"Here  again, many of the small fields contained orchards and the trees themselves were so low that often one couldn't pass beneath them but was forced to kink one's way through.  This made it impossible for the gunner to see clearly and, as the tank commander was bobbing up and down in the turret, or trying to use the periscope for sighting, it was all rather a nightmare.  There was an added hazard for the gunner, who was sitting down below hunced over his gunsight, in a very cramped position.  If he stretched his legs out through the turret age in order to get some relief and this coincided with the gun hitting atree while we were on the move, then the turret would have been forced round and off would come his legs.  A chilling thought.

In the Cromwell tank it was difficult to remove the shells form the racks and maintain a good rate of fire with the 75 mm gun. The shells were all stored in bin round the turret floor but as we were all traversing all the time there were few opportunities for the loader to pick them up.  In addition to this, they were about 2 feet 6 inches long and weighed over 10 lb, so, as one had to load one-handed, they were unwieldy.  It was our practice therefore, when we anticipated trouble, for the wireless operator, who doubled up as a loader, to sit with three or four shells across his knees, so that as we fired and the empty shell case ejected, he could reload in a matter of seconds.  This was fine if one was static, but when one was bouncing about in all directions it became both very painful and extremely difficult."

About four years later with a roll of drums and a farfare of trumpets it was presented to us again.  Four years it had taken to produce this iron monstrosity the Cromwell.  Our first impression of it was that someone had dug up an A13 from the museum and was having a very bad joke, but on examination the tank proved to be a  little better.  It had a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, a 75 gun, a slightly improved track and possibly an extra 1/4 inch all round.  It appeared that the brilliant designers had not heard of the Teller mine, as the bottom plate was 3/8 inch thick.  The turret was  flat in front and on all the sides, the sides were flat, the front was flat and the driver was in the unhealthy position of being shut in if the turret was traversed a little to the left.  Inside the turret was a typical example of what a turret should not be like with its little boxes sticking all over the place to hold w/bottles, prisms, spare cutters wire folding and all the little un-necessaries so essential to tank production in Britain.  The power traverse was the same.  I wonder how much it cost, the yards of piping, the precision-made swarm pump with the eleven beautifully made pistons, it must have cost a fortune to produce.  The idea seemed to be that the lone British Cromwell stood shoooting it out with the Tigers, which were not only in front but behind on both sides, hence the expensive powered traverse.  In actual fact I have never yet been in action with the gun at any other position than pointing to the front or at any-rate a degree or two to the left or right. A fairly elementary rule of the strategy of war is to engage the enemy before you reach him not when you have passed and he is a few hundred yards behind.  It seems high time that it was pointed out to the brainy ones who built the Cromwell. The tank had one redeeming feature however, it was fast, very fast, but apart from that it was a disgrace. I hold the designers of that tank and the men who ordered its production personally responsible for the death of hundreds of men who fought in those tanks and had a lot more guts than commonsense.  We of the division knew of the German weapos, the Mark III, IV, V, and VI.  Equipped with a long barrelled 50 mm the MK III was a better job than a Cromwell and it was the least of our worries with another three still bettter tanks.  Tigers, captured in Tunis had been sent home but apart from being gaped at and swarmed over by a bunch of base barnacles little had been done about it.  I am labouring the discrepancy in British tanks rathera lot but once said there  will be no more of it.  The big difference between the two tanks the Cromwell and the Tiger made it possible for the Boches to stand back at 2,000m and pick the Cromwells off like a rifle range.  At that distance, the 75 on the Cromwell would not look at the six-inch front of a Tiger while the long barrelled 88 tore through the Cromwell like a knife through butter.  In 1941 at Bir Barrani the 4th Armoured Brigade engaged the 15th Panzer div. who had IIIs and IVs whle we had Honeys with 37s.  It happened to be Cambrai Day and in any case there was no dodging out of the scrap - and scrap we did; and two and a half years later we were being asked to prepare for an invasion and inevitably battles with the odds so heavily against us that Bir Barrani seemed like a fairly even scrap.  We still had the guns to do it but it was becoming doubtful if our look would keep holding.  There was very little we could do about it and we consoled ouselves with the thought at least we would have more tanks than the Boches, ours were faster, so we could deploy and nip about mroe and in any case we were 7th Armoured divison and we could lick them in armoured preambulators if incesssary.

The shooting at Kirkcudbright turned out to be quite good in spite of a fair amount of rain and mist.  It as discovered here that the ammunition boxes for the75 rounds fitted in the turret were so badly designed that a reasonably fast time for taking a round from the box and loading it was five minutes. It occurred to me that the fault was typical, the most truly typical thing I've ever seen.  The boxes had been fitted in the tank since it had been built and as up until the time we took them over they had been used as playthings by the Bovington brigade, it had ever occured to anyone to put a round or two in the boxes.

Each night the tank would be inspected, sometimes by a rather silly officer who used to climb on board and look in the engine cmpartment presumably to see if the engine was still there.  In this compartment there were four fire alarms, which worked this way. They were wired up to the battery and whenever the termperature of the engine compartment went high enough, I suppose as high as it would get were  the engine to catch fire, a piece of wax or some material on the device melted, a buzzer sounded and the driver on hearing it yanked a lever and flooded the engine with chemicals which extinguished the fire.  Each of these devices had a hand-operated button with which one tested the buzzer to be sure that when the fire occurred and the wax melted the confounded buzzer would buzz.  The routine inspection by this rather sily officer was to look as intelligent as possible, reach in and buzz each of the buzzers in turn then climb down again. Each time he did it I rocked inside with laughter.  The tank was too thin, too small and the gun was quite inadequate but look at the beautiful fire alarms, four buzzers and they all worked.

There was a lecture one day by Capt Beresford on the Comet, a new British tank on which he had recently done a course at Bovington.  He said it was a fairly good proposition, not any higher than the Cromwell but thicker armour and just as fast, it also had a better gun. He said the stowage of the ammo was bad and that there was a wierd contraption under the gun carrying six rounds.  This was going to be changed for something better and he said, 'If it's anything like the average British modifcation, it will be something ______ awful'.  (Laughter)

The Firefly tank is an ordinary Sherman but, in order to accomoadate the immense breech of the seventeen pounder, the co-driver has been eliminated and his little den turned into storage space for the huge one-piece shells.  The electrical traversing gear makes it easy to swing the 8-foot-long gun with a twist of the wrist but heaven help me if i ever have to traverse by hand!  The flash is so brilliant that both gunner and commander need to blink at the moment of firing.  Otherwise they are blinded for so long that they will not see the shot hit the target.  The flash  spurts out so much flame that, after a shot or two, the hedge or undergrowth in front of the tank is likely to start burning.  When moving, the gun's overlap in front is so long that the driver, gunner and commander have to be constantly alert to avoid wrapping the barrel around some apparently distant dree,defenseless lampost or inoffensive house.