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Description
Mr. Rohmer tells a story of spotting Tiger Tanks in an unexpected area in Normandy, and how his reporting of it got him in hot water.
Transcription
Another event that occurred related to, I think it was August the 1st, and bear in mind we were working for the British Army. The Canadian, the Royal Air Force wings worked for the Canadian Army. Same area, Canadian Armies were on Caen over to the east. But this had been decided well in advance of D-Day. So we worked for the British Army. So I'm sent out to do a reconnaissance out of B8. It was almost, it's very late in the afternoon and I go down past a place called Mont Pinson south of the beach head quite a distance. And on the way back it's dusk, as I'm coming along at about 2000 feet or so I see straight ahead of me, as I'm travelling north back to the beach head and my airfield, I see gun fire. I come up to the source of the gun fire and here are tanks going up this peculiar back dirt road. I look at the tanks, they're Tiger tanks in my recognition and they're firing away. So I look at the map and they're inside what we call the bomb line. The intelligence people draw on our maps a line called the bomb line. Anything in that area to the south of the bomb line you could report on the radio. Anything north of the bomb line, in that area was regarded to be ours, Canadian or British and you could not report it on the radio because the Germans listened, monitored everything we were doing. They knew, they knew us by voice and...So I could not report these, these tanks. But I thought "Well, I know they're Tigers, and there might be some Typhoons in the area." So I call up my friend group control centre and reported the location of these tanks, even though they were north of the bomb line.