大象传媒

For a few hours we were in a 'No man's Land'situation, until eventually the forces of Russian Marshal Koniev which had by-passed Dresden , owing to so many bodies in the streets, passed through the Erzgebirge Mountains and proceeded along the road to our camp.As they did so, they fired a warning shot at our camp, as the result of which two of our men were said to have had their feet blown off and died as a result of having lost so much blood. Very soon the German Swastika flag was replaced by the Russian Hammer and Sickle. This was on what later on became known as VE Day. It was quite a nice day and I can only think that the two men were simply sun-bathing between the trip-wire and the perimeter fence.
When eventually the head of the Russian column reached the gates of our camp, I was obviously very excited and kept falling over my own feet hurrying towards them, tears of joy streaming down my face!
They were very apologetic when told of the fate of the two men killed, but said that they thought we may have been Germans by virtue of the fact that we did not show ourselves around the fence, which apparently we should have done.
All at once they shouted to us to get back into camp, because they had spotted a German machine gun nest in front of them.
It seems that the German camp to which we first went - 1Vb at Muhlberg, had been relieved a fortnight or so earlier, possibly by this same Russian force. Whilst Marshal Zhukov was busily engaged in Berlin until VE Day, Marshal Koniev ventured south and relieved us on the very same day.
We in 1Vc at Maltheuren, near Brux, were the last allied camp to be relieved, then the Russians had to relieve the last capital in Europe - Prague. We could hear spasmodic firing in that direction, pockets of resistance here and there. As the Russians said 'For you the war is over, but for us, we must go on' During the halt outside the gates some of them came into our camp and clasped hands up in the air with some of us, exclaiming 'Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt - Prima!' Some of them opened their fur coats revealing vast numbers of watches appended thereto, which they apparently had looted from cars left along the roadside.
For the rest of the day until well into the night, the column ventured onwards, but what struck us most, was the bravery of the Russian women who proceeded their tanks, brandishing machine guns at the ready! in the back of several trucks a Russian soldier was to be seen playing an accordion and they threw cigarettes to us.
However, they insisted that we were French and we just could not persuade them that we were in fact British.
The German officers and their wives were herded into our camp and one of the officers pleaded with me for some water for his wife. Just guess what was my reply! This was a very proud moment because those officials and wives had to listen to the voices of H.M King George V1 and Winston Churchill each proclaiming victory in Europe on the loudspeakers in camp. What a moment that was!!
Soon there were streams of German soldiers being booted out of Czechoslovakia back over those mountains into Germany. It was a very real pleasure to shout at them to get going, as they rested along the roadside, some with only bare feet.
M King George V1

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