BBC W V Thomas Awaiting To Cross The Rhine (1

Our period of waiting is over. This is the time. In the buffalo, that strange all-purpose vehicle which is taking us over the Rhine, I'm coaching with the commanding officer of the assault battalion. In his bread and gun carrier fills the buffalo and on the bread gun carrier, a pile of his men tin-hatted.

And we're watching gazing towards that far bank of the Rhine. It's a fantastic sight. We've broken out first through the Bund, the wall that retains the floodwater of the Rhine. We're out in the open spaces.

Overhead goes an absolute crisscross pattern of our traces, firing in as fast as they can into the German bank. The thunder of our guns echoing and crashing in our years. As we waited, we were destined by the noise and blinded by their flashes.

But now we seem alone, out here in the open space, right on the water there, waiting for the final signal. The buffalo, the driver in charge, man, the Royal Tank Regiment is receiving the signal, the captain's waving to him.

And this is where we move. The battle of gravity gives an extra gravity, feels for the edge of the water. We're guided up right to the very edge by a long little line of small green lights that have been laid to take us to the jumping off ground.

I last looked back at the shoreway leaving. The dirt side to play. Sing one wave without an indid to lone star. And the moonlight filling the sky, but chair ahead of us. There's no effect of moonlight at all.

water's edge and we see the rain not running as we thought it would right under the moon but running red because right on the opposite side of the valley every single house and haystack you can see is burning beaten down by the fury of our barrage slowly carefully we come down to the water's edge