大象传媒

Submitted on behalf of George Cutterham by A E Crawford:

I joined the army in 1940. I went over to France on the second week in January. After being out there for about two or three months, Dunkirk happened and I was lucky to get out of there by May. We went back to England and unfortunately when we got back we had no ammunition, no weapons and it became a defence of this country. I was posted up to Scotland.

We formed a working company up in Scotland and then moved down to the south of England and about a week before D Day we were loaded onto an American tank loading craft, then we sailed up to Weymouth where we stayed for about ten days. Two days before D Day we went across to Normandy. I what a wonderful sight! Everybody was frightened. Anyone who says they weren't frightened must be telling a few fibs. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

There were thousands and thousands of ships firing. We landed on Sword beach of the eve of D Day and from there we went up to France, then into Germany.

We had a very busy job. We were on duty 24 hours a days. Most of what we did took place at night. We were getting shelled and mortared on the way. Our drivers were sleeping at the wheel! We had two or three hours sleep wherever we could along the road.

At the end of the war, I ended up in Hamburg, Germany. We were sent down to Bruges in Belgium and were going to fly out to America to join the forces there and then they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and so two days before we were due to fly out we were sent off on a ship to Jerusalem instead!

There were bombs going off everywhere. When we got the news ahout VE Day, it was wonderful. When we heard about it, we were on a farm in a little village and in an old fire station we found an old fire engine. We got it going and travelled all around the village, ringing the bell!

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