My request to join the Coldstream Guards Association Branch 36, (Canada) was accepted warmly. That was in 2001. The Annual General Meeting, April 2002, in Galt, Ontario, was my first introduction to the group. It was the first contact I had made with any ex-Coldstreamers since the war. The Coldstream Guards were my life from spring 1943 to spring 1946, after which, while stationed in Germany, I transferred to the British Army Intelligence Corps for my final year of service. Army discharge was from the Bonn Station, Int. Corps, June 1947. Then, in 2001 however, after a gap of 55 years, I met my old buddy with whom I had trained since Day One at the Guards Depot, Caterham, Surrey, and who became my closest friend throughout the war. His name is Glen Bishop. Glen and I hit it off well, when we first met in the induction centre in 1943. We stayed together throughout the preliminary infantry training, where they mould you like putty, then on to the next stage of battle techniques at Pirbright Camp, Surrey. It is here that you are toughened up to a high pitch. At this stage, Glen and I were still talking to each other. We were now set for overseas but, instead, we applied for and were accepted into the Guards Armoured Training Wing (GATWING). We became trained tank men, in Churchill tanks, at Pirbright, assigned to the 4th Tank Bn. — which, with the 4th Grenadier Guards and the 3rd Scots Guards, comprised the 6th Guards Independent Tank Brigade. The ‘Dynamic Duo’ were still together. We were both placed in No. 1 Squadron. There are eighteen tanks per Sqn. and 3 Sqn. to a battalion, including H.Q. SQN. Guardsmen Bishop and McIntyre stayed with No. 1 Sqn. from England, travelling across Europe and ending up in Schleswig Holstein on the Baltic Sea, at the Danish border. Field Marshall Montgomery came by after VE-Day and said ‘Thank you’ at a resort called Plon. It was the only time I ever was in a swank parade with the whole Brigade present, approximately 3,000 men, including Brigadier Greenacre, Welsh Guards commanding officer of the Brigade. A most impressive ceremony to remember. We said goodbye to our Churchill tanks in midsummer 1945 and left them neatly parked on the Autobahn outside Hamburg. The brigade moved en masse to the Rhineland-Ardennes area as occupation forces. We were there through the fall and winter 1945-46. It was here we went our separate ways: Glen opted for a posting to England as a Guards instructor, and I stayed on in the Ardennes in a small town called Monschau, near the Nurburgring. The duties were not too boring , but with one year still to serve, I enrolled in an NCO course and also a mathematics course at the University of Brussels, paid for by the army. Civilian life, the real world, was rearing its head. Next I applied for a transfer to Army Intelligence and was accepted. This was more satisfying than occupation duties on the Belgian border — nice countryside, nice scout cars, lots of trips but some of us were thinking about our future. It was goodbye Coldstream Guards, and goodbye Glen for more than half a century. This was not expected as we assumed we would catch up later in the U.K. Glen Bishop (Reg. no. 2666183) hails from Blyth, Northumberland. He now lives in Canada in a fine house in Victoria, B.C., with his charming wife Blanche, and their West Highland Terrier, Geordie (funny name for a Scot). Their house has a beautiful view looking over to the mountains on the mainland. After three years of very active service in five countries, there was a gap of fifty-five years between the goodbye and the well-hello-again-Guardsman Bishop. When Glen and I met again in 2001 it was a strange coincidence and another story. It started in 2001, when my son gave me a book, Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts, by Neil J. Stewart (Trafford, 2000). It’s a most impressive and well-written account of tank warfare in Europe during the Second World War, a subject that is, of course, of great interest to me. The author, a Canadian from Edmonton who was in the war, painted a vivid and realistic picture of life in a combat armoured battalion. From my home in Toronto, I wrote a letter to Mr. Stewart, congratulating him, and explained that the similarities in our experiences had brought back memories long forgotten. Canadian armoured units and British tanks were often operational together under the same command at both army and corps level. His descriptions mention names that were familiar to me, such as Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Reichswald Forest and Cleve. We (the Brits) had a close working liaison with the Canadians. We admired the very high level of their training, which showed in their efficiency. Mr. Stewart replied to my letter promptly. At a Guards Club meeting he read it to a friend, who, upon hearing my name, said, ‘My God it’s McIntyre!’ as he fell off his chair. It was Glen Bishop. Our reunion was a phone call to remember, Victoria to Toronto, with arrangements to meet in Victoria in October. My wife, Olive, and I had planned a vacation in B.C., which luckily coincided with a Guards Club meeting, to which we were invited. Glen and I met face to face for the first time in fifty-five years at our hotel, The Royal Scot. Quietly and discreetly scrutinizing each other, we finally decided that we didn’t look too bad for two old geezers in their seventies. We attended the luncheon meeting at the Uplands Golf Club in Victoria with Glen and Blanche, and were introduced to everyone. The Guards Club has members of five regiments of the Brigade of Guards: Grenadiers, Coldstream, Scots, Welsh and Irish, plus the Household Cavalry and the Canadian Governor-General’s Foot Guards, as well as the Canadian Grenadiers — a distinguished membership. This is a lively group, some of whom come over from the mainland for the day with their wives and all and are picked up at the ferry docks. Neil Stewart and his wife, Sheila, attended the lunch. He is active in military matters in Western Canada and is the honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of the King’s Own Calvary Regiment. No speeches are made at these meetings, no formal minutes are taken and the president, Paddy Brennan, says everyone likes it that way. It is strictly a social gathering. Good food and good conversation. The Bishops had us to their house for dinner. The Stewarts invited us to lunch with them and the Bishops at the Union Club in Victoria. Our week in town included a Military Tattoo on the invitation of the Bishops; the Grenadier Reg. Band from the U.K., the band of the U.S. Marines etc. Olive and I were bowled over by the hospitality of our Guards friends. Looking back on the war exploits it seems like yesterday that Corporal Taylor looked at his bunch of callow youths in civilian clothes at the Guards induction centre and muttered to himself, ‘Holy Mackerel, what a shower.’ Taylor’s back-up comprised a trained soldier, a full sergeant, a drill sergeant (W.O.2) and the regimental Sgt. Major (W.O.1). All of these gentlemen had very loud voices. The degree of loudness increased in decibel rating as the rank ascended, so that the R.S.M.’s resembled a sonic boom. The commissioned officers all drawled quietly, like David Niven. It was a strange new world. Within a month we were pressing our own uniforms perfectly (you sleep on them), shining our boots like patent leather, polishing our brass work like burnished gold. Within three months we were very smart, proud as punch, whether square-bashing, climbing cliffs up a rope, or peeling potatoes. Life was a lark, as we moved on to Pirbright camp, which was more serious, less spit, more mud and tougher — black faces at night on silent patrols. There were pre-breakfast ten-mile run/walk marches, (the Swedish term is Fartlek). Six months after induction, boy were we tough! For us, at age 19, the world was our oyster. There are many incidents that happened after the C.O.’s passing-out parade for the infantry, too numerous to mention. Some were sad, some were happy. We remember mostly the good times, such as firing our big tank guns at floating targets offshore, while perched on a cliff at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, and at Hornsea in Yorkshire. And then, crossing the river Rhine at Wesel on a pontoon bridge which sinks lower and lower in the rapid moving water as your forty-ton hunk of iron inches across and the Luftwaffe are zipping about overhead making life even more difficult; linking up in support of our U.S. paratroopers on the other side who were clinging in dogged resistance to the beach-head which they had gained, waiting for us, the armoured support. We picked them up on our tanks, repelled the enemy with our big guns and headed for Munster about 75 km northeast. The men of the 513th U.S. parachute regiment, 17th U.S. airborne division, were elated to see us and our hardware. This combined force captured the city of Munster seven days later, having had no sleep, no wash and many skirmishes and battles. The American paratroopers were superb, ‘la crème de la crème’ of the U.S. army. They thought we were okay too. We captured Munster on my 21st birthday, April 1st 1945. At the Hermann Goering Barracks, which was captured intact, we found a wine cellar that was fit for a Prince and had one Big Bash. French bubbly on my 21st — what an event. I believe I passed out. Ask Glen. Donald McIntyre (Reg. no. 2666149) Toronto, December 2002 Footnote: Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts By Neil J. Stewart © 2000 Trafford Publishing, Suite 6E 2333 Government St. Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4 Canada

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