(dramatic music) (narrator) During the Second World War, a British unit won fame as pioneers of armored warfare.
(explosions) (man) My father was immensely proud of being a Desert Rat.
Most of them have been in action since 1940 up until the very last day of the war.
(gunshots) (narrator) They were one of Churchill's favorite divisions who tackled Hitler's most feared commanders and his worst war machines at great cost.
(man) Young men who had been alive that morning, and there they were lying down in the square dead.
(narrator) Fighting all the way from the baking sands of the desert to the hedgerows of Normandy... (man) For the first time in my life, I was really frightened.
(narrator) ...and on to the ruins of Berlin, they are the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats.
(explosion) (rapid gunfire) (engines humming) ♪ (narrator) An extraordinary war demanded extraordinary soldiers.
♪ (man) We were good, we were very good.
The best there was.
♪ (narrator) Forged into elite bands of brothers.
(man) You were fighting for your buddy.
You didn't want to let them down.
(narrator) By facing the trials of war together.
(man) They attacked us up through the vapor trails and butchered us up pretty good.
♪ (narrator) These are the stories of the Second World War's most famous fighting formations and their journey through tragedy and trial... (man) The German commander said, "I've never seen any people as brave as yours."
(narrator) ...to earn their battle honors.
♪ (solemn music) ♪ The 23rd of October, 1942, El Alamein, Egypt.
Tanks from the 7th Armoured Division are advancing towards the entrenched Axis positions in Egypt.
♪ Then, almost 1,000 Allied guns pour fire upon enemy positions.
(explosions) Victory will turn the tide of the war, and the tanks of the Desert Rats are on the front line.
♪ (engine buzzing) (dramatic music) Two and a half years earlier, Hitler's Wehrmacht stormed through France, forcing the British Expeditionary Force to make a humiliating withdrawal at Dunkirk.
♪ With neither Soviet Russia nor the United States yet at war, Britain stands alone against the Nazis except for her vast empire.
(triumphant music) ♪ But access to India and the Eastern Empire depends on Egypt's Suez Canal.
This is now threatened by Mussolini's fascist forces in neighboring Libya, which makes this the turning point in Britain's struggle with Hitler and his allies.
♪ To cover the huge area, Britain had formed a new unit called the Mobile Force in 1938.
(Dick) They were there to protect Britain's vital strategic interests.
There were two main elements that made up the Mobile Division, and they were the cavalry units who had been mechanized in the 1930s, and then there were the Royal Tank Corps units who were the successors of the First World War Tank units.
(narrator) At the heart of the Mobile Force was the Cairo Brigade.
Three regiments of Light Cavalry with an illustrious history.
In 1854, the 8th and 11th Hussars were part of the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War, and they were still charging enemy positions on horseback in the First World War.
Since then, they had traded sabres and horses for armored vehicles.
(man) The British Mobile Force was formed in Egypt from whatever could be scraped together, in reality, which was kind of a light armor group, a heavy cavalry, a more Dragoon type orientated, bigger tank, bigger gun operation, and an artillery component.
(soft music) (narrator) It was good enough for dealing with desert raiders, but not for fighting a modern mechanized war, and soon earned the nickname the Immobile Force.
Fortunately, Major General Percy Hobart quickly arrived to take command.
A champion of tank warfare, Hobart started an intensive training program.
♪ (alarm blaring) In 1939, with war declared, Hobart continued to improve the Mobile Force.
He wanted his men to be capable of winning battles in the harsh desert conditions.
(wind blowing) (Jon) Living and fighting in the desert is a truly horrific experience.
The heat, terrain, weather, it's designed to make it difficult for human beings to function in any way, let alone in combat.
♪ (Private Crimp) Nothing in the landscape to rest or distract the eye, nothing to hear but roaring truck engines, nothing to smell but carbon exhaust fumes and the reek of petrol.
Then, of course, there were the flies.
Lord Almighty, that such pests should ever have been created.
♪ (narrator) The North African climate wasn't the only source of misery.
There were their uniforms, too.
(Dick) The desert during the day can be hot, 45 degrees, and it can drop down to below zero at night, so you need two different types of clothing.
You need very lightweight clothing for the day and greatcoats and thick clothing for the night.
♪ (narrator) Rodney William Scott is Chairman of the Desert Rats Association and curates a museum in Norfolk, England dedicated to them.
(Rodney) We have a battle dress as would have been worn in the desert.
