made up for tanks to go along and there was a Tank Repair
Shed in the middle of Ludshott Common. ?Just inside the fence of the school
grounds at Openfields, there?s concrete still under the grass?, Jim Clark
says. ?They tried to break it up afterwards, but it must be nearly three
foot thick ? they couldn?t touch it, so they just put earth over it ? and
of course if you get a hot summer now, that grass all dies off first.?
?There was a tank shed by where the scout hut is now?, Mary Fawcett recalls,
?with several tanks parked near it, and there was always a guard standing
there, day and night.? There were also tank parks laid down opposite
Ludshott Common along the Grayshott straight, according to Pat Lewis. At
each of these, up to three tanks would run in onto concrete slabs arranged
in a ?trifurcated? pattern, hidden under the trees which were there at the
time. From these parks the tanks had only to cross Grayshott Road to get to
the training area on the Common. This at least saved them from having to
drive through the village.
Many residents remember the incident when a tank ran into the side of a
house in Arford. The house (see photo), since demolished during post-war
development, stood at the narrowest part of Arford Road just down from the
junction with Long Cross Hill. It had been built with a rounded corner, and
according to Katie Warner, ?they had a go at that rounded corner more than
once.? Betty Parker, who lived close by, said that the husband of the lady
living there was away in the Navy at the time. ?She was Irish, and flew out
of doors demanding a guard until it was repaired. He stayed on duty outside
there with a rifle at night for several weeks.? Sue Allden, who supplied
the photograph of the house, recalls the lady telling the tank driver he
?couldn?t drive a wheelbarrow.?
Joyce Stevens (née Suter) remembers that the tanks ?kicked up at the back
when they started off?, and more than once demolished different parts of
their garden wall in the High Street. She still has one of the forms from
the Canadian Claims Commission, proposing to pay £10 for ?damage to stone
wall by unidentified C.M.V.? on 19th November 1943 (see copy p.29). In fact
the bill from Johnson & Sons of Liphook for repairing the wall came to £12,
so the Suters were £2 out of pocket on this occasion.
Harvey Theobald recalls that their C.O. had ordered that any crew damaging
walls, etc, would be responsible for repairing same within 48 hours. ?The
walls near the entrance to ?A? Squadron tank park and the narrow bridge at
Lindford came in for a lot of special attention. Most of our tank crews
soon became very proficient as stone masons!?
Sue Allden says the wall by the road shown in her photograph of Arford was
?continually being knocked down by tanks?, and confirms the report in a
contemporary Parish Magazine which mentions the 1914-18 War Memorial being
hit and damaged by an army vehicle. The Memorial was subsequently moved
back from the road after the war to its present position, in order to
protect it from traffic. Pat Lewis remembers how he once hooked a woman off
her bicycle ? though not in Headley: ?I had a recovery tank, with plenty of
room, but I misjudged the width, and at the side of the tank there were
booms which hit her. She and the bike went over, but thank God there was
road works going on, and she landed in a pile of sand there.? No wonder
veterans tell the tale that the last vehicle in a tank convoy was always
the regimental paymaster, who paid out for damage caused along the way.
Vehicle Identification.
Each tank carried a squadron sign and tank number painted on the turret for
identification. ?I remember the squadron signs?, says Jim Clark. ?There
were squares, circles, diamonds and triangles on the turret ? and the
squares were parked up here in Openfields. I can remember in the evenings,
we were by the Holly Bush when all the tanks were coming back up from
Bordon, and we looked to see which ones came down our road and which went
elsewhere ? and when we saw the ones with the squares on we said, ?They?re
our lot?, and sure enough they turned down our way.? According to
convention in both the British and the Canadian army, the diamonds
signified HQ Squadron, and the triangles, squares and circles belonged to
A, B and C Squadrons respectively.
Other official identification marks included the Formation and Tactical
signs on the front and rear of each vehicle. The Formation sign for the
Canadians was a maple leaf superimposed on a rectangle of the relevant
Division?s colour ? green for the 4th, and maroon for the 5th Armoured
Division, and so on. The Tactical (or ?Tac?) sign was a number denoting the
?seniority? of the regiment within the Brigade. Conventionally for tanks,
this was normally ?51?, ?52? or ?53?. Thus, for example, the Foot Guards,
as senior regiment in the 4th Brigade (see Appendix III), had a Tac Sign of
?51?, while the Garrys, second in the 2nd Brigade, would display ?52?.
Reconnaissance (?Recce?) regiments, such as the South Albertas became after
they left Headley, displayed ?45?. Other numbering systems existed ? for
example it can be seen that the ?Tac? sign of the Calgarys at Dieppe was
?175?.
Tanks were also given names according to a convention which varied from unit
to unit. Sometimes they were chosen to start with a letter relevant to the
Regiment?s name: for example all tanks of the Foot Guards carried names
beginning with the letter ?F? (Marcel Fortier?s tank was ?Fitzroy?);
whereas in the Straths and certain other regiments, the names began with
the letter of the squadron: A, B or C.
But identification marks shown in photographs, even where the censor has let
it through, are not always to be trusted. Pat Lewis recalls: ?Wherever we
were stationed, we were involved in ?away activities?, loaded on tank
landing craft, doing fake runs here and there ? up to Wales, up to Scotland
and then back. We didn?t realise at first, but the ?Scam? was on as well ?
we were taken down the road and they?d tell us to change the lettering on
the tank, or something. We?d think, ?What stupid thing?s this? We?ve just
done that?. But it was all trying to screw up the German intelligence.?
Whereas the Calgarys arrived with British ?Matilda? and then ?Churchill?
tanks, all subsequent Canadian regiments here used the American M3 ?Grant?,
M4 ?Sherman? or Canadian ?Ram? types. The Grants were relatively
old-fashioned, and noted for having their main gun ?sponson-mounted? in the
body of the tank rather than in the turret (see photo). This gave them a
very limited angle of fire unless you turned the whole tank, and they were
eventually replaced by Shermans which did not suffer from this problem. The
Sherman became the main battle-horse of the Canadians during the Normandy
campaign, and was usually powered by dependable twin Diesel engines. See
Grant and Sherman specifications in Appendix IV.
However, the Ram was probably the tank seen most in Headley (see photos). It
was a Canadian manufactured version of the Sherman, of all-welded
construction, powered by an aeroplane engine running on 100% octane petrol,
and is said to have taken its name from the ram on the family crest of
General Worthington, the ?father? of Canadian armoured forces. These tanks
were relatively fast, but only did 1 mile per gallon with a maximum range
of some 100 miles, and also required a great deal of maintenance on their
engines. Their protective armour was not very heavy ? the Garrys discovered
on visiting the Linney Ranges in Wales that a shot from their 2 pounder
main armament would go right through them. They were used for training and
eventually replaced by ?real? Shermans for operational armoured work, but
the changeover was not complete until April 1944 ? just 2 months before
D-Day.
