The Kangaroos and the Badger

The cold weather has set in and although the calendar has been very packed, I thought I would tell you about another adventure of mine during WW 2 in Europe that ties in with a very interesting story of our famous Canadian Kangaroo Regiment written by Chuck Konkel last August 8, 2010 and published by Canada Free Press The Kangaroo Regiment was famous to everyone in the Canadian and British Army but not too many in the allied forces or the world generally would know who or what they were and what they did. These Kangaroos weren’t the Australian hop around variety but just the same they carried living beings in the protective custody of their steel pouches.

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Not many people realize that the greatest weight of enemy armor and first class Nazi troops in Normandy faced the Canadian and British armies in the battles to liberate France. Some eight-tenths of the German armored divisions as well as some of the toughest Parachute and Waffen SS Divisions were opposed to the British and Canadians. Canadian and British infantry and tank casualties were horrendous. This was primarily due to their tremendous disadvantage in the quality of our tanks and anti-tank guns compared to those of the enemy. The Germans were armed with the famous “88” anti-aircraft gun that was used as an anti-tank weapon and outclassed anything the allies had at the time. The 88 out-ranged and out-punched our Sherman tank’s weaker 75 millimeter gun and our tank’s thinner armor. A shell hitting a Sherman tank drilled right through its armor. Another weakness was that our Shermans were powered by the Wright Whirlwind airplane engine and therefore were fueled by high octane gasoline. When hit they tended to explode in flames. The Americans wryly called them “Ronson Lighters” after the famous American Army all-weather cigarette lighter and the Germans jokingly called them “Tommy Cookers.” To hold the powerful Panther and Tiger tank equipped German armor from punching through to the sea and at the same time fight to break through the Germans to our own objectives proved to be a touch and go situation for the British and Canadians. Attack after attack failed to achieve our major objectives. The infantry found themselves badly exposed during many of their attacks because of the high rate of loss of their accompanying tanks and because they usually found themselves attacking on foot across open fields against an enemy holding the higher ground. The infantry’s personal firepower was also deficient. They were up against the wicked MG 42, generally recognized as the fasted and most effective machine gun of WW2. Also, the crack Waffen SS and Parachute troops were heavily armed with automatic sub-machine guns rather than the standard rifle. Our men had sub-machine guns and machine guns but far fewer per unit and operating at a slower rate of fire. Add to all that a rain of mortars, artillery shells coming down on them and it was obvious something had to be done to get the infantry onto their objective before they were slaughtered getting there. The one great advantage the allies did have was our domination of the battlefield and the approaches to it by our air forces. As a consequence the Germans were never able to fully concentrate their armor and were forced to feed it piecemeal into the battle as they came under pressure. Nevertheless, the problem remained how to get the exposed infantry on his objectives fit to fight the enemy. The answer was the conversion of the Canadian Ram tank (at that time used only in training in England and Canada) and American Sherman tank into an armored personnel carrier, an entirely Canadian improvisation. Be sure to read Chuck Konkel’s article. The battle of Normandy was eventually won at great cost and the Kangaroo Regiment played a very important role in that achievement.

The Kangaroos and the Canadian drive north through Holland to Groningen

This particular tale will describe only small but interesting portion of my experiences during the armored drive of the Second Division of the Canadian Army carried out during April 1944, close to the end of the war. I remember crossing the great pontoon bridge built by Canadian Engineers across the Rhine to Emmerich in Germany. We were riding in our tracked Bren Gun Carrier and crossed without incident. We holed up overnight in a bombed out castle, sleeping uncomfortably on a pile of brick rubble. The next day we crossed the border into Holland, crossed the canal near Zuphten in Holland, joined up with the Essex Scottish Regiment (Windsor, Ontario) and headed north chasing the Germans who fought many rearguard actions with us over the next weeks.

