In 1983, the author, Tom Bates, (no relation to Sidney Bates, VC), formerly an officer in the British Royal Corps of Signals, now an American citizen living in Berkeley, California, had no sooner started writing about his namesake than he realized he would have to go to the actual battlefield in Normandy in order to understand exactly why the smart young soldier – Sidney was twenty-three years old at the time and had been promoted to lance-corporal, several times – had acted as he did. And thus started the Search for Sidney. Eventually, it turned out to be a search not only for the battlefield and for the personality of Sidney himself, but also for ways to correct certain misunderstandings, even slanders, both on the military and civilian sides, that have crept into the D-Day literature.
Bates started the search in London where he found the retired Lieutenant Colonel Eric Cooper-Key. As the twenty-six-year-old Major Cooper-Key commanding 'B' Company, the 1st Battalion The Royal Norfolk Regiment, he had submitted the recommendation that Corporal Sidney Bates of 11 Platoon receive a posthumous award of the Victoria Cross. Though at first his recommendation was turned down, Major Cooper-Key, determined that the courage and self-sacrifice of his section corporal should be recognized, persisted in his efforts and was eventually successful in having the award made.
Eric Cooper-Key and Tom Bates went to Normandy together in August 1983, thirty-nine years after the battle, to visit the field in which Corporal Bates had made his last stand. It proved surprisingly difficult to find the exact place because in the bocage all the small, hedge-enclosed fields look alike. However, eventually Colonel Cooper-Key found the place and gave Bates a detailed description of how he and his Company had fought their part of the battle.
It was only after Bates returned to California and continued his research that he began to suspect that perhaps Colonel Cooper-Key had not taken him to the right field! Correspondence with Jean Brisset of Flers, Normandy, who had written about the battle in his French-language book, La Charge du Taureau, seemed to indicate that the action had taken place, not at Sourdevalle, as the official record states, but at the nearby village of Pavée. There was nothing for it but for Bates to go back to Normandy once again to continue The Search for Sidney.
Because Colonel Cooper-Key could not accompany Bates on his second visit to Normandy, the author persuaded two former soldiers of the 1st Battalion The Royal Norfolk Regiment, who had both been in the battle, to go to Normandy with him instead. The ex-soldiers were Private ‘Bill’ Holden who had been a Bren-gun-carrier driver towing a 6-pounder anti-tank gun, and Corporal Ernie Seaman who had been one of the two stretcher-bearers who risked their lives to bring the mortally wounded Sidney Bates in from the battlefield.
With the help of Jean Brisset and other French people living in the area, the three old soldiers – les trois anciens soldats – found the Sidney Bates battlefield at Pavée. In addition, they also visited the other battlefields in Normandy on which their battalion had fought, and paid tribute to fallen comrades in the various cemeteries in which they are buried.
At this time, looking for a way to express their appreciation to Jean Brisset for all his help, the suggestion was made that Bates should translate Jean’s French-language book, La Charge du Taureau, into the English-language, The Charge of the Bull, and that Bill Holden, who owned a printing business in Norwich, Norfolk, should print and publish it. Firmly nudged by Major General ‘Pip’ Roberts who had commanded the famous 11th British Armoured Division in Normandy, the Charging Bull of that story, and who, at the time of the battle, had the 1 Royal Norfolk under his command, Tom Bates postponed the writing of the Sidney Bates story and got on with the translation of Jean Brisset’s book. It was launched at a memorable Reunion of 11th Armoured Division held in Tinchebray, Normandy, on Sunday, June 11, 1989, at which nearly a thousand people, veterans of the division and their French friends who had suffered through the battles of 1944, were present.
Once that was over, Bates went back to writing The Search for Sidney. Again and again he drew on the knowledge and assistance of Jean Brisset to clear up local points of detail in the story. It was in this way that he met Madame Suzanne Lenauld of Colleville-Montgomery, a small village about a mile or so inland from Sword beach, the most crucial of all the D-Day invasion beaches. Although it turned out that Madame could not help Tom Bates specifically with the Sidney Bates story, once he had heard what she had gone through on D-Day, he offered to try to help her resolve the two matters that have preyed on her mind since then.
It was through Madame Lenauld that Tom Bates met the retired Lieutenant Colonel Eric Lummis, formerly of the 1 Suffolk Regiment. Some years before, Bates had interviewed the late Canon Lummis, Colonel Lummis’s father, in connection with Sidney Bates’s VC because Canon Lummis was recognized as an authority on the Victoria Cross. Now the connection between the former infantry colonel and the former signals subaltern was rewoven through their common interest in HILLMAN, the enormous Maginot-like German fortress that barred the direct route to Caen from Sword beach. Part of HILLMAN had been built on land that Madame later inherited from her father-in-law. In accordance with his wishes, in 1989 she gifted it to the Suffolk Regiment who have turned it into a monument to those who fell in its capture on D-Day.
After Tom Bates had finished writing the book, as a courtesy he sent a computer printout of it to Jean Brisset who reads, writes and speaks English well. Jean wrote back to say that the book had brought tears to his eyes! Bates apologized for the distress he had caused his friend but Jean assured him they were tears of emotion, not tears of pain! He then said he wanted to translate the book into French. He felt it told a story that should be disseminated in Normandy, if not in all France. Initially dismayed at having to publish two books, Bates got the happy idea of combining the two languages in one book and sharing the maps and illustrations in common.
John Matheson, one of Canada's prominent citizens, wrote the Introduction to the book. Coming from one who is himself a much-wounded and gallant World War II soldier, his comments are very generous.And coming from one who is a fervent patriot for Canada, the last paragraph of his Introduction, commenting on the balanced, bilingual format of the book, makes a specially haunting plea for the unity of his troubled, bi-lingual country.
The next chapter, In Memoriam, was written in grief at the news of the sudden death of Ernie Seaman, MM, the Corporal stretcher-bearer who is really the unsung hero of the book.
The chapter that follows it, A Note of Explanation, was inserted just before the book went to the printer in order to answer the different queries made by many friends about various aspects of the book. In particular, it explains why Sidney Bates himself is such a 'shadowy figure'.
The book proper is in three sections. The first, major section of 108 pages is the story of the search for the place where Sidney fought and fell. It is written in the form of a diary of the five days the three old soldiers, Seaman, Holden and Bates, spent together looking for Sidney's battlefield and the other battlefields on which the 1st Battalion The Royal Norfolk Regiment fought. It ends with the successful, positive identification of the field on which Corporal Bates earned the Victoria Cross. An Epilogue that describes the battlefield monument raised to commemorate Sidney and his comrades closes out the story.
The second section, of 49 pages, is titled The Madame Lenauld Story. It is divided into two parts. The first, The Vow, tells the poignant story of Madame Lenauld's search, unsuccessful up to now, for the grave of the young British soldier who died in her arms on the morning of D-Day. The second part, Impossible!, examines the slander about the behaviour of Alphonse Lenauld, her father-in-law, on D-Day and clears his good name. The Epilogue that closes out The Madame Lenauld Story describes how, on the initiave of Suzanne Lenauld, Jean Brisset and Tom Bates, a statue was raised to honour Field Marshal Montgomery, Monty, in the village of Colleville-Montgomery that hyphenated its name with his.
The third section, of 42 pages, is titled 1 Suffolk and D-Day. It lays to rest for all time the unwarranted slander that the 1 Suffolk dragged their feet in the capture of HILLMAN on D-Day. The Epilogue that closes out this last section describes how part of the remains of HILLMAN have been dedicated and developed by the Suffolk Regiment and its Friends in Colleville-Montgomery as a permanent monument to the soldiers who fell in its capture.