Page Sixty-five
For the next few weeks, the Squadron was holding a line of over several miles south of the river Reno, from west of the river Senio and eastward nearly to San Alberto, a village close to the southern shore of Lake Comacchio.
Notes about the sketch, which obviously is not to scale:
1. The river Reno is canalised between levees more than twenty feet high.
2. There are many more unoccupied houses than shown, some being large enough to be called a casa. The area in which they are located essentially was a "no-man's land" being occupied periodically by both our troops and Germans.
3. Except for 5 Troop, which had only one house in its location,
tanks were sheltered behind separate houses except when in a firing position.
The Squadron was about to experience, what was 
a different form of warfare, which soon became evident when men of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals arrived on the scene. As it had been realised, maintaining communication by wireless required constant manning of the tanks with a considerable drain on their batteries, the Canadians had
been given the task to establish a field-telephone network. Upon its completion, I became responsible for maintaining both a miniature telephone exchange and literally miles of wire. The Canadians were not the only ones busy that day.
Scattered around the two thousand yards or so of territory, between the river and where the Squadron's tanks were located, were many houses which had been abandoned by their owners. Previously, when German troops who had crossed the river during the night, were found occupying one or more of them, tanks of 'C' Squadron would be asked to lay down some HE fire - in the dark, it was very much a hit-or-miss effort!
On relieving 'C' Squadron Major Sidebottom, having decided that our tanks firing from fixed positions could do better, ordered that every house be targeted by at least two tanks firing from fixed positions. Hitting houses, at a relatively short range and during daylight, presented little difficulty, the problem being how to duplicate the task during the hours of darkness - the solution was both simple and effective. Marks which were painted on the turret ring, indicating the traverse position and the number of turns of the hand-wheel for the degree of elevation, were both recorded for each of the targeted houses.
During the weeks the Squadron was employed in its static role, few were the nights without the sound of main armament being fired, often with the rattle of BESA machine-guns thrown in for good measure. The great expenditure of ordinance, coupled with that used on several shoots during daylight hours, created severe replenishment problems for the echelon. As the roads from both the east and south were subject to heavy shelling during the day, supplies had to be transported by night, fortunately the difficult task was made somewhat easier as only a small amount of petrol was being consumed.
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