WWII TANK DOLL

Little Audrey was the lucky mascot of a British Cromwell tank commander who took her on campaign from Normandy to Berlin

This lucky mascot travelled from Normandy to Berlin

In 1944, British junior officer Lionel ‘Bill’ Bellamy was given a small china doll by his then-girlfriend Audrey before he set out for Normandy. A member of 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, Bellamy had joined the Royal Armoured Corps in 1941 and crossed the English Channel with his unit after D-day. Nicknamed Little Audrey, the delicate doll is just 13cm tall and wears a bouffant dress while clutching a wide-brimmed hat.

Bellamy attached the doll to the searchlight on the turret of his Cromwell tank and she became a good-luck charm for the crew, who apparently accepted her “without question”. Despite the fierce fighting in Normandy and beyond, Little Audrey remained unscathed by enemy fire – until the tank was attacked in the Netherlands.

On that occasion, Little Audrey was knocked from her position by a branch as the tank passed through a hedgerow.

She was so loved that the troop of three tanks stopped while a troop leader from another tank jumped out to retrieve her, at great risk. Bellamy later wrote: “As I was about to give the signal to move, I saw

Sergeant Bill Pritchard leap out of his tank. He rushed back to the hedgerow, picked up Audrey, clambered on the back of my tank, handed her to me and shouted, ‘I’m not going without her!’ I knew that she had become a very much-loved mascot, but until that moment I hadn’t realised the full extent of her role!”

The cherished doll continued to accompany Bellamy for the rest of the war, including when he reached Berlin and wandered around the Reichstag. His acclaimed war memoir

Troop Leader: A Tank Commander’s Story was published in 2005 and he kept Little Audrey until he died in 2009.

Bill Bellamy was awarded the Military Cross by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in March 1945. He retired from the British Army in 1955 with the rank of captain Little Audrey survived everything that German forces threw at Bellamy’s tank, including mines and machine gun, mortar and artillery fire Little Audrey is on display as part of the new WWII: War Stories exhibition at the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset. For more information on how to book tickets visit: