The Quiet Gunner: El Alamein to The Rhine with the Scottish Divisions, a book by Richmond Gorle MC RA, available in hardback from bookshops, online direct from publisher Pen and Sword , or from the major retail websites including Amazon (sold out, but more stock shortly).
Dick was a soldier but he also knew how to capture a reader
In 1939 Dick Gorle was already a professional soldier but stationed in India. After the Dunkirk disaster he was recalled and initially involved in training recruits at Plymouth before going north to hel re-form the 51st Highland Division Gunners.
He writes of the journey to Egypt and thereafter the intense action at El Alamein under Monty and the long gruelling advance to Tripoli. The invasion of Sicily followed and Dick describes the horrors of war in the mountains and towns while the locals carried on with their lives, almost oblivious to the momentous events unfolding around them.
Called back to attend Staff College, he then rejoined the fray in North West Europe. His new Regiment, part of the 15th Scottish [Lowland] Division, alternatively received ecstatic thanks and welcome from those liberated and fierce and deadly resistance from the retreating Germans. His memoir sums up the elation of victory, the closeness of comradeship and the desperate sadness of losses.
One of his readers sent the following comment which truly sums up the success of the book.
”I read it from cover to cover with my heart in my mouth. Technical in its descriptions of how an army worked in those historic times…most enlightening; but above all, a personal story, told with humility and without a trace of sentimentality. Yet…’this is what it was all about’….his all-important and much-loved family.
A truly special book which I will long remember (and re-read often).”
