BGen Sydney Radley-Walters (Part II): A Tank Ace on D-Day

Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories

Brigadier General Sydney Radley-Walters was a tank commander in the Canadian Army and was the Western Allies leading tank killer during WWII.

In the final part of his interview, Radley-Walters finishes his recount of the D-Day invasion, including the battle of Buron, Operation Totalize, and capturing Caen, and more. He also talks about the booby traps he encountered, air support, the smell of death, his tactics as a tank commander, and how he, without knowing it, killed Michael Wittmann, the Black Baron, an infamous German tank commander and tank Ace.

Radley-Walters is credited with destroying 18 German tanks and many other armored vehicles, and he was awarded an Order of Military Merit, the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and a Canadian Forces Decoration.

During the episode, Radley-Walters describes the aftermath of death inside the tanks:

“The smell of death, it sticks on you. And if you take a body and bury it or pick up a person who's dead and move them around, it gets on your hands, it gets on your clothes. You can't get rid of it. And it gets on a tank. Even though they took the tank back, they wash it all out, they repaint the inside with white paint and it's glistening, you get that horrible smell. The men, they called a ‘Jonah’ and they said, ‘We won't get back in that bloody Jonah, like the belly of a whale. We're we're going to get the new tank.’"

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