{"id":246,"date":"2024-06-05T08:41:40","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T08:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/?p=246"},"modified":"2024-06-05T08:41:40","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T08:41:40","slug":"d-day-new-forest-talk-sway-and-the-sherwood-rangers-spring-1944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2024\/06\/05\/d-day-new-forest-talk-sway-and-the-sherwood-rangers-spring-1944\/","title":{"rendered":"D-Day New Forest talk: Sway and the Sherwood Rangers, spring 1944"},"content":{"rendered":"

SWAY AND THE SHERWOOD RANGERS, SPRING 1944<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was the basis for a talk I gave in Sway village hall on 4 June 2024 as part of the village\u2019s impressive array of D-Day anniversary events, partly organised in conjunction with St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery in Lymington.\u00a0 My thanks to fellow St Barbe trustee and Sway parish councillor Neil McClocklin for inviting me to speak.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the spring of 1944 the residents of Sway had seen pass through their village hundreds into thousands of soldiers, drawn from a variety of regiments and corps.\u00a0 Billeting service personnel became the norm for families with a spare bedroom or two.\u00a0 Nor were these troops all British.\u00a0 For most villagers this was their first encounter with Canadians.<\/p>\n

It was almost certainly their first encounter with an armoured regiment, the noise, exhaust fumes, dust, churned up mud and sheer physical presence of the Canadian tanks leaving an indelible impression. After the Canadians left calm returned to the village, but in late April 1944 the tanks returned.<\/p>\n

This time they were mostly Shermans, or their more lethal version the Firefly \u2013 state-of-the-art tanks fresh off a ceaseless production line in Detroit.\u00a0 Shermans would spearhead the invasion of Europe.\u00a0 Not that the Sherman was an untested tank.\u00a0 Its arrival in North Africa in 1942 was a key factor in the Eighth Army\u2019s reversal of fortunes after El Alamein and the Allies\u2019 final victory in the spring of 1943.<\/p>\n

Nor were the two tank squadrons posted to Sway untested.\u00a0 They formed part of Nottinghamshire\u2019s Sherwood Rangers, a Yeomanry regiment which had fought its way across the Western Desert.\u00a0 The Sherwood Rangers had been in training at Chippenham Park near Newmarket, but they were now encamped across the New Forest and the Test Valley.\u00a0 In early June they would relocate to Lepe and Southampton for embarkation to France.<\/p>\n

For the next 11 months they would time and again find themselves in the vanguard of 21st<\/sup> Army Group\u2019s advance from the Normandy beaches all the way to the Baltic.\u00a0 In April 1944 the Sherwood Rangers was already renowned as a tried and tested tank regiment.\u00a0 By VE Day it would be one of the most decorated units in the British Army, albeit at appalling cost.<\/p>\n

To keep its tanks in the front line an armoured regiment required a large and well-organised logistical and mechanical back-up: out of around 700 men, only 210 would be inside the 50 or so tanks that made up the three main squadrons.\u00a0 Throughout May 1944 the Sherwood Rangers\u2019 support echelon was based in Sway \u2013 as the numbers suggest, this was a sizeable presence.<\/p>\n

For much of May also based in the village was the Sherwood Rangers\u2019 most experienced and most decorated veterans of the desert war, A Squadron.<\/p>\n

The presence in the village of the regiment\u2019s support echelon meant Sway was host to the regimental padre, Reverend Leslie Skinner.<\/p>\n

The presence in the village of A Squadron meant a temporary home for its commander, Major Stanley Christopherson, and his second-in-command, Captain Keith Douglas.<\/p>\n

Here we have three remarkable men in the heart of the New Forest on the eve of Operation Overlord (probably billeted in Sway House, in South Sway Lane).<\/p>\n

Why were these three men remarkable?\u00a0 Furthermore, why should Sway take pride in, if only for a few short weeks, hosting this particular regiment \u2013 a Yeomanry regiment which on the cusp of war constituted a motley collection of Nottinghamshire horsemen, in peacetime its officers sharing their spare time between fox hunting and obsolete cavalry manoeuvres?<\/p>\n

The Nottinghamshire Yeomanry Regiment (Sherwood Rangers)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Booted and spurred, with heavily polished Sam Browne belts and riding boots, the interwar Sherwood Rangers rode on manoeuvres at their annual summer camp as if the Great War had never taken place.\u00a0 Like other counties\u2019 Yeomanry regiments these were amateur soldiers firmly rooted in rural life and a semi-feudal, paternalistic social hierarchy.\u00a0 An ageing aristocrat, Lord Yarborough, was the colonel, and among his officers were no less than three Masters of Foxhounds.\u00a0 Subalterns from less privileged backgrounds, NCOs and troopers invariably boasted a lifetime of handling horses.<\/p>\n

