My War 1938 to 1947 Part 5 of 8

Once we were kitted out and our vaccinations and inoculations checked we boarded a train at Holyhead and set off for abroad’, wherever that might be, We thought it would probably be France or Belgium, and when the train pulled up at one of the Thames ports below London it looked as though we were right. We boarded our transport in the evening, and as we climbed the gangplank there was a loud bang in the sky above us, and looking up we saw a ball of smoke dispersing in the wind, and realised that it was a V2 rocket. However, we were issued with our rations for the night (a tin of bully beef and a loaf of bread between three or four of us) , and turned in, fully dressed, to try to get some rest before we arrived.

The ship arrived in Ostend before we were awake, but the noise in the docks soon took care of that, and we were disembarked and allocated to our train very quickly, and it was soon ambling through the countryside to our destination, Louvain. Our barracks there were an old cavalry establishment in the centre of the town, and there we stayed for several weeks. Thus, uncomfortable though they were, because we had little or no work to do, so we had plenty of time to visit Brussels and explore it pretty thoroughly, and also the battlefield of Waterloo, which I found somewhat disappointing. We managed to find a café in Louvain which, although it did get pretty crowded in the evening, at least was cheap, and the constantly changing clientele was quite entertaining. After a day or two we realised that it was not just a café, it was also a brothel, which accounted for the fact that it was so popular with the troops — particularly with the members of a Glasgow unit which was stationed in the town.
During the day we were taken for route marches, nothing too strenuous or taxing, and our entertainment then was exchanging badinage with men on the troop carrying convoys of lorries carrying them up to the front line. One day I was walking along one of the main streets with a friend when there was a great roaring sound in the sky, and two V1’s flew overhead, crossing the street at little more than roof level. Where they came down I never knew.

But now the war was coming to an end , and we were sent first to another Belgian town, Dendermonde, where the announcement was made that all was over. We stayed there for four or five days, interested to see how the loe acted to the ending of the war. During the day all was quiet and peaceful, but in the evening there was a very marked change. By about seven o’clock the inhabitants began to emerge in to the streets, and music began to sound from loud speakers in the village square. Pretty soon the stragglers who had arrived first were augmented until the whole centre was packed with people, singing and dancing, and generally letting off the tensions of the past four or five years. Eventually the dancing concentrated itself into a great circle of men and women, soldiers and children, all holding hands and singing, when
they knew the words,, and just going on and on and on and round and round and round. Every so often a group would break away from the dancing to vanish up s0me side street, not returning for some considerable time. They had gone to visit some of the town’s traitors, who had collaborated with the Germans. What they did when they found them we did not know, and it was only much later we were told that most of them were taken out of the town into the surrounding woods, where they were hanged.

From there we went to another small town in Holland, which was totally deserted , the streets empty, and doors and windows open, with curtains blowing in the wind. There was a curious sensation of the town having been just left to fend for itself, as though it was waiting for something new to happen. Then, now we had crossed the Dutch frontier, we were under canvas in what seemed to have been a battlefield , with taped pathways leading to the East to mark a safe passage through mine fields, and all the disorder and rubbish one associates with any area after a battle. We passed two or three days there, camped in an orchard, and then were loaded in to the lorries once more, and driven first to Maastricht, where I met a man who claimed to be English, and who had lived there throughout the occupation. From there we drove Northwards across the German frontier and through a small town whose name I forget, which had been completely flattened until no part of it was more than three or four feet high. Through this heap of rubble a road had been driven, and half- way along this there was a Tiger tank which had been bulldozed off the road to be tidied up later. That town was the worst example of destruction I ever saw.

At last we arrived at our destination, a transit camp established at a railway junction in northern Germany. There we stayed for a week or two, and there I was astonished to hear my name announced over the tannoy system, and ordered to report to the camp office at once. This was not something I had been expecting, and I was not sure it was something I wanted. However, I ran off, since they said it was urgent, and was astonished to find my Uncle Bill waiting there for me! It turned out he was in a camp about ten miles away , and he wanted me to visit him there. Needless to say I was pleased to accept, so we arranged a day, and laid on permission from my headquarters so that Bill could send a truck to pick me up. It arranged, I jumped in, and was taken to his camp. Since he was a 0Captain, and I was only a Fusilier, I could hardly go into his mess, so again he had laid on a dinner for us both to be served in his tent, and after spending a very enjoyable day with him he had me delivered back at the transit camp in good time. One of my more pleasant military experiences.

