With actions like this it makes me so proud to be British.
On a summer day in Normandy, in 1944, a British soldier stepped out of his slit trench and advanced alone through a hail of bullets across a meadow towards a position held by some of the most formidable elements of the German army. Firing his bren gun from the hip, he was hit and fell. He got up and continued his advance, firing all the time. Again he was hit and again he got up, still firing from the hip. Finally he was hit once more and fell for the last time. Nevertheless, mortally wounded, he carried on firing from the prone position in the long grass. He died two days later.
Why would a 23 year-old battle-hardened British corporal throw away his life in a desperate and lonely assault against an attack by 50-60 élite members of an SS Panzer Corps who could, and did, so easily train their machine guns and mortars on him?
Perhaps his anger simply erupted: a few seconds before Sidney began his lone advance, his friend 'Tojo' Tomlin had died in his arms, hit in the head. It was Tojo's bren gun that he was using.
Perhaps Sidney, like so many exhausted soldiers, had simply had enough and decided to end it all: taking as many of the enemy with him as possible.
Or was it that Sidney Bates, a simple working-class lad from London, knew what General Montgomery knew: that the whole Battle of Normandy was to hinge on denying the Germans control of a bleak and apparently obscure but vital hill-top position above the little village of Burcy.
A sergeant who witnessed the event believes that Sidney simply acted as any well-trained, first-rate infantryman would have done. Attack was the best means of defence and by advancing he greatly improved his field of fire.
We'll never know what Sidney was thinking but the consequence of his actions is beyond any doubt. A lone soldier did indeed prevent those élite German forces from taking that hill. And that hill controlled the main east-west road across Normandy. And that road (from Condé-sur-Noireau – Vire) was what the Germans had to control if they were fulfil Hitler's orders and halt the Allied advance in its tracks at Mortain.
Posthumously Sidney Bates won 'a very well-deserved' VC, the highest British military honour. But many who read this excellent book Normandy: The Search For Sidney may conclude that Sidney's greatest memorial is not the medal, nor the monument on the edge of 'his' field, but that Europe is free today because of men like him.
Sidney, is why I have Ruperts Brooke's words on the side of my marquee.
