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No, I didn't play the National Anthem on the roof of Buckingham Palace during the Queen's Golden Jubilee, but I did serve in the Cheshire Regiment in North Africa and Italy. We were in the Western Desert with the 8th Army in the El Alamein positions, but I was wounded by shrapnel shortly before the main battle and missed it! I returned to the 6th Battalion after hospital. We were first sent to Iraq and then, by a huge road journey, to Tunisia to take part in the final defeat of the Axis forces in Africa.

Next, we landed on the Salerno beaches and slowly edged our way up Italy until we were stopped in the Cassino area by resolute German resistance and natural obstacles. To by-pass these, the amphibious landing at Anzio was carried out. We were sent to reinforce what now become a besieged beach-head. Some weeks in this unpleasant place and we ourselves were withdrawn to Egypt to recuperate, refit and receive fresh drafts of troops. En route we witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius.

Refreshed, we returned to Italy in July 1944. This time we rejoined 8th Army on the Adriatic side of the country. We were again facing German resistance with its usual skill, courage and flexibility. This time they named their positions the Gothic Line and it was here that my active service abruptly ended.

As a Sergeant I was temporarily acting as commander of a machine-gun platoon. Seeking new forward positions for our guns in darkness, lit by burning haystacks, barns and so on, I encountered an enemy outpost and was shot at close range by light automatic fire. I saw the weapon flickering before I could get my own carbine lined up.

I now recount some memories of life as a wounded British POW.

The Haywain (with apologies to Constable admirers)

As a stretcher case with a shattered hip, I was transported away from the front on a horse-drawn cart, with another horse tethered behind the cart. My head rested on hay at the back. The horse there fancied the hay and chomped at it busily. Each mouthful flicked my right ear and I was unable to move. I have since composed the official demise of Sgt B. May to grieving parents: 'Eaten on Active Service'. Fortunately, the horse preferred hay to my head.

A room with a view

Still within the battle area, I was put inside a woodsman's hut in a forest clearing. With me were two British 'walking wounded' soldiers. An elderly (by our standards) German medical orderly was in charge.

Two Spitfires methodically began raking the forest and clearing it with machine-gun fire. Each time they roared overhead, the German orderly rushed outside and frantically waved a little Red Cross flag. Ridiculous, but pathetically brave. When the Spitfires at last left, a fearsome barrage from the Royal Artillery's 25-pounder batteries took their place. We infantrymen had always admired the British gunners’ rate and accuracy of fire. Now we were the recipients. Shrapnel whined and sang through the roof and sides of our flimsy hut. I still couldn't move on my stretcher and was in a sort of dreamy haze. The German orderly, prone beside me, kept gasping 'Tommy! Tommy!' as if I could still the uproar and danger.

And angels shall minister unto thee (G F Handel)

I was still lying rigidly on my stretcher, but I was now in a large church, where all the pews had been removed and the entire area filled with wounded men. Immaculate nurses moved along the serried lines of stretchers with water for parched throats and gentle words for suffering men. The German soldier on my right drank the water desperately and murmured his thanks. The nurse turned to me. An angelic face and a voice charged with compassion came close. She spoke, of course, in German and I couldn't understand her. The man on my right said 'Tommy, Tommy!' The beautiful face above me tightened in anger, and the proffered water, for which I craved, was withdrawn. My neighbour railed at her departing figure and tried to tell me he was sorry for her actions.

The Italian surgeon and his daughter

In hospital in Mantua I at last received real treatment for my wounds. Professor Dellarosa performed my operation - since praised by British surgeons examining the results. His daughter was in charge of the ward where I was placed after the operation. She was superb. Regardless of who the patient was, she gave dedicated care.

When a British soldier was fighting for his life on a bed close to mine, a screen round him was lit by a powerful light and the doctors and nurses worked desperately to save him. A German sentry outside reported that light was showing through the blackout. An enraged Feldwebel (sergeant) burst into our ward, shouting. Sister Dellarosa advanced on this huge formidable man, her eyes flashing, and brought him to an abrupt halt in her outraged German. The Feldwebel, close to my bed, stopped his shouting and, flushed with humiliation, slunk away. This was courageous of her. She returned to the screen, to resume the struggle for life.

