大象传媒

Three
Wartime Anecdotes.
1. In1941 my friend Basil and I joined the Home Guard I Saltford {Somerset} where we lived at that time. My father was the Platoon Sergeant .One Sunday morning was to be the priming and throwing of Mills bombs. This was to be done at a small quarry at Chewton Keynsham near Keynsham. No one noticed that Basil was becoming extremely nervous, we primed our bombs and fitted the base plugs. We practised by throwing stones the size of cricket balls throwing them the army way over arm with the leading arm aiming;
The throwing pit was a sandbag surrounded shallow pit on the quarry floor and over a shallow drop.
Basil went first, but instead of clenching the bombs in firmly in his throwing hand he held it loosely .the lever pushed the bomb out of his hand and it fell on the floor behind us. We all looked at this bomb on the ground within the pit for a split second. Then Father rushed at us like a swooping hawk and we all fell outside and the bomb exploded harmlessly inside the pit. I could hear shrapnel hitting the sandbags wall above my head but on the other side of the wall. Basil was very upset. Father said "I don鈥檛 think we need to tell anyone about this." I never got to throw my bomb until years later when I was in the army.
2. In Sept. 1944 we were hot footing it up the road with a Bailey bridge for Arnhem, should it be required.
30 Corps axis was Eindhoven-Veghel Udem 鈥擥rave-Nijmegen- Arnhem. In Veghel we were stopped as the road had been cut off by a German attack ahead of us. After half an hour no one was following us as the road had been cut behind us as well. We were just half a dozen of the Company vehicles of the convoy. Apart from intermittent mortaring during the day, all the villagers who had greeted us as we arrived, waving orange flags had disappeared. During the evening I was given a Bren gun and lay for several hours in the gutter hugging the kerb for cover. At about 9.30 pm I heard a group jogging towards me and I cocked the Bren gun. You could smell them, a very German smell! Then a loud American voice shouted ok you b----s lets go. We had been relieved by the American 81st Airborne Division ibid (Band of Brothers). An hour later the rest of the company caught up and we moved on into Nijmegen. Unfortunately, in the dark our truck ran into a burnt out tank, projecting into the road, the truck broke a spring and we had to proceed gingerly at a slow pace and did not arrive in Nijmegen until mid morning.
3. On a night in October 1944.with a tremendous explosion, German frogmen blew up a support of the railway bridge over the river in Nijmegen .In order to prevent a similar action against the Nijmegen road bridge. We were tasked to build a floating boom to protect the piers. The boom was to be constructed of Armfeld track suspended below larch poles lashed to drums. We were working on this, below the north end of the road bridge. Most of the company were involved in this work spaced out in a large circle. In mid morning some one tapped me on the shoulder and said pack it in we鈥檝e been told to take cover. When I looked up, about 30 men were being helped away by colleagues, having been injured by shrapnel from a shell burst, the shell having landed in the middle of the circle. I heard and saw nothing of the explosion, the blast had sprayed its debris in one direction, and I heard and felt nothing. The casualties were 36 injured and one officer killed. We were taken off this task and it was given to the Royal Navy. Their main problem was the anchorage, which drifted in the in the four knot flooding river.
4. My VE day. Since I had a smattering of A level French and German I was chosen as part of a guard on a displaced slave workers camp. Lists came in from the International Red Cross and others, asking if named individuals were in our camp, mainly the women and children would stick to the same hut, but the men were always on the move. During the night the slave workers raided the farms etc, for food and drink.In the morning we had to tidy up the camp and huts after drunken fights including in one instance reburying someone who had been killed and buried in the night. The inmates said he had been a slave camp guard working for the Germans and deserved it! It was decided that it was unsafe for us to set up in the same camp, so we took a motor cruiser up the river Weser that we anchored in mid stream, opposite camp and we slept, keeping our equipment on board. During the night the slave workers raided farms etc for food and drink. In the morning we had to tidy up the camp and huts, after drunken fights.
5. My name is John Horlick ex sapper Royal Engineers 582 ( Kent ) Army field Coy.12th GHQ Troops. I was born on September 19th 1924. I enlisted at Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow on 21st October 1943.

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