Every Place He Stepped, I Stepped

Heroes Remember

Every Place He Stepped, I Stepped

Transcript

We landed over in Belgium, Belgium was clear at that time, and went through all the medicals again and so on there. And I think we were at Ghent, I can't remember we went for the first time, and they took us up to the front there, which was in the Scheldt Estuary at that time. The Scheldt has just got open, had just, the troops just got in there. So we went in there maybe a couple days after they had, the waterborne nine across there. And they all puts us in the Highland Infantry, some of us in the Highland Infantry that's where I ended up with some other regiments you know reinforcements. And I do remember it was kind of a mucky mess there because it's low ground, and it's wet. And we took out a big fortress there they called Little Tobruk it was near, Knokke it's Knokke-Heist now but it was Knokke-sur-Mer at that time. And big sand dune and like that, and they had trenches all dug along the top and camouflage. They had one place in the middle of it all, you know it was just like a great big town there for snipers. He had the ranges marked off, in fact he shot two or three of our fellows before we got him. And I was Bren gunner at that time, and I went in the dikes there and had my, you know Bren gun this, I forget now, this way, and he put a gall darn shot between two front legs of the Bren gun that was underneath this arm like that, so I started shooting this way then. So it was about that time two of the, the sergeant's talking to the officer behind me, Major King, and he said, "Did you think that's a mine field ahead of us?" It was marked for mines there, he said he didn't know, had to go through it anyways. So he said to one fellow, you know he had the wire cutters, go and cut that. Well he wasn't gonna go in there. Prick anyway, excuse the language. But anyway, I got stuck for it and the sergeant said, "Come on Tomlin." Crossed this place that was marked mine field, and every place he stepped, I stepped. If he was going to get blown up, I wasn't if I could help it. So we got through, we cut some wire, and the other guys from the section come through then, followed our footprints through, I don't know if there was mines in there or not but we, nobody got hurt anyway. Got in on this here kind of a paved place and some German prisoners started coming out. One wasn't moving fast enough so the sergeant went to take a king of shove him with his foot. When an Indian fella was kinda took a jab at the guy's hind end with a bayonet. Met the sergeant's ankle half way then put the bayonet through his ankle. Sergeant was a D-Day boy like that, he said all the trouble he's had like that, he says get wounded by his own men he never left. He took some rum out of his water bottle and poured it through the wound, kept on going, never did get out. But he won the DCM, I guess for that I think. Because on his citation there I had to kinda laugh when it said that, Sergeant Norman Tuttle accompanied only by his Bren gunner, did this, cut the wire and so on and so forth. And I put down above it, I wrote in the book of the HLI's yes he got the DCM and I got the shit scared out of me. So anyway, he was close to me. He was a good man, he deserved it because he was a D-Day man. He was a leader, he's a good man. But we got into that area then and we cleaned it out, we took a lot of prisoners. Some of them were going to fight 'til the end but after when we told them, we threatened we'd send over the aircraft to bomb it, we throwed in the flamethrowers and everything else they surrendered. In fact, we got quite a few high ranking officers because they were completely surrounded at that time.

Description

Mr. Tomlin describes the capture of 'Little Tobruk,' a German gun position in the Scheldt

Glen Tomlin

Mr. Tomlin was born in Clinton, Ontario, in 1923. His family moved to Harriston when he was very young. Once he was old enough he worked in a box factory earning $7/week for 60 hours of labour. Despite having had rheumatic fever, which made it impossible for him to walk at a marching pace, Mr. Tomlin was accepted by the army, where he trained as a field gunner. He later switched to infantry, joining the Hard Light Infantry, 9th Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division. Mr. Tomlin's service saw him in several combats in Northern Europe, often engaging the enemy at very close quarters. Mr. Tomlin now resides in Palmerston, Ontario.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 3:48
Person Interviewed:: Glen Tomlin
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Belgium
Battle/Campaign:: Battle of the Scheldt
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: Highland Light Infantry
Rank:: Private
Occupation:: Gunner

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Every Place He Stepped, I Stepped

Heroes Remember