大象传媒

continued from 19a

The two officers were still discussing the local situation and arguing about local support when I went across to them and reported the setting-up of the O.P. Captain McAllister saw his chance. "There you are," he told the infantry captain, in the tone of one who has just won a decisive argument. "You say it's too dangerous to send your men out there, yet my signaller has been out there and set up our O.P. on his own. Now do we get local support?"
We got it. While Captain McAllister, Nobby and I went to the hut, leaving Alf to look after the carrier, a section of infantry, 'including men with P.I.A.T. mortars, spread out to take up their positions somewhere in front of us.
We carefully removed some of the thatch so that we could see through the roof instead of showing ourselves at the window. The tanks were still out of sight somewhere in the "dead ground" at the end of the field, but their position seemed obvious to us. We called up the guns and ordered five rounds of smoke. The guns fired; the shells screamed over us and burst above the target area, the smoke canisters splaying from them and streaming towards the ground like smoking comets. The smoke rose lazily above the top of the near slope as the canisters hit the ground, and spread slowly outwards as it enveloped the target area. As each succeeding round was fired into the "dead ground" the smoke thickened and spread wider and formed a dark grey fringe across the brow of the slope. The light breeze took some time to disperse the smoke but when it did so three Tiger tanks could be seen lumbering up the slope opposite, going away from us. The smoke screen had been completely effective. The tanks were retreating. We had only just given the guns the order to stand easy when the vicious barking of gunfire immediately behind us startled us out of our wits. Unknown to us, a troop of self-propelled 25-pounders had entered the field and were helping the tanks on their way with a salvo of armour-piercing shells.

Two days later, and now almost unopposed except by demolitions and obstacles, the Dorsets entered Herzlake and Loningen. One brigade, with the 4th Somersets and the 4th and 5th Wiltshires, now left the main axis to move along a secondary road to the north and converge again on the important junction town of Kloppenburg. The capture of this town would mean the final cutting of enemy communications between Holland and Bremen.
The Hampshires launched the attack in the early afternoon of the 13th April, and advancing along their respective routes the Companies reached the demolished river bridge in the centre of the town and a second bridge in the northern suburbs before the enemy retaliated. A stiff fight developed with a force of tough young Nazis, amongst them the elements of the Gross Deutschland Brigade Hitler's so-called bodyguard. Although faced at a distance of only thirty to forty yards by two self-propelled guns in the main street, and fired on from the houses, the Hampshires and the tanks of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry fought on into the darkness. Clearing the suburb house by house they gradually drove the enemy out, killing or capturing over a hundred. As they pulled out, the Germans were attacked by the D.C.L.I. in a left-flanking move to the north of the town and over one hundred surrendered.
The capture of the important communications centre of Kloppenburg was for the main elements of the Division the culmination of eighteen days and over 150 miles of continuous and tiring fighting and pursuit east of the Rhine; but this phase was not completed until the next day, when the Worcesters faced the first counter-attack reported on this sector since the breakout from the Rees Bridgehead. With the crossroads at Ahlorn, ten miles east of Kloppenburg, as their objective, the Worcesters, with formidable armoured support, advanced along a road frequently broken by craters and barred by roadblocks. These obstacles caused considerable delay and the troops were already tired as they reached a river crossing in the evening. The bridge over the river had been blown up, but two platoons got across and engaged the enemy on the far bank. In the meantime an alternative crossing was found and the whole battalion got over the river to cover the bridging operations of the Royal Engineers.
That was when the Germans retaliated. They first stopped the bridging operations by heavy and accurate shellfire; then switched their fire to the area in which the Worcesters had consolidated.
Their counter-attack followed immediately, about one hundred infantry charging from the woods and overrunning two forward platoon positions. The Worcesters rallied so well that the counter-attack was halted abruptly and then smashed with the help of strong fire from a second Company on the flank; and after an hour's fierce fighting the Germans pulled back, leaving many dead and prisoners behind.
That was the last counter-attack the Division had to face.

After the frustrations and the irritations of the delays on the road from Kloppenburg to Bremen we in Roger Dog eventually entered the village of Riede, about five miles from Bremen, and made ourselves as comfortable as possible in a big square house called the Genossenschaftshaus. It was there that we heard on our radio that the British Government had given the German garrison in Bremen an ultimatum to surrender within twenty-four hours, or be bombed into submission. The ultimatum was rejected, and promptly at 11.00 hours next day a mixed force of Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings flew in very low and dropped their bombs. We were observing from the steeple of the local church just across the road from the Genossenschaftshaus and watched them fly in. Quite by chance I had with me an old camera I had liberated somewhere on my travels and managed to take a photograph of the cloud of smoke that arose above the city when the first bombs landed. I still have that photograph.

With our infantry controlling the autobahn, German troops could not leave the city by that route nor reinforcements enter it, and when we received the order to attack the city we covered the five miles from Riede without any trouble and entered the city at a big junction of several roads near what we learned later was Burger Park, the "Hyde Park Corner" of Bremen.
The 4th Somersets led the assault on the Park, their task being to clear the residential area bordering the southeast corner and then move into the Park itself. In the area were the Nazi Party Headquarters, the Volkssturm Headquarters, and the residences of a number of leading personalities. There was no desperate fight in the defence of these headquarters but the street fighting was often tough and difficult. German marines in particular fought cleverly and stubbornly amongst the bomb-scarred buildings. "Hyde Park Corner" was the scene of the toughest opposition, and the Somersets had to face intense small arms and Panzerfaust fire before they got into the area of the Park.
As we hesitated at the junction near Burger Park Captain McAllister pointed to a large house with a big bay window at the corner of one of the roads leading from the junction and told Alf to pull up in front of it, quickly, and me to reel out my remote control cable and get into the house. We lost no time in doing so.
In contrast to the noise outside, the interior of the house was strangely quiet, like the buzz of conversation being suddenly hushed when an intervening door is closed. There was no sound of the house being occupied. I had just finished fitting the handset/headset on to the cable in the large square entrance hall, and was about to join the others in a search of the house, when a woman entered through the open front door. She wore the wrap-around overall apron popular at the time and looked a typical German hausfrau. She approached us quietly, on her toes, and silently shushing us with a finger to her lips as if enjoining us to be quiet, which was rather pointless in view of the noise outside.
I happened to be standing nearest to her when she entered, and as she approached me she held out a scrap of paper and thrust it into my hand. Then putting her finger to her lips again she said, in almost a whisper, "Sh-sh-sh. Herr Mueller. Nummer Elf. S.S. Sh-sh-sh." and out she went.
I looked at the scrap of paper. It had evidently been torn from a school exercise book, and on it was written:
MUELLER
NR 11 S.S.

"What the hell have we got now, Burdon?" Captain McAllister asked, stopping in his tracks, as he was about to start his search of the house.
"An informer, by the look of it, sir," I replied, and I handed him the scrap of paper.
He read it; then grinned. "O.K., Burdon, so Herr Bloody Mueller at number eleven is in the S.S., is he? What are you going to do about it?鈥�
I had already made up my mind about that. The war was obviously nearing its end, I was still fit and active and in one piece and intended to remain so. I had no intention of risking getting shot up for the sake of one lousy S.S. wallah.
"Bugger Herr Mueller," I replied. "Let him stay in the S.S. He might be bigger than me." Discretion was ever the better part of valour!
Captain McAllister's grin widened, and he nodded. "I quite agree."
Having tested the remote control and found it working satisfactorily I joined the others in the search of the house. The first room, nearest to us, was a small kitchen off the hall. It contained a floor- to-ceiling cabinet in one corner and the ubiquitous flat-topped iron stove, which stood behind the door with its back to the hall. A few embers glowed a dull red in the grate. A pram stood near the stove, and a baby was fast asleep in the pram.
This was interesting. Where there was a baby there obviously had to be someone to look after it. We searched further. At the other side of the hall, almost directly opposite the kitchen, was another door. We pushed it open and entered, and saw it was the room with the big bay window. The room was in semi-darkness because the curtains were still drawn, but we could easily see a bed with the figure of someone lying in it.
Captain McAllister gently pulled the bedclothes down a bit and a pretty blonde head bobbed up.
"Uh-uh-ooo, Tommy," the young lady whispered in a frightened voice, and promptly pulled the bedclothes back over her head. The bedclothes quivered as she trembled with fear. Captain McAllister uncovered her head again, gently, so as not to cause her undue alarm. "I don't know whether you understand English or not, but if you do, don't worry. We're not going to hurt you. We'll go out of the room now and let you get dressed," he told her.
We left the room and returned to the kitchen. Surprisingly, the baby was still fast asleep despite the noise of the fighting outside. The blonde joined us soon afterwards neatly dressed in a white blouse and navy blue slacks.
Alf pointed to the baby and then to the partly open storm window and asked her: "The baby, will it be all right with the window open?" A slight draught was coming from the window.
The blonde smiled faintly but did not answer. Alf tried again. "Is it too cold for the baby with the window open?" Again, the blonde smiled uncomprehendingly and did not answer. Alf got exasperated, and leaning against the cabinet he pushed his steel helmet to the back of his head, looked at each of us in turn, and asked, with all the tolerance of foreigners for which the British soldier was noted, "Why the bloody hell can鈥檛 these stupid, square-headed b*s speak plain b****y English?"
The young lady's eyes lit up immediately and she bestowed a charming smile upon us. "Oh, I speak English," she replied. Touch茅, Alf!
She told us her husband was a fighter pilot and that the Russians had shot him down and he was now a prisoner-of-war in Upper Silesia. A little while later, with the young lady going about her domestic chores happily now that she knew we meant her no harm, three men in civilian clothes entered the hall, doffing their hats and bowing and scraping in a most obsequious manner.
"We are very pleased to see you, sirs," one of them said, fawningly. "These Nazis, they are bloody bastards."
Captain McAllister glared at them in angry disbelief. "Bloody marvellous, isn't it? We've been fighting on German soil for the last six months and we haven't found a single German who's a Nazi. Not one. Where have they all gone? South America?"
The three men shuffled uncomfortably and Captain McAllister told them sharply to bugger off if they had no useful information to give us. Germany was calling up every available man, from young teenagers to pensioners, in an effort to delay the end of the war as long as possible, but these three men were no more than thirty years old at the most and looked too fit and healthy to have escaped the call-up. We strongly suspected them of being servicemen who had realized that defeat was inevitable and were taking the easy way out by deserting, probably with a view to "getting well in" when the Military Government took over the running of the city's affairs.

continied in 19c

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