KARL STEEL talked to the legendary singer-songwriter backstage to find out more about his amazing Cumbrian connection.

Seventy years ago, Dennis Bragg was part of a small regiment testing a top secret tank in the Cumbrian countryside – this weekend his son visited the very site to play a live set in front of tens of thousands of people.

“If my old man could've seen that out there, well I'm sure he wouldn't have believed it,” said Essex-born ex-punk and world-renowned singer-songwriter Billy Bragg. 

“He was here in 1945, and now here I am talking about it on stage in front of all those people.” 

Few people outside of the immediate family know about the connection to Lowther Castle, where Kendal Calling took place in the surrounding woodlands this weekend. 

For the early part of 1945, the Ministry of Defence took over the Lowther Estate and Dennis and the 43rd Royal Tank Regiment were stationed there to test and train with the ultra-secretive Canal Defence Light tank. 

Billy himself has only recently been able to piece together his father's war years and being booked in for a main stage appearance afforded him a first visit to see where he was stationed towards the end of the Second World War. 

“Probably if I'd played here 10 years ago, I'd have had no idea about the connection,” he admitted. 

“My dad died when I was 18, so I never really knew his story. He left a lot of photographs, mostly of his time in India, and when my mum died I realised that I was the only one who knew anything of his story, but I didn't know all that much.
Dennis Bragg (second from right) and his comrades standing next to a Grant M3 CDL tank. Photo thought to have been taken in India

"I live near the tank museum in Dorset, and I used to always go to show my boy - from that I've managed to piece together what my dad did in the war. 

"I got talking to the archivist at the museum and really started piecing things together to create enough of a narrative.” 

The first anyone else knew of it all was when Billy imparted a snippet of the story on-stage mid-set on Sunday.

"When I was booked to play Kendal Calling I never twigged that it was at Lowther, I was just happy to be playing because everyone knows it's a great festival. 

"We're only about a mile from the castle so it was something I knew I'd want to come and see while I'm here.”

The CDL tank, specifically a Grant M3, housed a 13-million-candle light designed to blind the enemy and dazzle them with a strobe effect. 

However, the hugely-expensive operation never fully came to fruition, with the war ending before they had a chance to unleash it. 

"The 43rd RTR missed D-Day, so they were shipped to India in May 1945, to prepare to use the CDL tanks in the invasion of Malaya, blinding the Japanese in the jungle,” said Billy. 

“They got to Bombay and while they were waiting for the call, the Americans dropped “the big one” on Hiroshima and the war ended. 

“They were used a couple of times in canal crossings to create artificial moonlight, for building bridges and that kind of thing, and when the Brits decided to leave India, there was a lot of inter-community violence - what we would now probably call ethnic cleansing - between the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, so my dad and his regiment would be in places like Fort William to try and help police it all. 

"My dad never shot anyone and wasn't shot by anyone - I think he was quite happy about that, instead of feeling like he'd missed out.” 

Even though the contribution the CDL tank had in winning the war was minimal, the six months that Dennis spent in Cumbria had a huge impact on his life. 

“He never really spoke to me about the tank, and not a lot is known about it,” said Billy. 

"It was all so secretive - so secretive that Montgomery didn't really know of its existence.

"The thing with it was that it could only be used really effectively once - they figured that the enemy would learn how to deal with it quite easily the next time. 

"But the way my dad would talk about Penrith, I thought he must have been here years, but he was only here for around six months. It really left an impression on him, and they must have been thinking they were going to come in and do this great thing, but they had to sit tight for the right time to use it, and that day never came.”