Johnny's days of the Jackal

3:28pm Monday 1st October 2001

It was an emotional moment for Johnny Lambert when, many years after the war, he once again caught sight of the tank which he drove into battle in October 1944.

Sergeant Lambert, who settled in Borehamwood after the Second World War, lost both his legs when a mine exploded beneath his Churchill tank at Overloon, in Holland.

Years later he was able to visit the same tank, which was nicknamed 'Jackal', after it had been placed as a memorial in the Netherlands National Open Air Museum.

Mr Lambert and his wife, Audrey, who he met while he was a Coldstream Guardsman stationed in Elstree in 1941, went to see the tank at the museum, in Overloon, in 1972.

Mrs Lambert, from Milton Drive, said: "We found out by chance from some old Coldstream Guards they asked him if he had seen his tank and he couldn't wait to go."

The vehicle still carried the scars of the explosion which injured Mr Lambert and killed several of his colleagues, during one of the biggest tank battles of the war.

Mr Lambert, who died four years ago, grew up in County Durham and joined the 4th Battalion of the Coldstream Guards after the start of the war, at the age of 21.

He was a motorcycle dispatch rider at the time of his posting to Elstree, when 16-year-old Audrey was living in Shenley Road and working at an aircraft parts factory.

"We used to see the guards parading around the village or riding their motorbikes and we used to think there was something a bit special about them," said Mrs Lambert.

The couple first met during a dance at the Dufay Hall, which stood on the site of Boulevard 25, and they married at All Saints Church, in Shenley Road, two years later.

Although the 4th Battalion was an infantry unit when it arrived in Elstree, it became part of an armoured division and Mr Lambert was trained as a driver mechanic.

He landed at Juno beach in Normandy on D-Day Plus 14, which was June 19, 1944, and his battalion joined the Sixth Guards Tank Brigade for the advance into northern Europe.

The battalion went into action at Caen, to clear the way for an American advance, and the three-day battle at Overloon, on the German front line, began on October 12.

After being invalided back to a hospital in Cardiff, Sgt Lambert returned to Borehamwood and took up work as an inspector with the General Electrical Company.

Despite his disability, Mr Lambert continued to enjoy riding motorcycles, and he was well known locally for his involvement with the Borehamwood branch of the Royal British Legion.

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