The Valour and the Horror

World War Two, saving private ryan, Second World War, W.W.II

Syndey Radley-Walters

SYDNEY RADLEY-WALTERS As quoted in "The Valour and the Horror"

Radley-Walters was a tank officer from Gaspe Peninsula.

On teaching today's army:

V&H 01:06:25:10 It really comes back on our own shoulders, that before they put us six feet into the ground, that somebody should sit down and each one of us at least pass on to the generation that's going to follow some of the lessons which we learnt.

On the second wave of the D-Day attack:

V&H 01:15:07:00 When you looked at that tremendous wall there - how the hell the poor infantrymen got over it, and this gun that was here which was knocked out by that combination of cooperation between the tanks and the infantry....

On D-Day casualties:

V&H 01:15:29:05 The Queen's own, there were a number of lads with blankets covering them, and they had brought the bodies together in various spots along here. And then along the..., sitting down on their haunches were, oh, must have been three or four groups of German prisoners. And those were the first Germans that I had seen at that time as we hit the beach.

On the 12th S.S. ŒHitler youth' attack at Abbey Ardenne:

V&H 01:20:20:18 It's I think a little bit like a hockey game. Once you drop the puck and get going, you're all interested in what you're doing and consequently that little bit of fear sort of goes away from you, but there's no question when you're fired at first, I think everybody has a sense of fear. Its very confused fighting. Communications go out between the infantry and the tanks. We hear of a company of 100 men being overrun in Frankieville. We don't hear anything more from our reconnaissance troop and it gets wiped out.

On Verrières:

V&H 01:41:09:05 ...And I found that the anti-tank fire and the defensive positions were getting stronger rather than getting weaker, and every time you attacked anywhere along the Verrières ridge as a tanker, you generally came back walking.

On tanks at Verrières:

V&H 01:42:26:20 We had some tanks that had gasoline in them, and other ones that had diesel. And we used to say that if we got hit in the diesel, we had maybe 14 or 15 seconds in which to crawl out through these hatches and get out. If it was a gasoline fire, you had nearly half that time, 7 or 8 seconds in which to get out. I was madly trying to force these hatches open so we could get out, and the tank was burning, and the fire was coming up through me and my hands and my hair, and of course my poor operator and...and gunner were getting burnt too. And they weren't very big, they were small men, but I can tell you under those particular circumstances, somehow or other they got their shoulders against my ass and they shoved me up, and it was my head that opened up the hatches and so on.. and we all got out, and I think I ended up with something like 39 stitches in the top of my head, but when that happens, it's amazing, you just get out. There's stories of men who had their both legs off and so on and out through the top hatch and running on their stumps with their (snatchplug?).....either holding them into the tank, from their headsets and them trying to get away from the bloody thing which was on fire...

On the dead at Verrières:

V&H 01:48:48:02 ...an animal would bloat up and so on, and nobody would bury it, and consequently troops that were dead on the ground weren't buried in time. And we went by some Fort Garry tanks and they had been knocked out and the bodies were in there for, I don't know, three or four weeks in this hot weather, and the absolute stink as you went by was just overpowering.

On psychiatric collapse:

V&H 01:49:52:00 We needed tanks badly, I was down to six or seven and, this one motor was still running, and we could see where it had been hit and so on and when night came on, I decided to get the body out, and I had to go in and cut the guy in half because rigor mortis had set in, I took a machete and I cut him in half and took him out in two pieces because we couldn't get him out in one piece. Well that doesn't do you very good, and ah, I thought afterwards in doing these little tricks ah, not little tricks but in doing your duty really, that came over me, and ah, I decided on my own that none of the crews or myself should get involved in it again.

On German tanks:

V&H 02:31:42:20 If you hit it on this big heavy gun mount, and here's a pretty good example over here, where somebody's hit it, and what happens, it just bounces off. But now look over at the armour on the driver and on your side, the co-driver, and just see how thin it is in here. Now if you can get around, to come on in, and hit on the lower side of this gun mount, from here right over there, which gives you a target of about four or five feet wide, and from there down to here. The round cannot bounce off, it must bounce down. And when it bounces down, what does it do? It smashes this weak armour here over the driver and the co-driver and in most cases, we found out that they're either badly wounded or they're killed, and the tank is automatically knocked out.

On patriotism, and his reasons for going to war:

V&H 02:39:26:00 And I think what I learnt was an awful lot about ourselves, and what I found out is that, you don't necessarily fight for king or queen or even country. But I found out that there's a whole bunch of friends out there, chums, and people that you had joined up with, people who you trained with, and people who you loved really, and therefore, when the chips are down, nobody but nobody was going to leave the other guy down. Every Canadian, whoever comes to France, should just walk up there, and spend a minute by himself, and realize that the number of Canadians who died on that hill was just exceptional and their bravery in trying to get there and maintain the pressure was just beyond anything one can imagine.