And the tunic is made of a rough wool, which is incredibly coarse and it irritates like hell.
It's awful.
Incredibly abrasive, and it will take the skin off your neck and off you wrists.
The soldiers did iron the insides of them, almost scald them to try and cut that down a little bit.
It's quite a heavy garment.
I'm sure there's many a swear word that's been said having to stick this on, especially when it's particularly hot.
It would, of course, to a certain extent, help with sandstorms that came up, because it was quite hardy, but in the nighttime when the temperature dropped, I mean, way below freezing.
During the day, I'm sure they thought, this is too hot, but during the night, they'd have liked another half a dozen on top of them as well.
(solemn music) (narrator) As the Mobile Force deployed along the border of Italian held Libya, the unit received its first setback when General Hobart was fired.
(Dick) The problem that Hobart had was he was a visionary, he was a fantastic trainer of men, but he wasn't much of a diplomat, and he wasn't very good at convincing his bosses that what he was doing was right, and in fact, the story goes that when he arrived in Egypt, his boss said to him, "I don't know why you're here.
I think you should go home."
Fighting people like that became very, very difficult.
(narrator) But the Mobile Division was fortunate in the replacement.
Major General Michael O'Moore Creagh, a tough, diligent general.
In February 1940, the unit changed its name to the 7th Armoured Division and gained a new nickname, too.
(soft music) ♪ One story suggests that the Desert Rats' name came from Hobart after he met a soldier with a pet jerboa known as a desert rat.
But at the Divisional Museum, Rodney William Scott has an alternative explanation.
(Rodney) The badge that I have here is one of the first badges that were ever made.
The whole idea of having the jerboa was thought up by General Michael O'Moore Creagh.
He had seen jerboas, the little desert rat, and he thought that that would be quite a good emblem.
General O'Moore Creagh supposedly took his swagger stick, marked out a rough shape in the sand, and overnight, his wife and some other nurses made eight badges, and he handed one badge to CSM Len Burritt, and he said, "Stick that on, Burritt, we're gonna be called the Jerboa Troop."
Len Burritt turned around and said, "Well, General, we call 'em 'desert rats.'"
And he went, "Desert rats, that'll do," and that was it.
Later on, a lot of the badges were made in a factory, and again they're different, and to this day, any man wearing a Desert Rat badge on his shoulder is very, very proud to do so and quite rightly so.
(solemn music) ♪ (explosions) (narrator) They had also received more up-to-date kit, including deadly 25-pounder artillery.
But until now, the Desert Rats hadn't seen any combat.
And the Italians had not joined the fight.
♪ That was about to change.
♪ In June 1940, Mussolini entered the war on Hitler's side.
(explosions) (dramatic music) And on the 13th of September, he ordered a full-scale invasion of British-held Egypt.
There was more than just a strategic interest as stake.
(Jon) Mussolini wanted to emulate the Roman Empire in all its glory from classical times.
He wanted to have a land empire that would match his ambition and the prestige he wanted for his nation, and that meant defeating the British in North Africa.
♪ (narrator) The Italians quickly advanced almost 100 kilometers into British controlled territory... ♪ ...before digging in.
It was a fatal mistake, giving the British the initiative.
Although massively outnumbered, Hobart and Creagh had trained the Desert Rats well, and the remodeled 7th Armoured had a decisive advantage in its mechanization.
(Jon) The 7th Armoured became structured around brigades with larger artillery components, with larger engineer and singles components.
It grew from the Mobile Force into an independent divisional unit.
(narrator) The Italian Army consisted largely of infantry.
What's more, they lacked effective anti-tank weapons.
The British commander saw an opportunity.
On the 9th of December, 1940, he launched a counter offensive.
♪ (rapid gunfire) (explosions) ♪ Raids on the line of fortified camps that lacked the protection of minefields, perfect targets for an armored assault.
(solemn music) Spearheaded by the Desert Rats fighting alongside the 4th Indian Division.
Now, without the traditional preliminary artillery barrage, the tanks would have to break through the defenses themselves.
But it would preserve the element of surprise.
(Rea) As we came over a small ridge, we saw about 20 Italian tanks cutting across our front to the north.
Over the air, I gave orders to my squadron.
"Enemy tanks ahead.
Form battle line on me and stand by to engage."
My eight tanks raced forward to their battle positions.
(explosions) (narrator) At the heart of the attack was the British infantry tank, Mark II, nicknamed the Matilda because the troops thought they waddled like a popular cartoon duck.