Joined by Kangaroos

One day we found ourselves ordered into an attack across country and off the main road north. Our infantry were pleased to find they were in for a ride rather than their daily dose of hiking and fighting. We normally had two tanks in the lead of the regiment but now we were joined by some eleven Kangaroo vehicles with our infantry sitting on benches inside their armored hulls. So instead of our Bren Gun carrier being the 4th vehicle in line behind the two tanks and the Essex’s Sergeant Major in his Bren Gun Carrier (carrying ammunition) we were now 15th in line bringing up the rear. It sounded good to me, with all that armor and infantry up ahead but I wasn’t too happy about going off road because I had a dread fear of mines. In fact going down strange country roads or places not necessarily swept of mines I used to get up off my seat in the carrier and sit on the back of the seat with my feet in the air, hanging on for dear life so that if we hit a mine I might be blown clear. It was probably a deluded idea but I’d seen other vehicles hit and they often turned turtle trapping the men underneath. In any case we left the road and headed across a number of fields. All of a sudden I saw a German 88 shell skip across the grass about 5 yards in front of our carrier. Obviously an anti-tank solid non-explosive round aimed at the parade of tanks and Kangaroos ahead of us. Now we knew the enemy was aware or our presence. There was some more stuff thrown our way as expected. Then the column ran over a wire fence, crossed a ditch and climbed up onto a dirt road. As soon as they got up on the road they turned right and proceeded east. As a result of the 13 tanks turning on the dirt road a cloud of dust that could be spotted a mile away was raised high in the air. We were not too happy about this. Well, we had no choice and had to follow across the ditch and up onto the road, turn right and follow along. Then we encountered another more serious problem. When a tank turns it does so by braking one track and driving with the other causing the tank to slew around. The driver uses tiller bars (leavers) to do this. But the braked track acts like a scoop in soft ground and after two 34 ton tanks plus 11 multi-ton Kangaroos and a carrier had done this road scraping right turn it left a big hump of soil in the middle of the road. Rocky Kyle, our driver, climbed up on the road turned right and gunned our carrier in the hope of skidding over the hump but no luck; we were hung up like a stranded whale. We were about to jump out of our open topped carrier and dig ourselves out when down came dozens of German mortars right on top of us. We couldn’t see for smoke and dust and the crashing of the mortars around us was terrifying. All that had to happen was for one to drop in the carrier and either the carrier would go up in flames or we would be turned into minced meat, perhaps both. We were lucky again. After what seemed an eternity the mortars stopped. We jumped out and grabbed our shovels, crawled under the carrier and scraped away the hump on which we were stranded. The Germans probably figured we were dead because we were under the carrier before the smoke cleared away. In any case when we looked for our armored column they had turned north again and were stopped about a half mile ahead of us. (Later, we found a big dent in our side armor and our supplies in the back in steel boxes looked like Swiss cheese. Our spare uniforms were torn to shreds and a big tin of jam was mashed into everything including our bedrolls). Rocky pulled out all stops and we soon caught up. I jumped out along side the lead Kangaroo and climbed up to report to our Captain who was riding with the infantry Colonel. He was elated to see us and said, “My God it’s a miracle you guys are alive; we looked back and saw you disappear in a barrage of exploding mortars that shot smoke and dirt 60 feet in the air; are you both OK?” I said “Yes Sir, we’re fine” and everybody in the carrier gave us a big grin and a thumbs up. Just then, the driver of the Kangaroo, looked up at me from his seat far down in the hull on the other side of the Kangaroo and said, “Hi Dick what the hell are you doing here?” I was stunned and said, “Geeze your voice is familiar, but how do you know me?” He said, “Just a minute, and raised his goggles to the top of his black beret and said, “Now do you know me?” I said, “How do you expect me to tell because your face is black with dirt and your goggles leave your eyes surrounded by white, you look like a Badger?“ He laughed and said, “OK now do you know me?” and he took off his beret and out fell all this blond curly hair; instantly I shouted “Ross Rolls, for God’s sake, great to see you!” Everybody laughed for he was an old school mate of mine at Scarborough Collegiate and the only person from home I ever met in action overseas. So that’s why I titled this story, The Kangaroos and the Badger. Thanks, Chuck, for writing your first class article, it brought back fond memories.