MIGHT HAVE SHOT HITLER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 December 1939, Page 11

MIGHT HAVE SHOT HITLER

V.C’s. STORY OF GRIM FIGHT. “If one of my bullets had found a different mark in October, 1914, the world might be free from the horrors of war today.” The man who said this to me was speaking no more than the truth, states a writer in ‘Answers,’ London. Without knowing it, he might have altered the whole course of history. He might have killed Hitler. Sergeant Tandey has a strange story. Today he is a commissionaire at a Coventry motor works, a middleaged man, a little thin on top. with a quiet voice and a strong disinclination to talk of the scrap he shared with Hitler.

But back in 1914 he was just Private Tandey—and private he insisted on remaining, even after the three highest distinctions a ranker can receive had been conferred on him within the space of a single month. He is, in fact, the only private in Britain with the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and the Military Medal, as well as the Mons Star. Just over a month ago he took a week of! and went to the Green Howard’s reunion. It was there that he discovered how he once fought the man who has plunged Europe into war. Hanging in the regimental headquarters is the original painting by Matania of the Menin Cross roads, in which Private Tandey is the central figure. Hanging in Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden is a copy of the same picture. When Mr Chamberlain was there a year ago Hitler showed it to him, and explained that he was one of the German machine gunners opposing the British at this point. “We were dug in by the Menin Cross roads, with orders to stay there whatever happened,” Sergeant Tandey told me. "The Germans were holding the ridge 900yds in front, with 16 machine guns to our two—and behind one of their guns was the future leader of the German nation. "I didn’t know he was there, of course. No one but his own company knew that Corporal Hitler existed. But, if he says he was. 1 suppose he must have been.

"If you were to print some of the things I could tell you about what happened on the Menin Cross roads no one would believe you,” says the sergeant. “We had no trenches. We were lying in shallow holes scooped out of the sand, often 100yds apart, and no way of getting .back. The nearest rations had been dumped a mile and a-half behind us, and the only way of getting them was to crawl up the ditch beside the Ypres road. When we were thirsty we stretched our handkerchiefs over the mud in the corner of the trench and sucked! “No. we didn't know what was happening. When we received orders to dig in. we guessed the Allied advance had been held up —that was all. From time to time other regiments came through us. moving back, and that made us a bit uneasy. And then, in the morning, the Fourth Cavalry Division came through and we knew wo were for it.

"First we saw the German cycle patrols appear on the ridge, then the cavalry, and later the infantry opened live on us with their machine guns. "It was touch and go those four days. They were attacking all the time, and our barbed wire, raided from the farm fences, and fitted with tin cans containing pebbles to act as alarm signals, wasn’t much protection. "I don’t think a day passed when we didn't have to bring in someone who had been hit. crossing from trench to trench, and was lying out in the open. "Did I see Hitler? ‘ I had the sights of my rifle on most of their gun crews, but whether I hit any of them 1 shall never know. I’ve wondered since how near I camo to knocking down lite future dictator.