Holding a crew of four, the Matilda was designed to support ground troops.
Its heavy armor provided great protection, but its firepower was severely limited to an obsolete two-pound gun, and it could only waddle along at a sedate 14 kilometers per hour.
(Dick) In 1941, it gained the sobriquet Queen of the Battlefield, because when it was fighting against the Italians, it had a reputation that it really couldn't be knocked out because its armor was so thick.
(narrator) As a testament to its durability, one Matilda was hit 38 times and remained fully operational.
They may have been slow, but the Matildas quickly cut through the Italian defenses.
Turret fire!
(narrator) What began as a limited operation became a route.
(soft music) (Jon) The success that the 7th Armoured had was huge.
The Italian positions were very weak and set out extremely poorly.
What that allowed the British to do was to turn the raid into an all-out offensive.
The Italian 10th Army, their entire front collapsed, and then the British Army forced them to surrender.
(narrator) By December, the Italians had been pushed back 800 kilometers into Libya, but the Desert Rats continued to advance.
(gunfire) And over the next two months captured 130,000 Italian soldiers.
(Jon) For Mussolini, it was an absolute disaster.
A much smaller British force had in effect almost destroyed his forces in North Africa, and that bought particular joy to the 7th Armoured.
(narrator) On the 7th of February, 1941, after a long retreat, the Italian force surrendered.
It was a stunning British victory.
But rather than push the Italians entirely out of North Africa, British strategy changed.
(Jon) Churchill called a halt to ongoing British operations and said, "Wavell, I need you to send some of your best troops over the Mediterranean Sea to Greece to help out the German invasion there."
(narrator) It would be a critical mistake.
Having seen the total Italian collapse, Hitler came to their aid, bringing one of his best commanders head to head with the Desert Rats.
His name, Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox.
In February 1941, Rommel arrived in Libya with a newly formed unit of elite German troops, the Afrika Korps.
(Jon) Erwin Rommel served with distinction in the First World War.
He'd written a book on infantry tactics and had then gone on to command a panzer division during the invasion of France.
He'd completely changed the balance of power in North Africa.
(Dick) If there's one word that sums up Rommel, it is "independence."
He loved independence of command, and he often didn't care about logistic supply lines, he didn't care about leaving open flanks.
He would charge in and do his very damnedest to create the most amount of mayhem and violence imposed upon the enemy.
(narrator) Rommel's force included three divisions.
Their armored backbone was the 21st Panzer Division equipped with tanks far superior to the Italians, plus one of the most feared weapons of the war, the 88mm multipurpose gun, deadly.
Even against the heavily armored British Matilda.
(dramatic music) (narrator) In April 1941, Rommel launched an attack eastwards to retake land lost by the Italians.
(gunfire) The British High Command was taken completely by surprise.
♪ Within two weeks, the Germans had advanced hundreds of kilometers.
(somber music) (narrator) Soon, the Afrika Korps had surrounded Tobruk, a strategically crucial town on the Libyan Coast.
(Jon) Tobruk, it's a deep water port, one of the very, very few on the African Coast.
Every pound of food that you ate, every gallon of fuel, every bullet that you fired had to be brought into a port, and Tobruk was one of the biggest around, so for the Germans, it was vital to seize it, and for the British, it was vital to hold it.
Tobruk becomes a key word, a very emotive and important word in the whole of the campaign.
Churchill himself, you know, he is always interested in what is happening in Tobruk.
(narrator) When Rommel struck, most of the 7th Armoured Division were refitting their tanks.
They rushed west, and for the next eight months, they would be bloodied and bruised in a series of operations designed to dislodge Rommel's troops.
None were successful and losses mounted.
(Cyril) There was a clang of steel on the turret front and a blast of flame and smoke.
The shockwave left me breathless and dazed.
I looked down into the turret and it was a shambles.
The shot had penetrated the front of the turret just in front of King, the loader.
The explosion tore his head and shoulders from the rest of his body and started a fire among of the machine gun boxes down on the floor.
Smoke and the acrid fumes of cordite filled the turret.
(soft music) ♪ (narrator) In September 1941, the Desert Rats became part of the 8th Army.
They were expanded with the 22nd Armoured Brigade and yeomanry units.
(ominous music) These were English volunteer regiments that had a record of service going back to the Napoleonic Wars.
♪ By the end of the year, the British were ready to take on Rommel led by the 7th Armoured Division.
