Description
Mr. Brice describes the Allied armoured advance at the bridge, with casualties on both sides.
Harry Brice
Harry Brice was born in Wimbledon Common, England, on August 26, 1888. He left home for Australia, via Canada, in 1909, but he fell in love with Saskatchewan and stayed. Mr. Brice was a Corporal in the 9th Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers. Designated for special services with the 42nd Battalion, he and his crew first trained in weaponry, Allied and German, and became a Lewis gun crew helping to hold the Allied Northern flank during the Michael Offensive. He and his crew were then selected for a highly secretive mission, to debug the bridge at Domart which had been booby trapped by the French to thwart a German advance. However, the Allies now needed to cross the bridge to advance on the German positions. Mr. Brice describes in great detail the process of removing explosives, under threat of enemy fire, from a roadbed. There is no record of Mr. Brice’s post-war experience. He died August 26, 1959.
Transcript
We heard one of our airplanes going backwards and forwards, as if he was lost. It was just making a noise. And I said, there something going on here fellows, something going on here. Listen, I could hear tank engines coming. I flagged the tank. He saw me. It was still dark you know. And he opened the door and a young officer was in there and he says, “How far am I from bridge #64? ” I said, “You’re about 20 yards.” I think that’s what I told him. “This is it boys, this is it.” And he says, “This is it, fellows. We’re the first ones to go.” And so I came back to the boys, I says, “Watch out now, they’re waiting for the signal.” The signal is the largest gun we have. “When it’s fired,” this officer said, “when the largest gun is fired, you’ll see the flash, you won’t hear it. It’ll be drowning everything out.” Now this flash, we saw the flash, it was a big flash, a big naval gun, way back, probably six or eight miles back. These tanks, it hadn’t been gone five minutes when there was a shell come in. Three or four seconds later, another one came over and landed right under the tank, turned the tank partly over, killed all the crew. And a third shell came over, he was short. He was right on the road, right on the road, but he didn’t kill anybody, didn’t hit anybody. And they probably had three of our guns zeroed in on him. He didn’t last long, he fired three shells. But if he had hit the bridge, you see, and the charges, the whole thing would have blown up, taking our tanks right up with it.