Shortly after this I was told that I would soon be posted to a unit of my regiment, and indeed this happened within a few days. I was told I would join an Independent Support Company of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers attached to the Guards Armoured Division, stationed near Cologne. So once more I climbed into a three ton truck, along with other men bound for units on the way, and off we set. We had to follow a pretty circuitous route to cover all the different units we had to cover. On the way we saw just how the allied bombers had pulverized the towns of the Ruhr, and of course at that time rebuilding
might have been in the minds of at least some people, but actually starting it was still a largely distant future prospect. When we reached Cologne I could see how extensive the damage was. In the centre of the city was the Cathedral, and even that was closed to the public because of bomb damage. From there on it gradually (very gradually) improved, but to get to where there was little or no bomb damage was a matter of quite a few miles, and you were then in the country.

The first problem, as I saw it, was to solve the problem of refugees. Wherever you went there were lines of refugees walking in all directions, all trying to the best of their ability to reach their homes. Some (men and women) were wearing the distinctive black and white striped concentration camp uniform, while others wore civilian clothes in all stages of wear or disrepair. Where they slept I do not know. Where and what they ate I do not know. All I knew was their never ending stream of misery, and, for all I knew, starvation.

That night we slept at a Convent, but we saw no Nuns. The place was spotlessly clean, but I was forced to conclude that all those living there were kept rigidly apart. Perhaps they came out later in the day, but we certainly saw none of them.

As soon as we were up, and had had breakfast, we set off in the truck through Cologne and out of the other side, where, after a few miles, we reached a small village, pleasant to the eye after what we had seen elsewhere. This was our destination, and we unloaded our kit and carried it , under guidance, through the streets to a pleasant house where we were allotted army style bunks in a bedroom. The bunks were two-tiered, well made, and with clean mattress covers and pillow slips. The only fault I could find was that there was nothing to put inside the mattress covers and pillow slips, so we had to effectively sleep on bare boards. The next day we met our fellow fusiliers, and became members of a team with skills which were rapidly becoming redundant. Not that it greatly mattered, since we soon realised that the Independent Companies were going to disappear, and we would be re-allocated to some other sphere where we would be expected to master other skills. In the meantime we carried out our duties, every third day taking responsibility for a camp full of displaced persons awaiting return to their countries of origin. That was a strange place, with Russians, Poles and other nationalities, mostly young, being held in a very large camp composed of three very big buildings, all surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and , although they were officially our allies,
our orders were to shoot to kill anybody trying to escape.

Of the three buildings, one was for single males, one for single females, and the third for married couples. In practice they were all mixed up, higgledy piggledy, and we found it was commonplace for women to offer to sell their bodies to us at a very cheap rate. About once a week a convoy of lorries would drive up and be admitted to the camp. Every lorry had two armed guards in the back. While they were inside the camp members of the displaced persons would be separated from their fellows and loaded in to the lorries. All the rest of the prisoners, which is what they really were, stood and watched, silently, and with expressions on their faces that I can still see now, some sixty years later. Then the gates were thrown open, the convoy pulled out, the gates were shut again, and routine took over.

We asked some of the other refugees about this, and they just shrugged their shoulders. “They will be dead now” was all they said. Years later I learned that this was indeed the case, that once our convoys reached the border with the Russian Zone, the refugees in the trucks were off-loaded, reloaded on to Russian trucks, driven a few miles into their zone, disembarked, and then machine gunned to death.

To the Russians, it appeared, anybody who had been taken prisoner was a traitor, and deserved to be executed.

