On 15 June the Regiment was ordered to form a composite squadron of all its available Shermans which would move north next day to join 8th Indian Division, relieving 142nd Regiment Royal Armoured Corps’s composite Sherman squadron. The latter regiment had been advancing in contact with the enemy for eleven days and the pace had become too hot for its Churchills, which needed urgent maintenance; with the Churchills withdrawn, 142nd RAC’s Shermans continued supporting the Indians. The composite North Irish Horse squadron, which included all the Sherman troops plus the Recce Troop, was commanded by Major Welch with Captain Thomas as second-in- command. With no transporters available, the tanks set off at 0730 hrs next day on a drive of 138 miles.
Trooper Farmer, of A Squadron, recalled the
"....mammoth effort which took three days; it started in glorious sunshine and ended in pouring rain. It was never intended to be so long, but the enemy kept retiring before we could make contact, it developed into a chase until we caught up with him. It was fortunate that we had Shermans at this time as they were faster on the road than Churchills. I remember answering a call of nature one night and was horrified to see the whites of a pair of eyes peering at me from the other side of the bush. It proved to be a member of a Gurkha patrol. A few moments later a grinning face appeared. It was uncanny how quietly they could move at night."
As the squadron advanced, signs of the routed enemy could be seen; unburied bodies, knocked-out tanks - mostly Mark lVs - and wrecked artillery pieces littered the route. Whenever the tanks halted, starving Italians rushed out to greet the crews and were grateful for any food the troops could offer. The language barrier was eased by the many Italians who had lived in the USA and spoke English with a pronounced ‘Yankee drawl'.
Lyle Craig recalled one incident in a vineyard.
"We were sitting on the grass waiting for the evening meal to cook. Some Italians tentatively approached and asked if we would rise. It was the family orchard. The troops did as they were asked and were surprised to see the family set to and start digging up the family valuables. The troops in question regarded this as a great compliment as they had been hidden away from the Germans but not from the Allies."
The squadron spent the second night at Massa Martana, twenty miles behind the front. A withdrawal over twenty-five days and some 150 miles had taken the Germans back to the Trasimeno Line where they had established a continuous, cohesive line across the country for the first time since 11 May. This new line was some forty to fifty miles short of the Gothic Line which Kesseiring proposed to hold throughout the winter. From then on the Allies would pay heavily in men and in time for every mile of their advance; the terrain lent itself to the classic German defensive tactic of holding a position long enough to force the attackers to deploy and mount an attack before falling back to the next position where the pattern would be repeated.
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