Funny stories from the South Saskatchewan Regiment.

[tar]

Rounding out my posts from the regimental history of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, The March of the Prairie Men by Lt.Col. G.B. Buchanan, M.B.E are a set of somewhat humorous anecdotes:

The shells and mortar bombs rained down in crumps periodically throughout each day causing many casualties. The famous "Moaning Minnies" were particularly spine chilling missiles as they played their screaming orchestrations overhead. C.S.M. "Shorty" Warren was coming into Company Headquarters one day when the Minnie concert started. He made a running dive into a supposed "slit-trench." He soon discovered his error. It turned out to be a latrine and Shorty came out of it unfit for further operational duties until his old friend R.Q.M.S. Bowie had refitted him from head to foot --- from a distance. [p.26]

One good S. Sask. R. Sgt. named Mickey Faille, was overheard telling an old lady in London about the terrific shelling of the Ifs area. "Why didn't you hide behind trees, my dear," she asked. "Hell, lady," the Sgt. replied, "There weren't enough trees to go around the officers never mind the sergeants." [p.26]

The German air force dropped a large delayed action bomb near Battalion Headquarters which later on blew in all the windows and left a 75 foot crater. It was here that one of those "bright scouts" decided that sleeping in a farm house during a raid was a bit too risky. Grabbing his blanket he went outside and across the field to a big 60-cwt. vehicle and bedded down underneath it in a bit of a depression. In the morning he was shocked to find he had parked underneath the ammunition truck which was perilously close to the crater. [p.33]

One very amusing incident happened during the night of the [beveland Peninsula] canal crossing [in Holland]. One of the very efficient scouts was interrogating prisoners with the initial question "Haben sie [sic] Geld?" From there on the questions concerned such military objects as watches, cameras and Lugers. By morning the scouts were unknowingly the richest men in the Canadian Army. An unknown officer casually asked one of them if he had picked up any souvenir notes of large denominations, and the innocent scout honestly replied: "Yes, Sir," and proceeded to show him his many stuffed pockets. "Oh," said the officer, doing some fast mental arithmetic. "Thousand Guilder Notes? I haven't any of those, and these 500 Guilder notes are pretty, too, aren't they? My, they will add nicely to my collection, do you mind?" The scout who thought a guilder was of no value, like the German marks, kep on giving the officer all he wanted. Later the scout discovered that a Guilder was worth 40 cents. He had given a fortune away to an astute gentleman. Later the scout was heard telling a reinforcement "You gotto watch them officers, son, they're sly." [p.43]

[At Hochwald] for the first time since Caen days, the Moaning Minnes were heard screaming across the skies.... It was these Moaning Minnies which caused a soldier to ask Captain Gordon Walker, the Padre, for a Catholic Prayer Book. "Yes, here is one you can have," replied the Padre, "but aren't you the man I gave a Protestant book to the other day?" "Right you are, Sir," replied the man, "but at a time like this I'm taking no chances." [p.51]

Fighing patrols were then sent out to mop up odd enemy machine-gun posts. [Private] D. Phillips, a stretcher bearer for "A" Company, had seen a wounded German and had gone out to give him aid but was taken prisoner by the enemy. Phillips, who could speak German and was very upset over the absence of chivalry in the Germans, told them so in no uncertain terms with the result that he was released with full apologies. [p.53]

C.S.M. = Company Sergeant Major

R.Q.M.S. = Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant

[ March 11, 2005, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: tar ]

[Pzman]

LOL... thanks for those stories.

[Gpig]

Here's one from the South Alberta Regiment history;

The "shoot-up" signalled a renewal of the fighting in St. Lambert. By now it was mid-afternoon and the situation began to deteriorate as seemingly hundreds of Germans poured in and small fire fights broke out. There was no logic to the German attacks, they would flare up and just as quickly dissipate. Sometimes the enemy would disappear, other times they would fire a few shots and then surrender. "We were scrambling around a lot" with the tanks, Corporal Bob Fairhurst recalled, "trying to shake the Germans off and get better firing positions." Some of the Shermans, which had not moved for some hours, had run down their batteries and Ed Hyatt was horrrified when his Sherman could not be started to get out of the way of German AP fire. "They pulled up an anti-tank gun," he remembered, "and fired one over the top of the turret, one in the ground, and the third one right into the turret." The round did not penetrate and nobody was hurt but the crew bailed out and took cover in a nearby house. They returned after dark, got the vehicle started and removed it to safety. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Germans, were in and around the village and at one point "late in the afternoon, " Dave Currie recorded, "the tanks were running around in circles firing at one another to keep the enemy from climbing on top of them." Just to make matters more lively, St. Lambert now began to come under German artillery fire. As if all this wasn't bad enough, Dave got a call on the wireless from Captain Tommy Barford, the SAR quartermaster. The brigade quartermaster had been pressureing Tommy to account for certain items of issue known as "attractive stores." "Dave, can you give me the number of your binoculars," Tommy asked in an apologetic voice, "brigade wants to know." "Sure, Tommy," was the polite reply, "but I am a little busy now and I will have to call you back."

Heh heh

[tar]

Nice example of a crew abandoning a non-damaged vehicle....

[Gpig]

Yeah.

Also, during that same engagement, a SAR Sherman V was firing down the road at the Germans when the breech became stuck. Turns out each crew has a tool used to unstick the breech. But this one sherman crew has missplaced/lost theirs.

Anyways, the TC (or loader, I don't remember which) gets out of his tank, runs to a neighbours tank, grabs the tool and runs back to clear the breech. Then back he goes again to return the tool. Apparently he had to do this more than a couple of times during this particular action.

Sounds "hairy."

CMx2 = Go over the Sherman V2 and borrow a couple of Tungsten rounds, will yah? We are a bit short.

(heh)

Gpig