(explosions) The German forces were pushed onto the defensive.
But the Desert Rats suffered huge losses at the hands of Rommel's panzers and deadly 88mm guns.
♪ (Jon) The German 88mm gun was originally intended as an anti-aircraft weapon.
Early on in the war, when British tanks proved almost impervious to every other weapon that the German's had, they pressed them into the role of anti-tank guns and found that they were hugely effective.
They could hit and destroy most Allied tanks up to about 2,000 yards.
(solemn music) (narrator) Throughout the war, all Allied tankers learned to respect this deadly tank killer.
What we all feared the most was the 88mm, a very formidable anti-tank gun.
(explosions) First-class weaponry.
I really think that the German Army must've been absolutely pleased as punch.
♪ That was the weapon that all tank people fear the most.
It would go straight through a tank.
♪ When that 88mm shot came so close to me, for the first time in my life, I was really frightened.
Every time I saw an 88mm or heard one, I was thinking, "Oh, I shall have to be washed out of the tank."
And it was a horrible thought to be washed out of a tank.
(somber music) (narrator) Crucially, for a unit that relied so heavily on its equipment, 7th Armoured alone had lost over 500 tanks.
The British were losing far more tanks than the Germans.
(Dick) When they actually got to battle with the Afrika Korps, the Afrika Korps then were fighting them in detail, and Rommel famously said, "It doesn't matter if the British have got two tanks to my one, if they penny-packet them and allow me to defeat them in detail," which was what the Germans did.
(dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) The battle weary British and Commonwealth forces couldn't keep the Afrika Korps at bay, losing all the recent gains.
For the men of the 7th Armoured, it was debilitating.
(man) We did suffer a pawning difficulty in those days.
We lost a mass of tanks.
♪ We then had to retreat.
My first two months in the desert were all filled with retreats.
(narrator) While the retreat didn't collapse into a route, the division was under constant pressure from the Axis advance.
♪ (Allan) Running the gauntlet of German air attacks, their planes bombing and strafing almost at will.
There was no escape and little defense against these attacks.
Some infantrymen resort to firing their rifles at the low-flying enemy fighters.
Each attack left burning vehicles and casualties.
(engine whirring) On the 21st of June, 1942, Tobruk fell, a serious blow to Allied morale.
British forces retreated over 160 kilometers inside Egypt to Mersa Matruh.
Churchill was furious.
(Churchill) Defeat is one thing, disgrace is another.
(soft music) It was such a big moment, both symbolically and militarily, that Rommel was actually then-- became a field marshal and was promoted by Hitler well ahead of his time in the view of most of the other German generals.
(narrator) After the early victories over the Italians, the Desert Rats had barely tasted another success.
But as depressing as things were for the British, for Rommel, disaster loomed.
(Jon) They were at the end of their supply lines and these forces were pretty much exhausted.
(narrator) The moment Rommel lost the initiative and was forced onto the defensive, his Afrika Korps were in trouble.
(orchestral music) In July, the 8th Army stopped the Axis advance in its tracks at a place called El Alamein.
♪ A flood of new American tanks boosted the Allied forces, including the Grant, Stuart, and Sherman.
They also gained a new commander, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery.
(Jon) Montgomery brought meticulous attention to detail, which had been lacking somewhat, and a total belief in victory.
The British by that stage absolutely outnumbered their opponents.
They had more men, they outnumbered them in guns, they outnumber them in the air.
In tanks, it was about five-to-one.
Montgomery arrived at just the right time when a new commander was needed to instill that confidence, and he did that.
He said, "El Alamein is where we fight or where we die," and you don't get many British commanders saying things like that.
It's a little bit too sort of emotionally charged for the British sangfroid way of looking at life, but he wasn't afraid to do that.
(narrator) In October 1942, the Desert Rats would be handed their chance for redemption.
For over three months, the rival troops had faced off across the front line at El Alamein.
But Montgomery was preparing to deliver a knockout punch, having first stressed its critical importance to his men.
(mellow music) (Montgomery) When I assumed command of the 8th Army, I said that the mandate was to destroy Rommel and his army and that it would be done as soon as we were ready.
We are ready now.
The battle will be one of the decisive battles of history.
It will be the turning point of the war.
The eyes of whole world will be on us.
(engines buzzing) ♪ (narrator) On the 23rd of October, 7th Armoured began to advance.
