Syd Davie is a former Orléans resident who passed away in 2020 at the age of 95.
He was the last of a group of comrades who served together in the Irish Guard during the Second World War. He saw action in the raid on Dieppe, the Normandy invasion and Operation Market Garden.

He was also a member of an elite commando unit known as the Bogmen. Each member was hand-picked from the various Guard units. Their job was to divert, or “bog down” the enemy’s attention from the main action.

As a Bogman, Syd would also go on recon missions to locate enemy positions and occasionally offer some level of “harrassment”.

This is the story of one such operation in his own words, taking from a collection
of firsthand stories he wrote before he passed.

“Peering from the bush on the inside of the bend, I find there are three enemy tanks, closed up and firing at British tanks to the west. As the tanks were still closed up tight and had no ground troops with them we decided that we could take at least one of them out.

Now at this point in the story I have to go back a few weeks. Some time after we had arrived in Normandy my troop received a shipment of 50 “Sticky Bombs”.

A “Sticky Bomb” was a device that was designed to be slapped on the outside of an armoured vehicle, it looked like an overgrown toffee apple; imagine a glass ball about 6 to 8 inches in diameter, with a six-inch long handle. The ball was covered in some sort of strongly adhesive goo (commonly referred to as bird shit) and the glass ball contained nitroglycerin.

I suppose this was the forerunner of modern plastic explosives; in active use, the ball was protected by a metal sphere connected to the handle, this metal case was to be discarded immediately before slapping the weapon on the target. I had used them many times in practice on demolition courses but I have still never heard of their use in combat situations.

As we were recon and not attack and had never requested these armaments I sent them back (I was also very unimpressed with them due to safety reasons) however, before returning them I removed two units and stowed them in one of the rear boxes on my car, “just in case”.

Now, we thought, this is the case, this is the time to use what we have and to this end we removed the two bombs from their storage.

I gave Charlie a 15-second lesson in its use and while he waited at the bend gingerly holding his toffee apple, I advanced on the nearest tank.

All three were still closed up! I reached up, slapped the sticky bomb on where I thought was an effective place to get interior shrapnel and walked to the rear of the tank. Five seconds went by and no bang.

Now I expected the top hatch to open and a head stick out to see what was going on, but no, nothing happened. There was no reaction.

I was about to turn away and hotfoot it back to the bend when the hatch on the adjacent tank started to open. I froze – then I positioned myself to look as if I was having a pee – a head appeared, looked over at the turret of my target, then at me. Luckily he could not see my nether regions because the hand that should have been holding my tap had my Luger in it.

I should also mention that our camouflaged fatigues looked very similar so that you could not tell with a glance whose fatigues were whose.

I nodded my head at the crewman and grinned. He gave a slight wave in response and disappeared. Before he had the hatch closed, I was hotfooting it back to Charlie who said “God, when his hand came out I nearly let him have it!” Then he asked, “Do we try again?”

“No thanks!” was my response. “One misfire is enough for me. Here give me that,” and I threw the other sticky bomb I had given him over the hedge and five seconds later we were bombarded with an explosion and numerous screams and shouting.

Peeping cautiously through the hedgerow, we were surprised with the sight of a German field kitchen and what looked like a company of infantry in total disarray.
Our next decision was not discussed, but it was unanimous and unspoken – we were quickly in the car and driving south past the three tanks who obviously had eyes only for what was before them... Oh! Why didn’t we have three stickies that worked?