61st Reconnaissance

 

Chotie Darling

 Dedicated to the memory of my mother

and all those who hold the forever young of war in their hearts.

 

 Part 3        Lieutenant Williams   

 

Chapter 9            61st Reconnaissance

 

From 30th October 1943 and for the rest of his war Dick was back in the Reconnaissance Corps. He’d served as a Trooper in 43rd Recce from July 1942 to March 1943 and before that was briefly in the legendary 1^st Airlanding Reconnaissance.

The Recce Corps had two official mottos “From One Learn All” (Ab Uno Disce Omnes) and “Beaten Paths are Safest” (Via Trita, Via Tuta).  Their unofficial motto “Only the Enemy in Front…..Every Other Beggar Behind” was going to prove only too true for the 61^st Recce in NW Europe (see ‘Beaten Paths are Safest’ by Roy Howard, Brewin Books, 2004). 

 The Recce Corps' role was “that of the cat’s whiskers – armoured, mechanised transmitting whiskers. Those who served had to be intelligent, enterprising, brave, enduring and highly skilled” (Arthur Bryant on the 1940 Bartholomew Committee: PRO WO106/1741).  It also helped if they were slightly short – like the riflemen of old (‘A Dorset Rifleman’ edited by Eileen Hathaway) they were less conspicuous and could also fit into their rather small vehicles (Anthony Rampling pers comm.).  Dick was only 5ft 6½ inches when he joined up at the age of 18 in June 1940.

Unfortunately almost all the official war records for the 61st Reconnaissance Regiment have been lost so we have to rely on personnel accounts and diaries, such as this blog, to tell their story.  See also ‘Memories of the 61st Reconnaissance Regiment’ assembled in ‘Beaten Paths are Safest’ by Roy Howard, Brewin Books, 2004.

 

 Anthony Rampling was already in 61^st Reconnaissance when Dick joined the Regiment - and has kindly agreed to help me tell their story.

 

 

Joining Up & 61st   

 Coming from a little village called Tendring, not far from Colchester in Essex, Anthony had never even travelled as far as London before he joined the Army.  He was sent to Norwich – quite a big adventure! – but that autumn Norwich Barracks were like a prison. “You had to take paper and string with you to post your belongings home”. So began 6 weeks of square bashing and inoculations.  “Everything had to be so neat.”

 Posted to Barnard Castle in the north of England (County Durham) Tony learned to use a Bren machine gun with the Royal Armoured Corps and passed out after 6 weeks at the beginning of 1943.  He was sent to the Royal West Kent holding regiment but soon joined the 61st Recce.

 

61st Reconnaissance Regiment was camping in a field between Chalfont St Giles and Chalfont St Peter in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns, not far from Tring.  Anthony was placed in the Assault Troup of ‘B’ Squadron – Dick’s squadron to be. 

 He remembers the Regimental commander, Lt-Colonel Sir William Mount (grandfather to the former Prime Minister David Cameron), sent them off on a 100 mile route march, sleeping out and living rough. Many men ‘cracked out’ with blisters, etc.  Tony finished the march but collapsed when they got back to Chalfont St Giles. They were at Chalfont St Giles for some time - there was a dance there with about two girls and hundreds of troops - then they moved around, settling eventually at the Medieval Lympne Castle in Kent for coastal defence duties. Tony remembers  “It was very eerie on guard there at night."  (Lympne Castle is said to be haunted.)

 

Dick hadn’t arrived at the Castle yet

 - after receiving his commission he had 9 days leave

and met up with Chotie at Pagham.

 

1^st November 1943 – US Marines begin Operation Cherry Blossom to regain Bougainville from the Japanese, who occupied the island since April 1942.  Bougainville lies between the Solomons and Rabaul, the critical Japanese base on Papua New Guinea’s New Britain island. Bougainville was defended by 40,000 Japanese troops and supported four airfields. By the end of March 1944 the Japanese had retreated to the remoter parts of the island but, although US forces handed over to the Australian Army at the end of 1944, combat operations on Bougainville only ceased with the Japanese surrender in August 1945. By then thousands of Japanese had been killed or died of disease or malnutrition.
 

3^rd November 1943 – in Operation 'Harvest Festival' the Germans kill 42,000 Jews working in forced labour camps in the Lublin area of Poland.  The plan to murder all the Jews in Poland had begun in autumn 1941 and was codenamed ‘Operation Reinhard’ after the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich.  It was now approaching its culmination.  Over 3 million Polish Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust - 90% of the Jewish population.

 

5th November 1943 – British X Corps, fighting with the US 5^th Army in Italy, attempt to seize Monte Camino, the mountain ridges guarding the route to Rome.  After several days of German mortar fire they fell back from what they now dubbed ‘Murder Mountain’.

6th November 1943 – the Russian Army recapture Kiev, the largest city in the Ukraine. Soviet forces had advanced at night, bursting out of two bridgeheads on 3^rd November to encircle the capital. 

Soon after the liberation of Kiev the ravine burial site of Babi Yar was discovered, 4 miles from the centre of Kiev.  Here more than 30,000 Jews had been shot by the Nazis in three days at the end of September 1941.  The site continued to be used by the Germans to murder and bury Jews and other persecuted groups until by August 1943 there were about 100,000 bodies in the gravesite, probably 90,000 of them Jewish.  With the Red Army approaching hundreds of prisoners were put to work digging up and burning the bodies to hide evidence of the massacres, before being killed themselves –see 28th September 1943.