Re: WWII Forums Quiz Part VII
Close enough. The story I have, is from Tug of War by Denis Whitaker.
On a frigid mid-winter evening in 1944, a lone Canadian, distinguished by a shock of snow white hair, checked in for dinner at the Officer’s Mess at Larkhill, the BritishSchool of Artillery near Stonehenge. Lieutenant Colonel W.E. Harris, veteran Canadian gunner who had commanded a regiment until senior artillery officers decided he was too old for active duty, was now, to his great distaste, relegated to staff work at Canadian Military Headquarters in London.
The artilleryman noted a single familiar face in the room. The young British colonel who had conducted the artillery demonstration Harris had witnessed that morning was sitting dejectedly in the corner of the Mess.
“That was an imposing demonstration today, Colonel Wardell,” Harris commented.
Mike Wardell looked up. “Much good that will do!” he answered, and then added, “Oh! You’re the Canadian!”
As the two shook hands, Eric Harris recalled their earlier meeting: “I first saw him when our small group went out on the ranges to see the demonstration. An English colonel, in Guards battle-dress, looking somewhat out of place on an artillery range, and wearing a black patch over one eye, was standing beside a contraption which certainly did not look like a gun. The weapon, if it could be taken to be one, seemed nothing more than four rows of narrow stove-pipe, each of six pieced tied together and mounted on a two-wheeled twenty-hundred-weight trailer.”
Wardell introduced the curious weapon. It was, he explained, a rocket-firing gun, capable of firing up to eight thousand yards, the same range as heavy mortars, yet considerably lighter and more mobile. Harris’s skepticism turned to enthusiasm when he saw from his observation post the designated target enveloped in what he would always remember as “one of the most accurate, concentrated, vicious mass explosions” he had ever seen. Suddenly, within a very short period of some five seconds, all twenty-four shells seemed to come together directly in the target area and to reinforce each other with a tremendously devastating effect.
“Damned good!” said one of the War Office observers next to him. And then the same man uttered the words that would become the anathema of Harris and Wardell, “Too bad it’s too late!”
During dinner, Harris heard the story of how the infantry officer, a publisher in peacetime, had become so obsessed by rockets.
In 1942, fighting Rommel’s Afrika Corps at El Alamein Wardell’s position was being overrun by enemy troops. In desperation he seized an anti-aircraft weapon ordinarily used for shooting rockets at German planes, and turned the fire on the attacking German infantry. The result was electric; the enemy was demoralized by the devastating impact of the rockets and subsequently withdrew. Mike Wardell was himself wounded and lost an eye in the action but he never forgot the usefulness against troops of a weapon designed to fight planes. Back in England, he determined to design a rocket gun specifically for this purpose. Wardell took on another war, this time against mule-headed British authorities who were convinced that the war would be over before the weapon could be properly designed and tested.
At this point, Eric Harris stepped into the fray. The pair decided to approach Canadian officials, although without a great deal of optimism. Historically, Canada seldom took the lead over Britain in such matters, but perhaps this time, they though, the Canadians would do something on their own initiative. To their surprise, back came the decisioin, supported by General Crerar and Brigadier H.O.N. Brownfield, head of all Canadian artillery, to make the undertaking a wholly Canadian venture.
So, on the 15th of September, 1944, the 1st Canadian Rocket Unit, informally known as Land Service Mattress, was formed. Two weeks later, the unit was anchored off the coast of France at Arromanche, where they were compelled to sit out an eight-day storm before joining Harris and Wardell at Bruges, preparatory to training for the Walcheren assault.
Colonel Wardell, now formally attached to the Canadian Army, and Harris, flew directly to army headquarters. “We were a pretty jaunty pair,” Colonel Haris remembered; “Mike had been invalided out of the Guards, and because of age I had been relegated to duty in England only. Now we were back at the front, and with our own battery to fight with. In the damp little tent where were found quite acceptable quarters we drank a quit and thoughtful toast for what the months, and this day, had brought us.” Endnote: Lt.Col. Eric Harrs, Mike Wardell and the Canadian Rocket Battery.
Your go, Skunkworks!
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