DISPATCHES FROM WWII BRAVEHEARTS

Burning Steel

Peter Hart

Profile Books £25

★★★★★

Peter Hart was the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for nearly 40 years, and this fascinating account of one tank regiment’s experiences during the

Second World War has been compiled mostly from testimonies given by surviving veterans.

The regiment was the second Fife and Forfar Yeomanry (2nd F&FY), a traditional territorial unit that largely managed to retain its Scottish character despite a later influx of recruits from south of the border. It was composed, in Hart’s words, of ‘ordinary men, performing extraordinary deeds, in a noble cause’.

What Hart has done superbly is to weave their many voices into one seamless narrative, letting the men speak for themselves and imposing his own commentary with the lightest of touches. Individual voices emerge distinctly and the reader comes away with a vivid sense of what it was really like to serve at the sharp end of war.

The regiment spent long years training and didn’t get into action until June 1944, but thereafter it was constantly engaged until the war’s end.

The first battles in Normandy were the most gruelling, and it was a shock for the men to discover that their Sherman tanks were both undergunned and horribly vulnerable. Poor design meant that a hit on a Sherman almost invariably set it on fire, and many men were burned to death in hideous circumstances.

The book conveys in sobering detail the relentless grind of modern warfare: bursts of intense, lethal action, followed by periods of tedious waiting, both extremes usually accompanied by lousy food and few creature comforts. ‘Tiredness was the daily ration,’ stated William Steel Brownlie, probably the regiment’s most effective troop commander.

But the horrors notwithstanding, once it was over, many men found it hard to adjust to civilian life.

‘We missed the camaraderie, the comradeship we’d got used to,’ said

Trooper Len Newman.

You get the feeling that they wouldn’t have missed it for the world.