Experience riding a Russian T-34 for an associated TV Documentary

Sheila Watson, a wonderful lady and my first agent retired at the point I left the Army, when I had decided to write full-time. After deciding to go it alone without an agent I was introduced to Charlie Viney. He persuaded me to write Tank Men for Hodder and Stoughton and I am glad he did. It was a departure from previous books about battles and campaigns but I was intrigued to do something different and more fully immerse myself in the human stories I had earlier populated my battle narratives with. Like the Army it was a challenge, out of the ordinary, and Charlie, who became my new agent fed in effective and constructive advice on content and style. I was unused to frank editorial appraisal and it did me little harm.

David Willey the Curator at the Bovington Tank museum and his staff were very supportive, allowing me to mount and crawl inside all tanks of any historical consequence, to develop the ‘feel’. An overland ride in a Sherman tank reminded me of the claustrophobia, limited vision, smells, noise and discomfort of being buffeted around by a tank moving at speed – as well as the need to dodge moving machine parts and not touch the hot spots.

Panzer veterans Ludwig Bauer left, author and Hermann Eckhardt right during my visit to interview veterans in Germany.

There was a need to interview a batch of foreign tank veterans to supplement the high quality British personal accounts I was finding found in the Bovington Museum and Leeds Second World War Experience Centre archives. After advertising in Germany I was contacted by Ludwig Bauer, a panzer veteran and Knight’s Cross holder. He had fought panzers from the invasion of Russia in 1941 through the Normandy Bocage in 1944 to Germany in 1945, and was knocked out nine times. Visiting him near Stuttgart, he introduced me to an Afrika Korps Knight’s Cross holder panzer veteran. Both regaled me with amazing stories, as also a number of veterans who communicated by post.

A serious short fall was material from Russian tank veterans. Although fluent in German, most of my Russian material had come from German translations. The Military Academy at Sandhurst came to the rescue, asking if I could speak on a battlefield tour to Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk in 2006. This proved a saviour. During the tour I was introduced to Vladimir Alexeev and Anatoly Kotzov, Russian veterans who had fought from Stalingrad through Kursk to Berlin. The problem of identifying the uniquely Soviet perspective was solved with the aid of some truly generous Russian interpreters over vodka and beer during long interviews on several overland night trains.

Soviet tank veteran Vladimir Alexeev at Kursk

My military background was airborne not tanks, but I did have my panzer experience with the Bundeswehr, service as an anti-tank platoon commander in the British Army of the Rhine and the first Gulf War to fall back upon. It was a privilege to converse with British and foreign veterans ever ready to share some of their most sensitive and often sad moments, and brutalising experiences, with a total stranger. The best way of marshalling this very human yet disjointed material was to place it in the context of the technological arms race that occurred between 1916 to 1945, and reflect on their individual roles within it.

Gathering material for Tank Men was a fascinating and often humbling experience.