(explosions) ♪ Under cover of the largest artillery barrage of the war so far as the massed 25-pounders made their mark.
♪ (Jon) Montgomery wanted to bring German armor into a fight where it would be outnumbered and it would be on ground of his choosing and where he could then utterly destroy it, specifically with the 7th Armoured Division.
That, in effect, would take Rommel out of the war in North Africa.
That was the whole plan for El Alamein.
(suspenseful music) (Albert) As we approached the minefields, the sappers in front were clearing a path.
We followed.
Everybody moving with that same quiet determination knowing what was about to happen.
At 3:30, all hell broke loose.
Hundreds of guns broke the silence.
The noise of the battle was terrific.
(explosions) ♪ (narrator) Over several blistering days, carefully targeted artillery and air strikes preceded relentless attacks.
Until the multinational 8th Army finally broke the Axis line.
(gunfire) By the 4th of November, the Afrika Korps were in retreat, and Montgomery ordered the Desert Rats to pursue.
(Albert) As we moved forward, we saw hundreds of German tanks that were left, burnt and burning, bodies splattered against the tank walls and millions of flies.
A terrible destruction and a waste of life.
As we went deeper into the desert, we saw German and Italian prisoners.
There were thousands of them.
As the Axis positions collapsed, their troops were captured in their thousands.
On the 23rd of January, 1943, the Desert Rats entered Tripoli.
They had played a crucial part in the crushing defeat of a renowned Nazi force.
It was a turning point in the war.
(Jon) Churchill, his response to El Alamein was unmitigated joy.
After two years of endless defeat, at last, he had a significant battlefield victory to trump it.
(Churchill) Before Alamein, we never had a victory, after Alamein, we never had a defeat.
(narrator) By May 1943, the Axis were defeated in North Africa and the Desert Rats had been key to the victory.
They had become veterans of the desert, but now they would be tested again on the brutal battlefields of Europe.
(explosions) After pushing the Axis out of North Africa, the Allies turned their attention to Italy, the soft underbelly of Europe.
The 7th Armoured spent weeks pushing north along the Italian Coast, but then they were withdrawn to England to refit for a new mission, the creation of a new western front, the Normandy landings.
For the Allies, it was incredibly important to open a second front in Europe.
Stalin had been calling on them to do it since 1941.
By the summer of '44, the Allies were ready.
They were prepared with the largest sea force the world has ever known, massive, massive superiority in air power, and overwhelming land force.
(narrator) Having been in combat since 1940, the Desert Rats were some of Britain's most experienced troops.
However, fighting in France would be very different to the deserts and dunes, and retraining back home was a disorienting experience.
(Dick) The Desert Rats were sent to the area around Thetford where they inhabited really old Nissen hutted camps which were cold, drafty, the rations and standard of catering was particularly poor.
Morale took a huge dip.
(narrator) The Desert Rats would need new tanks.
For much of the North Africa campaign, they struggled for parity against the panzers.
But as they retrained in the English countryside, they were finally equipped with a machine designed specifically to level the playing field, the Sherman Firefly.
(dramatic music) The Firefly is a great example of one of the great British design successes of the Second World War.
♪ (narrator) The Firefly was an adaptation of the Sherman M4.
Its old 75mm gun was replaced with the superb British anti-tank gun, the 17-pounder.
♪ This upgrade in firepower meant that the Firefly could take on the latest German battle tanks, Panthers, and the dreaded Tiger.
♪ (Peter) The Firefly 17-pounder gun gave us a much better range against German armor.
We also had an advantage that the Sherman was a faster tank than the Tiger and Panther.
(narrator) One in four tanks in any unit would be Fireflies.
But the Desert Rats' main armament would now be the new Cromwell tank.
(man) You're stood in front of a Cromwell Mark IV tank circa 1944, '45.
Mainstay of the 7th Armoured Division in the Normandy campaign all the way to Berlin.
The arrival of the Cromwell marks a sea change in British tank design.
Mechanically, she's much more reliable.
She's got the Meteor engine, which is basically a non-supercharged version of the Merlin engine that's in Spitfires, Hurricanes, et cetera.
At full power, this thing could do well in excess of 45 miles an hour.
The other advantage of being very highly maneuverable at high speed is the fact that it was much more difficult for the German gunners to get a bead on her, and several of the tank crews say the speed of the Cromwell saved their necks time and time again.
The only problem with the tank was the fact she was equipped with the standard 75mm gun, which was not capable of taking out Panthers and Tigers.
