大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bill Ross of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of Jack Bland, and has been added to the site with hispermission. Mr Bland fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
==================================================

The next day, our captain said we had to set up two water points which were large plastic tanks and were positioned next to a well. A pipe was put down the well and a Petta engine pumped it into the S tanks which held quite a lot of water really. One was to be put behind one farm, close by, and another at a farm just up a track. There were 12 of us, Sappa鈥檚, and I told six of them to stay where they were and the others to come with me. We walked into the yard and just then, I saw a couple of Germans walking across. I thought about getting a rifle and having a shot at them, but thought better of it, so just waited until they had gone.

We set everything up at the farm by the track and had worked out of sight behind the barn, when someone poked their head over the hedge and said, 鈥淐ome on, you鈥檝e got to get out of here, empty the S tank, hide the Pettas engine in the straw in the barn and get back.鈥� So the only way to go was up this slope, about 10 ft. I was about half way up, when I heard a German machine gun, but I didn鈥檛 think anything about it, but when I looked back, there was no-one behind me. I crept back down, keeping my head down and found all the others still hiding in the barn. I said to them, 鈥淲hat are you doing, aren鈥檛 you coming?鈥� They said, 鈥淲e鈥檙e not going anywhere, that machine gun you heard was hitting the ground behind you!鈥� So, we had to go up to the other farm behind the trees and carried on, not on the road, and went about 200 yards, when we found an Infantry digging in.

An officer came over and asked us who we were. I told him we were engineers, setting up water points. The officer told us to get some picks and shovels and start digging in with the rest of them. But I said to him, if we did that, who was going to lay the mines tonight? Just then, our own officer came over and set us off laying mines. We walked down a field and came across an infantry man who had been bombed. We got him up, took his rifle off him, and had to carry him off with us.

The next day, we set off up a mountain. We went up and as soon as we had arrived there, our officer sent us in another direction, down the other side and parallel to a track. We had to dig in there to support a small infantry who were above us. We were squeezing grapes from all the grape-vines around us (this was around September time). About the middle of the night, there was a surprising attack by the Germans. We heard mortars, then the German machine gun fire. We didn鈥檛 hear any of ours return fire and it was really dark by then. All of a sudden, we saw about 20 or 40 infantry men screaming down the mountain side, shouting, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not taking any prisoners, they鈥檙e shooting everybody, get out of here.鈥� So we said, 鈥淲hat are we going to do?鈥� But I said, 鈥淟et鈥檚 hang on and see what happens.鈥� So we did that and about half an hour later, we heard a German officer doing a roll call just on the other side of the road.

What were we going to do? We decided we knew they were there, but they didn鈥檛 know we were there, so decided to stay put. We had nothing to fight them with really, we had thirteen First World War rifles, the ones which had to be re-loaded every time, whereas the Germans had automatic rifles. We were keeping our heads down, when suddenly we heard a voice calling us very loudly, 鈥淐orporal Bland, Corporal Bland.鈥�
I told the men to get down and shut him up, thinking the Germans would definitely have heard that, but by sheer luck, they hadn鈥檛 and though there was no more shouting, we followed the man and made our way back down. It was astonishing that the soldier had found us, on his own and in the middle of the night; that was great really. Anyway, we followed him and must have gone about half a mile until we came to this big house and went inside. There were only candles lit and I couldn鈥檛 see any of our men there, only infantry men, and after about 5 minutes, one of the infantry men said to me, 鈥淐ome on you RE鈥檚, show us what you can do.鈥� So, we went back to the farm and went back towards the direction to where we had been. I said to the officer, 鈥淓xcuse me Sir, but if we keep on going the way we are, we鈥檙e going to walk right into the Germans!鈥� So he said, 鈥淥.K. I鈥檒l tell you what I want you to do. I want you to take your guns up to the top of the hill, and just keep on firing, just fire into the darkness.鈥� I thought I had never heard anything so stupid, just to fire into the pitch black, to let everyone know you鈥檙e there. So, we went up about 200 yards, and all of a sudden, we could hear these shells screaming overhead, above us. We knew they were coming from Solerno Bay, we could see all our battleships light up and firing away.

I decided to take the lads back down to the track and it was just breaking dawn, and as we were approaching the house, about 100 yards or so, there were some thick bushes and all of a sudden we saw this man in a German uniform come out from the bushes with his hands up. One of the men said they were going to go and get him. I stopped him and waved to the German to come forward. I told the men, there may be one German on show, but there may be many more hiding behind the bushes waiting to shoot us.

Anyhow, he came forward and took his gear off him, including his automatic rifle and surrendered to us. We took him back to the big house and handed him over.

We went looking for our Company and found them, so eventually went with them walking further on until we came to a big hill. We were standing at the top looking out over the hills, when suddenly we saw four great big German trucks pulling up at the bottom. We couldn鈥檛 fire at them, we were too far away, but they started off loading, lining up and parading. I told one of our men to get back down the mountain to the infantrymen and tell them and put some shells on them. The lad came back and told us that the artillery had said they had their own observation on them, but weren鈥檛 firing on them! Anyway, we stayed there all night and the Germans just stayed where they were.

The war went on for us and we travelled on further throughout Italy and North Africa and actually ended up in Austria at the end of the war, where I met my wife.

Pr-BR

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.