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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Radio Suffolk and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Turner fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was fifteen in 1939 when the war broke out. I was evacuated to Norfolk but returned to London when the Blitz started. I lived in East London (Hackney) on the top floor of a block of flats. In the grounds there were brick built cycle/bike sheds and the government added six inch slabs of concrete on to the roofs and made them into an air raid shelter. My mother used it only once and then declared she would not go in there every night! So for the rest of the war she and her family remained in her fourth floor flat. My mother was a very brave lady who lived until she was ninety-six. Her husband had died in 1936 and left her to bring up five children alone.

I was called up at the end of 1942 when I was eighteen. I had been in the services for four months when I was sent to North Africa as a Marine. I came back to the UK in February 1944, volunteered for the Commandos and joined the 48 Commando Unit in Holland. I was too late for D-Day and was sent to the Schelde Estuary (the Rhine flows into it) and the idea was that we were to clear a passage for ships in order to enable them to be able to get up to Antwerp in order to finish the war.

We raided islands on the Dutch cost and our job was to find out the strength of the Germans and to pick up prisoners. Our biggest problem was mines. The Germans used Italian mines — Sehu mines which were contained in a wooden box (so that mine detectors were unable to pick them up). They could take a leg off above the ankle — in one raid involving thirty people, seven legs were blown off. We only had one medic with morphine and a limited amount of dressings so they had to use tourniquets. On night raids, the first man off the landing craft had the minesweeper — on each side was another marine with a roll of white tape about three inches wide — they swept a pathway, unrolling the tape so that those of us following behind knew where to go safely. However, after one hundred yards the tape had run out and we were on our own!

After about twenty raids, we then moved on to the banks of the River Maas which was on the front line. It was the winter of 1944 and it was a very bad winter. On one raid we had a man in the forward observation position inform us that a German patrol of six men were moving into a clearing. I fired a five second burst of my gun (about sixty bullets). Four men fell immediately and the last two made a run for it; I fired again and brought number five down but number six managed to escape into the trees. We later moved on and took position in a bombed house on the river bank. Next morning we were surprised to see a line of pristine white washing blowing in the breeze along the bank side. On investigation, we found that a group of a dozen or so nuns were living in a bomb damaged building — the tide of war had washed over them from both directions but they had refused to move. These nuns offered to do our washing — we had been on the front for three months without having taken a bath; they were probably surprised that British servicemen had been issued brown underwear!

Our next move was along the bank to a position where the 47 Commandos had suffered heavy losses assisting some Canadians to drive the Germans across the river. The conditions were very bad here and several men had been buried in shallow graves with only a rifle stuck in the ground to mark their passing. From our position on the river bank we could see bodies lying on a grassy slope down to the river. They had been there for three months and were wearing white snow suits which had failed to save their lives. For us to move down the river bank in daylight would have meant certain death but in the morning, when there was a mist descending down onto the river, we men, in groups of four, crept down the river bank. Each group had a blanket; we rolled the bodies on to the blankets and brought them back to our position. In all we recovered thirteen bodies. I looked at one man, a young Canadian; exposure had blackened his features and his shrinking flesh had drawn back his lips in a bizarre smile. Just then a jeep arrived carrying our cook with bully-beef sandwiches and a steaming dixie of tea. We sat next to our Canadian friends and had our lunch — how quickly death becomes familiar! The Canadians had two identity tags around their necks. One we buried with the body to await the New Graves' Commission. The other was to be sent to the Canadian services so that the men’s relatives would, at least, know the fate of their loved ones.

Half a century later the grey haired survivors of the 48 Commandos once again trod the beaches of Walcheren, in the Schlede Estuary, and travelled east to Bergen op Zoom, a military cemetery in Holland. There we paid tribute to our fallen comrades. From the original Unit of between four to five hundred men, more than one hundred died. Statistics tell us that for every man killed in battle between three or four are wounded. This is a heavy price to pay. Was their sacrifice worth while? History will be the judge. When evil men menace the world everything must be done to preserve the peace. Should these efforts fail, there is no alternative. Put down the pen and pick up the sword.

Went the day well?
We died and never knew
But went it well or ill
Freedom we died for you.

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