That was only the 17-pounder anti-tank guns and then the Fireflies that could actually deal with one of those tanks.
(explosions) The tank is marked up Little Audrey.
That was the markings of the troop commander of 5 Troop B Squadron First Battalion Royal Tank Regiment when she landed in Normandy.
And our founder, the late Les Dinning, ended up serving in the original of this tank in Normandy.
And so he decided that when we set up a memorial, not only should we have a Cromwell 'cause they're unique to the Desert Rats, it should be marked up in his tank, which I think is a fitting tribute.
(birds chirping) (narrator) The D-Day landings in Normandy would pitch the Desert Rats up against an old foe, Erwin Rommel.
(Jon) Rommel was in overall command on the German side of the Normandy beaches.
It was he who led the defense, it was he who prepared the Germans for the invasions.
He even had 21st Panzer Division there, which, of course, had come to be one of his armored formations when he faced the Desert Rats in North Africa.
(explosions) (narrator) Towards the end of D-Day, on the 6th of June, the first units of the Desert Rats started to land and push into the Normandy countryside.
Despite months of training in England, the challenging terrain was an immediate shock.
This was bocage country.
(Cecil) No one knew about the deep lanes, the high hedges.
Hadn't got a clue.
We plunged through the hedge, and then hurtled down about 15 feet into the road.
And such an impact that the driver and co-driver were killed.
They were small fields with very high hedgerows on five-foot banks.
Bocage country was brilliant for the defenders.
(suspenseful music) (narrator) Field after field bordered with thick bocage gave the German defenders well-prepared cover, overlooking wide open killing grounds.
♪ It's hedges all the way around.
So each meant it was a little battlefield.
The Germans fought in that one, and then if they got pushed out of that, they fought in the next one.
(Dick) For those tank crews who had been used to fighting in North Africa, it must've come as a great surprise.
The last thing you want as a tank commander is to have that feeling of being closed in.
The best thing we could do was to try and blast a hole in the hedgerow, and the best way to do that was to get an army bulldozer.
That took time.
It took time trying to get hold of a bulldozer, 'cause they were in great demand.
(narrator) On the 12th of June, the Desert Rats were ordered to take the village of Villers-Bocage in an effort to outflank the elite Panzer-Lehr Division.
(tense music) (Jon) Villers-Bocage sits on high ground on a high ridge on a main road, and this gave it a tactical and strategic positioning that its size didn't warrant.
So for the Germans and for the British, they would meet at Villers-Bocage in what became, in many ways, totemic fight that epitomized the Normandy campaign.
(narrator) Units from the 7th Armoured found the village unoccupied.
By the morning of the 13th of June, they were spread throughout the village and on the approaching roads in and out.
Everything seemed calm.
And we came in, it was a beautiful day.
People came out to the streets with flowers and cider and covered us, and we thought, "This is great!
No sign of any Germans."
(narrator) What the Desert Rats did not know was that lurking in the cover was an SS tank ace commanding a troop of Tiger tanks.
(Jon) Michael Wittmann was Waffen-SS Panzer Commander.
He'd come to excel in the fighting in Eastern Russia where he'd become one of the panzer aces.
♪ (man) When we got to Villers-Bocage, from nowhere, it would seem, a troop of Tigers came from the East and one of them proceeded to conduct absolute mayhem.
♪ (John) I saw this tank coming, it moved the 88mm just like that, then wham, and a shot came, and I was standing up within the turret looking through the periscope, I ducked down, and I felt a tingling between my legs.
I thought, "Oh, lucky my legs were apart, the shot must've gone between."
All I could see was the massive flame from the engine.
So I said, "Bail out," and the crew bailed out and I bailed out, and I was still wondering what's happened.
(John Lawson) It came down and shot up every vehicle.
We were utterly helpless.
(dramatic music) And A Squadron was completely annihilated.
♪ All I can remember of this was the terrible bark of the 88 guns firing.
♪ (narrator) The British were hopelessly outgunned.
In just 15 minutes, around 14 tanks and up to 15 other vehicles were destroyed.
Wittmann caused havoc before he was trapped and his Tigers destroyed, losing irreplaceable tanks.
However, the equally unexpected arrival of the 2nd Panzer Division left the British dangerously exposed, forcing a humiliating withdrawal.
(soft music) They had taken heavy casualties, losing over 55 tanks and armored vehicles.
