Second World War Memoirs of JOE BROWN

They were understandably impatient to get to grips with the enemy and we always had to check when fighting flared up on their sector to be assured it was not the first-stage of a co-ordinated German attack that would involve us. Also notable was the very quick cancellation of one of our rest breaks out of the line, due to the German break-through in the Ardennes . We were ordered to quickly move forward and take over a sector of the line which had hurriedly been manned by a make-shift battalion of troops formed from drivers, cooks and administrative personnel. During the first few nights, enemy patrols penetrated through all our positions right up to battalion headquarters but we quickly organised ourselves to counter this aggressive patrolling with fighting patrols. It was here that we first used our two patrol dogs and whilst they would ignore dead bodies they quickly picked up other human scent and this alerted the patrol leader to take cover until he could determine whether friend or foe, giving him time to decide to intercept or not.

In Lysander over the German lines

It was during this time of intense patrolling by ourselves and the Germans [apparently German commanders had been told to keep the British troops busy and fully committed during the Ardennes offensive] that I failed to persuade the commanding officer to allow me to try and get a seat in the Lysander aircraft based at Division HQ which regularly reconnoitered across the divisional front. I had proposed to try and get answers to some of the patrol tasks that were set down for that night and hopefully to confirm the information we had about enemy positions and their defensive wire. The C.O. later changed his mind when we located a rocket projector (Nebelwefer) that had a range of 10,000 yards and could rapidly fire ten high explosive shells. This weapon had not been encountered too often but it must be remembered that 'rocket technology' was still in its early stages of use. I knew it was towed behind a half-track vehicle and its role was to dart in and out of prepared firing positions to launch surprise demoralising attacks and thereby exploit their devastating and deadly high-explosive fire. We only located the Nebelwerfer through the alert observation of our forward infantry positions taking compass bearings of enemy fire and in this particular case the quick reaction and appreciation of the situation by myself at Battalion HQ.