At lights out each night, a tiny Italian nun intoned a blessing in Latin over us from the doorway. Some patients persuaded her, one evening, to add some highly improper English words. All in innocence she finished her blessing and included them. The howl of laughter from the ward made her stagger back in amazement. Sister Bellarosa glided in, spoke gently but firmly to the little nun, and reproved us all with a glimmer of a smile on her proud face.

Germany: 'Vair are you vounded?'

In late October some of us were loaded into converted cattle-trucks, still on stretchers, and taken by rail out of Italy, through the Brenner Pass and Austria into Bavaria. At a town called Friesing, some 30 miles south of Munich, we were carried into a large building converted into a hospital. Nurses in grey costumes took charge of us (see first question above). A huge American doctor, resembling Orson Welles in voice and personality, spoke to me. 'Much crap?', he genially asked, pointing to my hip, swathed in bandages. I held my nose and he guffawed. 'We'll take care of you, son!' I began to feel better.

I now spent the next six months to the end of the war in a big ward with British and American patients and a few others. One of them was a slim Moroccan boy from Marrakech who was in the bunk below me. By the time he was repatriated, shortly before me, we could converse fairly easily in a strange mixture of English, Italian, German, Arabic and French - the last because he was with a Free French unit when captured in Italy.

Many of the British were from our 1st Airborne Division, wounded and captured after its heroic battle at Arnhem ('A Bridge Too Far'). Friendships developed between us and with the Americans. A notable case was that of a cheery, one-legged Cockney Airborne man and a tall, blinded American soldier. The one provided the navigation round the ward and the other the helping hand. The former had a ready string of tales, sprinkled with Cockney slang, while the other had a permanent smile of pure delight at his friend's stories. Much of the slang mystified me but the American found it all enchanting, whether he understood it or not.

The morning doctors' round consisted of a portly, officious German, the American (Orson Welles) and a British Airborne doctor, Captain James, his own arm in a sling. I owe so much to him, for on every round he would urge me to keep pushing my right leg down in bed. I did this constantly and, as he foretold, it enabled me to walk for the rest of my life.

My first walks, after months in bed, were very uncertain. My American friend Danny (from Utah) helped me along the passage to the toilets, until the great day when I walked 'solo', leaning heavily on a stick.

Bavarian winters are cold and snow fell heavily. As we slowly recovered from our wounds we began to feel hunger. German food was very poor - potatoes (often rotten) most days. Red Cross parcels were less frequent as Allied air power over Germany grew stronger, but we hoarded them as best we could.

Spring 1945: Things are looking up!

Every evening a German officer, with a gloomy escort, came into the ward to read us 'The News'. He reeled off so-called victories over the Allies, who were in fact pressing into Germany from both sides. He concluded with a click of his heels, a Nazi salute and a high-pitched 'Heil Hitler!' The invariable response from the rows of double-tiered bunks was always a low, mumbled repeat of his final words, but with another word substituted for 'Heil'. He would march out, glowering. No doubt, earlier in the war, he would have responded very differently. The final time he came to read the news it was obvious that he knew it was nearly over. No 'victories' were proclaimed, but a bitter, impassioned denunciation of the Allied air attacks on Dresden. 'A beautiful city of no military importance and thronged with refugees from the murderous Soviet soldiers.' He left without even his trademark 'Heil Hitler'.

In mid April, US Fortresses heavily bombed our town of Friesing. Glass from the tall windows flew into the ward and covered the beds. Those of us who could now ‘sort of' walk hurriedly got those who couldn't under the bunks, and cowered beside them as more bombs fell. Some of us ventured down to the next ward where we found Russian POWs unable to move from their beds. We got them out and under. Returning to our own ward, feeling pleased with ourselves, we learned that 'walking' Russians had been in and ransacked all we had, including precious items from our very last Red Cross parcels. When our rage subsided we had to accept that Russia did not belong to the Geneva Convention - so no parcels.

One week later, Patton's US Third Army entered the town and we were liberated. A week after that, I was on a US Dakota heading for England (a beautiful word, which I still cherish). On the flight, the American co-pilot opened his door and called out 'The war is over! Germany has surrendered!' No one spoke and he impatiently closed his door. Over London, bonfires were burning in every street. We landed near Swindon and next day moved out of its railway station to a chorus of 'cock-a-doodle-doo' from every locomotive to our white Red Cross carriages. In the City of Derby hospital we heard Churchill proclaim VE Day.

Brian May (Cheshire Regiment 1935/1945)

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