(Harold) In Villers-Bocage, young men who had been alive that morning, there they were lying down in the square dead.
And you think, well, you know, this could happen to anyone in this campaign, but you just have to live with it.
(narrator) Montgomery used the Desert Rats as his trusted veterans from North Africa, but in the Normandy campaign, they would come into criticism for being too cautious or having lost their edge.
In some ways, in Normandy, the 7th Armoured Division become victims of their own success.
They were brought back, as we know, to be a veteran formation, and everybody expected great things of them.
They were going to be the wonder weapon amongst the British Armoured Divisions, and so as a result of the Villers-Bocage problem and some other general feelings of what Montgomery would refer to as "stickiness," that lack of aggression, he then decided to sack some of the senior commanders.
(mellow music) (narrator) After their bloody dune, the Desert Rats spent several weeks recuperating.
But in mid-July, they were back in action, taking part in a series of operations designed to capture the city of Caen.
(Jon) Caen was kind of a bogey for Montgomery, and he launched offensive after offensive, Totalize, Bluecoat, Goodwood, all designed to both take the city and then move inland.
(narrator) It took far longer than planned, but by mid-August, the Allies had pushed past Caen and moved slowly towards Belgium and Paris.
(solemn music) ♪ German positions began to collapse across France, and as the Allies looked to keep the Nazis on the back foot, their attention turned to the low countries.
♪ (Jon) The race was on to end the war, and the low countries, Belgium and Holland, had some of the largest ports in Europe.
So seize the low countries, seize their ports, and then get yourself into Germany as fast as you could.
(narrator) By September, the next target is the historic city of Ghent in Belgium.
Commanders wanted an armored thrust, fast, deadly, unstoppable.
And the Desert Rats fitted the bill.
Before dawn on the fourth of September, their tanks rolled across the border between France and Belgium.
♪ Along the way, the Desert Rats were greeted by happily liberated civilians.
♪ (Harry) We moved out at first light.
A Sherman did about one mile to the gallon, and we refueled out of jerry cans and lived on dry rations.
We carried infantry on our tanks and had Canadians as well.
On the swan up to Ghent, we were going up to 100 miles a day or thereabouts, a bloody long way, and it was hard to keep awake.
(explosion and gunfire) ♪ (narrator) Entering Ghent, it took days to clear the Nazi resistance.
Before the Desert Rats finally got a chance to rest and refuel.
♪ (Rex) Later, there was a colossal banquet in a large town hall with tables, linen, silver cutlery, still wet Desert Rat signs, bully beef, tinned fruit puddings, fresh fruit, Belgian beer and wine.
The cigars were marked with "Fur Deutsche Wehrmacht."
Slept for 14 hours.
(soft music) (narrator) The Desert Rats spent the winter re-equipping in the Netherlands, but their reprieve was short.
They were ordered to take Hamburg.
At long last, they would be fighting on German soil.
(Jon) Hamburg was both strategically and symbolically important for the Germans, even at this stage of the war.
It was then and still is one of the major cities.
The Germans definitely wanted to try and hold Hamburg.
♪ What the Desert Rats had found was that they would come up against pockets of resistance, elite units within the German Army who just weren't prepared to give up.
(narrator) Defending this area were students and instructors from the nearby Hitler Youth Cadet School in Hanover.
Fanatical, highly trained, and touting the best equipment, these seven companies were serious opposition for the Desert Rats and supporting units such as the 11th Armoured Division.
(Patrick) Clustered in those woods were about 1,000 dedicated German officer cadets who were determined to die for their Fatherland.
It was a death trap to go through.
(Dick) Although they were cadets, these were combat veterans.
These are, in some cases, the people who had been fighting for two, three, four years.
They knew what they were about.
♪ (narrator) After days of bitter fighting, orders came for the Desert Rats to withdraw.
While two fresh infantry divisions engage the SS cadets, the 7th Armoured now formed the spearhead into Germany.
On the 16th of April, the unit liberated POW camp Stalag XI-B, which contained Desert Rats who had been captured in Africa.
(suspenseful music) Thousands of POWs were set free.
♪ By the 20th of April, the 7th Armoured were close to the suburbs of Hamburg, but along the way, they were still encountering fanatical resistance.
The Germans were now flooding the battlefield with portable anti-tank weapons.
♪ (Patrick) The Panzerfaust was the little anti-tank projectile and greatly feared in Germany, because everybody could use it, schoolboys could use it, and they could destroy a brand new tank in 15 seconds.
