A lancashire Lad Goes to War : Chapter 12

The Netherlands and Demobilisation

My memories are very vague now — well it is sixty years ago!

We were driving through a small Dutch village with some shops on the left and houses on the right. The soldiers in the back of the truck in front of us were laughing and joking when a shell landed on their vehicle, killing them instantly. My driver braked violently and asked me what we should do. There were other soldiers all around so I told him to carry on and avoid blocking the road. When he tried going forward nothing happened. He thought that he had stripped the gearbox; I suggested moving into four-wheel drive (which had a different gearbox), at which point we found that an ammunition box had moved forward when he had braked and knocked the drive selection lever into neutral. We therefore continued using two-wheel drive.

When we arrived in Nijmegen, the railway bridge had been blown up by the Germans so we waited in a side street for the road bridge to be checked for explosives. A shell must have landed at a shallow angle to the road, because it continued travelling under the cobbles like a mouse running under a rug, but it did not explode. Eventually we were allowed to proceed, so we crossed the bridge along with the 30th Corps Armour and established a base in Valberg.

Some four or five days after the fall of Arnhem we had deployed our Advance Posts, but one of
them was in a rather awkward position. The soldiers there wondered whether we were too frightened to visit them and take them rations, so I set off to prove them wrong. I turned a corner and encountered a long straight road. The Royal Engineers had set up some smoke canisters at the other end of the road, because further on was an 88-mm gun which fired down the road at regular intervals. We timed the interval between three shots and, immediately after the third shell went past, we raced down the road with me holding the stopwatch. We had about five seconds to spare after the third shell had passed us and so we had to swing off the road to the right to the Advance Post. We did this for a week and then my Sergeant Sinclair found out what I was doing and told me not to be so reckless. He reasoned that if the Germans had changed the time of the shelling then we would have been hit and the troop would be one Instrument Operator down.

Later on, a well-dressed Dutchman presented himself at our base and offered to show us the locations of some German artillery if we would let him into our headquarters. It was forbidden to allow civilians into the headquarters, and when we asked the villagers about him they said he was unknown to them — perhaps he was a spy. Two days after turning him away we heard the distinctive double bang of a gun firing in our direction. From 8 0’clock in the morning the Germans were firing at us and by noon we were under constant fire and lost five trucks and two motor cycles. The cook had just finished cooking a stew and was lifting it from the stove when a piece of shrapnel knocked the pan out of his hands. Bully beef again! At 3 o'clock it was judged too damaging for the civilian population so we pulled out, moving to Elst where we set up Headquarters in a blacksmith's forge.

We were very close to Arnham and we could hear the gunfire and small arms fire still going on. The soldiers at Arnham were slowly retreating.

According to my diary I arrived in Calais on 10th May 1945 on my way home for leave. I arrived in Dover at 13.45 and left for Manchester after having my dinner. The train was early and later that night I was back home. I spent the next eleven days catching up on news with my brothers, drinking with my pals and visiting relatives. Most important of all I renewed my friendship with Dorothy and when I left to return to Europe we starting writing seriously to each other. The war was over and seeing as it was unlikely for me to get killed at this stage, I felt more confident about having a loving relationship with someone.

We sailed from Dover on 22nd May, 1945 about 10.00 hours and arrived in Calais in time for lunch and a trip to the pictures. On 26 May I was on guard at Stalag XB Concentration Camp near the village of Sandbostel. It had been liberated the month before but we saw quite a number of people in black and white stripped clothing coming through the gates. It was a terrible sight. Their bodies did not seem much wider than my hand; their faces were sunk in and their eyes were bulging. Some inmates had gone from the compound and taken some black bread to eat. Sadly their stomachs could not take it, so the food needed to keep them alive actually killed them, and there they lay on the side of the road. There were all sorts of diseases including typhoid and I had to guard the hospital area. We were instructed to burn down some of the buildings which we did the next day.

I was given no home leave until 3rd October, 1945 when I travelled from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, arriving back at home in Manchester at 16.40 hours. Dorothy and I had been exchanging letter for some time now and she came straight over to see me that evening. The next day I asked her to marry me and bought her a ring on 6 October. Early on the 16th I left Ashton-under-Lyne and was leaving the shores of England again from Harwich at 19.00 hours. I noted in my diary that it was ‘six years ago today I joined the army’. By the 18th I was in Hannover, and on 12th December, 1945 I signed my demob papers. That was the day I heard that the flowers which I had sent via Interflora (run through the NAAFI) had arrived on 6th December. When the time came to leave, it was realised that we had more equipment than we should have (not as much had been destroyed during the conflict as had been notified) and we were told to dig a large hole and bury the surplus. As well as burying our theodolites and electrical equipment, we also buried eight bottles of rum whose contents should have gone to the soldiers during the winter but none of us liked rum. Wonder if it is all still there?

I was demobilised on 25th January, 1946. I was young, fit and ready to get on with life.

Kenneth Ashton Brooke
23 October 2005

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