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TRANSCRIPT
War Vet Tells All
WW2 Veteran Arthur Knightley told all in an exclusive interview about how he survived the conflict.
Arthur, now 74, was a tank driver who fought the Germans in both France and Tunisia during the Second World War.
He was present during the retreat and evacuation at Dunkirk and throughout the North African campaign, serving under General Montgomery during the push into Tunisia where the allies sustained heavy losses to the superior German tanks and equipment.
Arthur said: “The Germans had Flak 88’s and advanced AT guns both of which ripped our tanks to shreds.
“We had some AT capacity and a few Sherman/Wolverine brigades but never quite anything to match the advanced tanks that were deployed against us.”
Arthur began the war as a member of the national reserves stationed in Kent at the outbreak of the war. He fought briefly in France where he was assigned to the 60th Mechanised brigade which took part in the fighting in France and the evacuation at Dunkirk.
After the loss in France, this unit was reinforced with fresh troops in Britain and then re-assigned to North Africa.
Referring to the trip from Europe to Africa, he explained: “I’d never been abroad before apart from to France, so the weather and conditions in general were a big change for most of us.”
He talked about how one of the hardest parts of the actual campaign was “adapting to the new environment when we all came from rainy England.”
The brigades’ specialization was speed and initiative, and they quickly earned themselves a name among the other corps as a brigade to be feared.
During the evacuation at Dunkirk a third of the entire brigade stayed behind and significantly delayed the advancing German panzer divisions towards Dunkirk saving significant lives in the process.
When I asked him about the retreat, he told me: “I managed to make it out, I had a friend who was part of the force ordered to stay behind and delay.
“He spent the rest of the war in German POW camps whilst I was off fighting in North Africa, I still can’t decide who was the lucky one”