Wally wasn't the only soldier in Normandy to adopt a dog!
...the shells whistling overhead did not make this job any easier, and so it was with wearing the tatty old jerkin and smudges of grease on my face that the NCO in charge of the signallers on my vehicle shouted, "Come on you Taggy B*****d we’re moving on!" Taggy was the name that stuck with me for the next three years of my service with the 3rd Regiment Horse Artillery, never once was I called by my name Stockley or even Scouse Wally. I think I must have been the only person in the army who was called this.
On leaving the beach we saw a little white haired dog, we stopped and picked it up. With signallers on my truck all having served in North Africa with the Desert Rats, it was decided that the dog should be named Swia which I believe is Arabic meaning small or little. He stayed with us from that day until a day in June 1945, which you will read about later. Swia shared our rations, his favourite meal being M&V. (meat and vegetables) out of a tin mixed with some hard tack biscuits. His place in the vehicle was lying on a blanket on top of the engine cover in the cab.
After moving on from the beach, the first distressing thing that I saw was the sight of four British Soldiers lying dead in the corner of a field, just a little further on down the country lane which we were driving
along lay two dead German soldiers in the hedgerows at the side of the lane.
The time spent in the Battle of Normandy lasted from the 6th June until 20th August a total of about 80 days. During this time the countryside was littered with carcasses of dead cattle. They were lying on their backs with their legs pointing up towards the sky, their bodies were bloated and blown up like balloons. As the weather was hot at this time of year the smell of rotting flesh was nauseating added to this there were flies everywhere which didn’t help matters.
Driving without lights in the summer when there were not many hours of darkness was not too bad, but as winter approached it was quite nerve racking.
Our job on my vehicle, known as M1 (Monkey One), was the laying of the phone line from the forward Observation Post to the Battery Command Post. Laying the phone line did not mean climbing telegraph poles, far from it. I would drive the vehicle very slowly with the cable being reeled out at the rear, and two of the lads placing the cable close to the hedge on the side of the lane...