So the Armour feared it.
(narrator) The simple design made the Panzerfaust deadly, even in untrained hands, destroying numerous Allied vehicles.
They made the streets of cities like Hamburg deadly for the Desert Rats.
On the second of May, 1945, there came some momentous news.
Hitler had killed himself.
Just one day later, Hamburg surrendered to the Allies.
The Desert Rats entered a totally devastated city.
(Edwin) Hamburg was absolutely ghastly.
I shall never forget it.
There were several nights of firestorms, hundred-and-something thousand people killed.
All the main buildings were wrecked, were gutted, old people pushing barriers around, rubble everywhere.
It really was quite appalling, I mean, it looked so dreadful.
(somber music) (narrator) But despite the state of the city, the people they found were not hostile.
(Harold) Hamburg, people came out on the streets, they really wanted to be friendly with the British.
And the first thing they would ask us would be for cigarettes.
That was a great thing, actually, that the German people were very friendly.
(narrator) Soon after, the Desert Rats helped to take Hamburg.
The European war was finally over.
♪ (Brett) It was indeed a wonderful and an astonishing sight to see the end of the German Army.
We'd known for long how disorganized they were and the whole administration had broken down completely.
Even so, the sight that we now saw was more than we had ever expected.
(Harold) We felt exhilarated, actually, to think that it was once and for all over now, that the war had finished.
And there's a wonderful feeling I feel now that, after all those years, all the efforts we'd made during the war, civilians and military people, had now come to an end successfully.
♪ (narrator) The Desert Rats had been in action from the earliest days of the war right through to the very end.
As one of Churchill's favored units, they were accorded a major role during the Berlin Victory Parade.
(soft music) (Ian) The parade started with an inspection of Churchill.
He's in the half-track inspecting men in front of their tanks.
Also, what we have here is a flag, Union flag, flown from the top of one of the tanks from the 7th Armoured Division during the victory parade in Berlin.
And the Desert Rats who had fought for so long under this flag were given the honor of carrying it into Berlin to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany.
For the men of the 7th Armoured, it was a sign they'd done their bit.
Flying their flags meant that they could celebrate and commemorate the victory they had fought so long for.
The division must've come a good 3,000-plus miles.
Churchill calls it the Long Road to Victory.
If you think about how far it is from the deserts of North Africa all the way to Northern Germany and on to Berlin.
Most of them have been in action since 1940, and they fought up until the very last day of the war.
I think it was an immense honor for them.
(narrator) Following the war, the Desert Rats remained in Germany as part of the occupation army.
Here they helped in the process of denouncification and the rebuilding of the devastated country.
(solemn music) (Ian) My father was immensely proud of being a Desert Rat.
♪ This is my father's battery.
♪ This happens to be the 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium, so it's like the local tourist spot to get your photo taken.
♪ These are the people he spent the best part of four years with.
They were his family.
Some of these guys in that photo had been in action since 1940.
They've seen an awful lot of stuff.
Here we have a postwar magazine for September 1945 telling all that's going on.
It mentioned in here, the advert says it's BAOR.
Up until the end of the war, they were the BLA, British Liberation Army.
After the war, they became the famous British Army on the Rhine, and that was an official change of title in this time.
The regional signpost listed everywhere they have been, all their battle honors from the division.
And this was a nice memento of their journey from the deserts all the way to Northern Germany to the heart of the Nazi empire.
At the end of the North African campaign, Churchill said any man would be proud to say he marched with the desert army.
This was their badge of honor, the Desert Rats.
My father was proud up until the day he died.
On his coffin, he had the jerboa to see him off to the next world.
♪ (narrator) The Desert Rats remained part of the British Army for decades, earning further battle honors across the world until they were finally converted from an armored unit to an infantry one.
But although the vehicles may have gone, the famous badge and the nickname remain.
(Jon) For the Desert Rats, their legacy is assured.
Other armored divisions served with great distinction and courage, but the 7th was something different.
Beating Rommel at his own game in North Africa is a really big feather in your cap.
And then to continue onwards to your final glory being a successful capture of one of the largest cities in Nazi Germany and surviving as a unit intact until then is a pretty great achievement.
(Dick) The modern British Army have got so much to thank the Desert Rats for.
We have learned how to do tank warfare and how to be good at tank warfare, because of units like the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats.
So I take my beret off to them.
(dramatic music) ♪ (electronic music)