“Another frost bond month, in which we have struggled more against the cold than the enemy, has finally drawn to a close, and two - thirds of the winter is now mercifully behind us. Although on occasions we have managed to thaw out when the wind has relented, the times that we shall remember are the nights when the North wind has been coming down from Siberia, and sending the mercury away below the zero mark. For the solitary watcher on the hill top, no colder place can be found than a tank, which contrives to funnel the wind into its innermost points, and freeze its crew with the mass of cold metal with which it envelopes them.”
Born in London but quickly whisked away to Japan in his first year, Simon spent much of his childhood in Kobe where his father was a sales manager for Dunlop Rubber Company. They returned to England permanently in 1938, but that early brush with the East would return in decades later. After attending Woodcote House School in Windlesham on the outskirts of London, Antill enlisted as a trooper in the 12th Royal Lancers when he was eighteen. He was posted to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst by January 1949 and commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment in July. Alongside Lieutenant J. D. Blackwell, the pair were the first two regular subalterns to join the 8th Royal Tanks since the war. Antill took a troop in C Squadron while Blackwell went to A Squadron.
There was little activity during those first years of his service and he watched as a squadron of the 7th Royal Tanks went to Korea in 1950 and many individuals took extra-regimental postings to get into the war. Finally, men were asked to volunteer for the 1st Royal Tank Regiment for Korea and in 1952, Simon transferred out of the Eighth for a posting with the First. Though only recently recovered from an injury sustained earlier that year in a tank park accident, Antill was eager for operations amidst Korea's bitter terrain. (The Eighth’s hockey team regretting losing him as he was one of their two best players.) It was a unique campaign for the tankers who lacked the open playing fields like the Western Desert or the frontiers of Northwest Europe. Their war was one of pits and ridges with the occasional foray out across a valley for a reinforced patrol.
He went with the advanced party in September – less than ten officers and seventeen men sailed with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, arriving a month later to nothing – no facilities, just a few tents and dug outs across blighted hills. They went to the front in early November to the 5th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards where they immediately became subjected to shellfire.
On the second day, after being allocated to 1st Troop, A Squadron of the Skins, Simon occupied an area with Lieutenant Busby Hill between Points 210 and 159. Busby was an Australian officer who had been seconded to the Greys before going to Korea attached to the 5th Inniskillings. The move, done at night, was very routine for the Korean veterans, but Simon was very proud to announce his unopposed capture of Hill 159 that sadly went without reward. They supported the Royal Fusiliers during the week and Simon observed Lieutenant Hill ‘sniping’ with 20-pounders throughout the days to cover stretcher parties searching for wounded. Perhaps the most exciting event to follow during the first month was when Simon and Lieutenant Thomas accidentally burnt down their tent.
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The main party of the regiment arrived at Pusan on October 30th and took over for the Inniskillings on December 5th. In that time, Simon took command of 4th Troop, A Squadron on the far right of the Divisional sector in support of 28th Commonwealth Infantry Brigade. They ascended the area around Point 355 with two full troops and one troop of three tanks on the line with one reserve troop in Squadron Headquarters. One or two tanks were deplayed to company areas for fire and observation where, by day, they would observe and engage in defensive fire. By night, each troop delivered fire against predetermined targets.
The tanks rarely moved from their firing positions, as was the practice of the Skins, but soon the Royal Tanks felt this was unacceptable given the amount of shelling they attracted. It was less a problem for the tankers as it was for the surrounding infantry. They switched to a system of using aiming stakes to align the tanks which could be driven up and back as needed to remain before the skyline during daytime hours. As innovative and as successful as it was after testing January, they only practiced it sparingly.
Though their first weeks on the winter front were relatively quiet, the month of January brought out an interesting example of inter-allied flank co-operation between Simon’s 4th Troop and the neighboring United States’ tank battalion who were in support of an ROK Division. On visiting the American tankers, the A Squadron commander Major Howard-Jones decided to install a telephone line between the right-most troop of his squadron (which happened to the be 4th Troop) and the left-most platoon of American tanks.
The line rang of January 15th for the first time to alert the British tankers of an anti-tank gun across the front. In ‘a rich deep south voice’ the American described the location of the gun which they could observe, but were unable to fire on. He described the location while Simon scanned the area through his 10x perio-binos, but saw nothing suspicious, and called back to ask for corrections.
“Hell, Lieutenant, you’ve asked for it and you’ll get it!”
The confidence over the phone soon gave way to confusion at the Royal Tanks’ position when Simon understood the differences between British and American calculations, but he proceeded to fire without visual. “The corrections although at first a trifle confusing, finally resulted in the destruction of the target,” was the conclusion noted in the war diary. The Tank journal offered a more detailed series of events:
‘The arrival of my first round was met with: “Left ten mils add five mils.” Searching for common ground we asked for correction in yards. Incidentally the observer was at about right angles to the line gun-target and that did not help either.
I put my driver behind my tank with the phone, told him to shout the corrections up to me, and away he went.
“Shot.” “Right five zero add one zero.”
A hurried calculation resulted in the order to my gunner: “Add fifty left fifteen minutes,”
“Shot,” “Right five zero.”
Might have been a contradiction, however: “Add fifty,” “Shot,” “Left five zero,” “Drop fifty,” “Shot.”
“Can’t put you any closer but if you go right a bit and up a bit you sure will be right where you’re not wanted.”
I gave the final range and elevation to the only other tank in my troop which could bear on the target and ordered three rounds gunfire stand by: “Fire.”
“Fellah, out of your six strikes you got four homers.”
That final comment may have been obscure but it was certainly encouraging, and to our great satisfaction the secondary explosion and flying timbers proved the kill.’
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The weather was the predominant factor in their lives, even more so than the war. The tankers found it to be of great extremes from season to season. After leaving a stark winter for “wallowing in the mud of typically English January weather, glad in a way to be no longer shrivelled by the winds from Siberia, but not liking the sleet and the rain any better. We have travelled far since then. Almost overnight the rain stopped and the sun came out. Since then, it has been getting steadily warmer, but alas, dustier also. The much talked of Korean flowering shrubs and wild Spring flowers are everywhere bursting out, and the dull brown hillsides are splashed with patches of pink and gold. Each day passes with the sun shining down from a cloudless sky; days which are marred only by gusty winds which start regularly at mid-day, and cover everything, no matter how well protected, with a thick layer of dust.”
A Squadron returned to the front in that flowery dusty spring to support the 29th Brigade on the Central Sector. They took over from the Lord Strathcona’s Horse under threat of rain, but the weather held and their transition was a smooth one. In the new terrain, the tanks were further from the Chinese lines than previously – about two to three thousand yards out and not within the forward infantry company areas. Simon, however, was ‘up sharp’ with two tanks watching his old position on Point 159 where he faced regular shelling, particularly in late June. The enemy seemed to take special interest in A Squadron and managed to score one hit on Simon’s tank.
The regiment finished their year-long tour in December 1953. Antill departed with the main body of the regiment for the Middle East and ultimately returned to the Eighth, completing a full circle of service that had begun there just after his commission. He remained active through the next decade, particularly in regimental sport where he excelled in hockey. It seemed to be at the forefront of his service as most photographs of him from the period show him beaming with stick in hand.