At night there was no peace, either. All the time, after darkness had fallen, we could hear screams and shouts, near and far, mingled with an occasional shot. You may ask why we did not try to enforce some order on what sounded like hordes of savages attacking helpless people, mostly women. The reason was simple. There were thousands of British prisoners throughout Germany, and in particular in the Russian zone. The first priority of the Government was to arrange the release of these people, who were at the mercy of the Russians, while the Germans had treated our allies, when they were absolutely without any protection at all, with complete heartlessness. Our people must come first.

After a week or two of this there was a call for volunteers to be transferred to jobs more applicable to civilian life, I volunteered to train as a school teacher, and after testing I was told that I had proved satisfactory and would be trained accordingly. However, before this could happen I was told that I had been selected (along with many, many more) as being suitable for service in the Far East, where the war continued, so I would be sent back to England to be trained as an infantry officer. So off I went, back to Blighty, I thought, but first I must pass through another WOSB, this time once more at Dendermonde. I passed this, too, and was sent straight back to England, where they did not know what to do with me, so they sent me on indefinite leave, subject to recall at short notice.

When I got back to Middlesbrough I found other familiar faces, plus some strange ones, also hanging about waiting for orders. The most prominent of these were Sandy Sweeting, a Naval officer, Tony Brown, an RAF navigator, and Alan (Tops) Towell,
an RAF pilot, with all of whom I had been at school. We met most mornings at Sandy’s home, and passed our days together with other more casual acquaintances, some of whom had not been in the services at all. We did not mind that — we would all be in Civvy Street within the next year or two, so we did not mind being paid for doing nothing,

When the orders came I was directed to report to Pre-OCTU at Wrotham camp, in Kent, situated on top of a long ridge, most of which was taken up with army camps, while at the other end it vanished into what was then known as ‘the longest village in England’. What its name was I do not remember. There we went through the old regime of drills, with only one thing different to break the monotony: we had to learn to drive. My instructor was admirably laid back. We got into a fifteen hundred weight truck and he drove us away from the camp. Then he stopped and we changed places, after which he ran through, verbally, the procedure for changing gear, and any other commonplace things that all drivers need to know. Having got that off his chest he took off his beret, put it over his face, settled himself comfortably into his seat, and went to sleep. I was then left to carry out what little I remembered of his instructions, and to hope for the best. The first thing I found was that it was not easy to steer the truck straight, so we made our way, slowly and erratically, from the gutter on the left of the road to the gutter on the right, and back again, not once, but over and over until at last I began to get the feel of the vehicle, and be reasonably confident that I could keep it going straight ahead. I remember feeling, very strongly, glad that the roads were almost deserted. What would have happened if there was heavy, or even light traffic, did not bear thinking about.

After a few more lessons (fortunately with another instructor) I was beginning to feel quite confident, and since there was little taught at this camp that I had not covered before, I realised that I could not stay there much longer. Most cadets found that their main stumbling block was parade ground drill, which had to be carried out to Brigade of Guards standard, or nearly so. Fortunately for me I had acquired a reasonably high standard in this at my previous OCTU. The drill instructors (drill pigs) there obviously did not know about any previous records we may have had, and they set out to break me, and the few other cadets who also had learned a higher standard of drill than they had expected, by drilling us harder and harder. For me this was not too bad, but I was sorry for other cadets who did not have the necessary training.

My next posting was to Trentham Park, near Stoke on Trent. We had a pretty hard time there, since most of the ‘drill pigs’ were not easy men to like. What I did enjoy was our field training episodes in Wales, even though this could, and often did, involve nights without sleep, with almost constant movement across country, living as best one could.

What the inhabitants of some of the small towns must have thought when they were subject to night assaults and other disturbances I cannot imagine. But we did not bother about that. We were there to live rough and to deal with any problems that arose. And that we did.

1946.

However, all good things come to an end, and so it was with this. We were to pass out at last, and be commissioned as second lieutenants in the infantry. The Passing Out Parade was our big show, with a military band, and any members of our families who could, or who wished to, attend. Some actually came, but not many. But once this was over we were free to don our service dress uniforms, complete with the single pip which showed our new rank, and then to go on leave for a week before reporting to our new regiments.

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