When in mid-1942 these men finally went to war as an armoured regiment they took with them the language and culture left behind in the villages and country houses of the rural East Midlands.\u00a0 For example, radio communication was rooted in cricket and hunting analogies.\u00a0 Keith Douglas\u2019s memoir From Alamein to Zem Zem<\/em> provides colourful examples of RT exchanges, along the lines of a tank pulling out of the line \u2018returning to the pavilion.\u2019\u00a0 A further example involves Lord Yarborough\u2019s successor as CO: another local landowner, the MP for Birmingham Aston Lt-Colonel E.O. Kellett, known to one and all as \u2018Flash\u2019.\u00a0 On the eve of Alamein \u2018Flash\u2019 Kellet informed Captain Patrick McCraith that his troop of tanks would be first to navigate the German minefields, <\/strong>telling him to \u201cPut on your white flannels\u2026You\u2019re batting first for England.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet these same amateur soldiers adapted very quickly to the harsh realities of mechanised warfare, not least because the overwhelming majority \u2013 officers and men \u2013 was keen to learn.\u00a0 Crucially, they were keen to keep on learning, right until the end of the war.\u00a0 In consequence, they evolved into a highly efficient and effective fighting machine.<\/p>\n

By the time the Sherwood Rangers arrived in Sway the character and composition of the regiment had changed markedly, not least because so many prewar personnel had been killed, seriously wounded or taken prisoner.\u00a0 288 would die across the course of the Second World War, including 34 officers.\u00a0 For example, in the first six weeks of fighting in Normandy no less than 40 tank commanders \u2013 a staggering 80% of the total number – were killed in battle.\u00a0 \u2018Flash\u2019 Kellett and his successor as CO Donny Player were both killed in North Africa, following which command of the regiment was held by outsiders.\u00a0 The CO when the Sherwood Rangers embarked for France was badly wounded on the evening of D Day, after which command of the regiment passed back to one of its own, Stanley Christopherson.<\/p>\n

Christopherson was not a Nottinghamshire horseman, but he rode well and in 1939 he fitted into the mess courtesy of his upper-class background (a colonial background, Winchester College, and a lawyer in the City).\u00a0 From 1942 to 1945 many of the incoming officers were \u2018temporary gentlemen\u2019 from an urban middle-class background, initially ignorant of the regiment\u2019s roots and tradition.\u00a0 A cadre of veterans provided continuity (if fully recovered from their wounds junior officers and NCOs would return to the regiment).\u00a0 In due course the old hands recognised the need to integrate new arrivals as quickly as possible, not least as the turnover in personnel was so great.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, the Sherwood Rangers\u2019 tally of 30 battle honours between 1939 and 1945 was unmatched by any other unit in the British Army.\u00a0 The achievement is that much more remarkable as the regiment\u2019s tanks first saw action as late as June 1942: 8th<\/sup> Armoured Brigade was formed in August 1941, but it took ten months to have a full complement of tanks delivered and for its regiments to be fully trained in mechanised warfare.\u00a0 The Sherwood Rangers had carried out policing duties in Palestine in the spring of 1940 before packing away their sabres, saying farewell to their horses, and retraining as battery gunners.\u00a0 Cavalrymen turned gunners served with distinction in the fall of Crete, from where only two escaped, and in the siege of Tobruk.<\/p>\n

The Sherwood Rangers\u2019 baptism of fire was the Battle of Alam El Halfa in late summer 1942, and evidence that they were quick learners was the 26 enemy tanks destroyed in one day on 5 November that year.\u00a0 The regiment was in the vanguard of the initial advance at El Alamein, later being singled out by Rommel for its success in penetrating the Afrika Korps\u2019 forward line.\u00a0 That role of punching a hole in the enemy\u2019s advanced defences was repeatedly undertaken in the 1942-43 advance across Libya and Tunisia, at an appalling cost in tanks and men.<\/p>\n

The regiment\u2019s dubious reward was to return to England to train as one of the four British armoured regiments chosen to land on D Day.\u00a0 It went on to fight on 50 of the Normandy campaign\u2019s 60 days duration.\u00a0 The Sherwood Rangers continued to provide infantry with an armoured punch through northern France, Belgium, Holland and into north Germany, taking part in both Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.\u00a0 Somehow, despite the appalling casualties, Christopherson\u2019s regiment avoided the fatal fatigue and decline in morale of so many units Montgomery brought back from North Africa to fight in NW Europe.<\/p>\n

The Sherwood Rangers\u2019 achievements from the regiment\u2019s landing on Gold Beach on 6 June 1944 can be summarised thus:<\/p>\n