大象传媒

This is an extract from my book 'A Walk in the Sun' only available from Dudley libraries.

The journey from Normandy to the Baltic took me just ten months it was the most exciting,the most frightening, the most traumatic ten months of my life. The physical scars healed a long time ago, but the mental scars will be with me for ever. I was one of the lucky ones.

The following account is just one of those 290 days. The 17th October 1944.

By the 16th October 1944 29 Brigade had crossed the Deurne Canal and were making steady progress towards Meerselo. In the meantime the American operation to establish a bridgehead over the canal on the Deurne-Venray road had met with stiff resistance, and although a bridge was constructed during the night the division was not in a position to continue the advance. A decision was therefore taken to shift 159 Brigade right round into the Deurne area and move them through the American bridgehead the next morning. So on the morning of the 17th October we found ourselves sitting on our tanks in the middle of Deurne waiting for orders to start our advance up the road to Venray. It was while we were there that I saw my very first jet aircraft, a German Me.262 fighter. The roar from its engines made us jump, we'd never heard anything like it before, everyone looked up as it streaked across the sky. By 0900 hours we began our advance, I was on the back of the second troop of tanks and with the canal only three miles away it didn't take us long to reach the first American troops dug in on either side of the road. We moved cautiously up the road towards the bridge, it was a typical Dutch road raised above the surrounding fields with an avenue of trees on either side. The silence was broken by the first mortar bombs falling about two hundred yards further up the road. We dismounted and continued our advance on foot. Some of the tanks moved down onto the fields but immediately got bogged down. We then came under a ferocious mortar bomb attack, we took cover in the ditch that ran on either side of the road. In a few minutes it was chaos,I pressed myself into the soft earth as hard as I could. All around there were cries from the wounded as the shrapnel from the bombs found their targets. What happened next is hard to explain, a mortar bomb exploded where my feet should have been, and yet I felt no pain. I then realised I couldn't feel anything from the waist downwards, it was completely numb. I was terrified to look over my shoulder and see if my legs were still there. The first person to reach me was Jack Carroll,
"You've got a Blighty there Bob" he said " Are you hit anywhere else?"
I looked back and my feet were lying in the crater from the bomb, I must have had my legs wide apart when the bomb exploded! There was a hole in the front of my left leg just above my ankle and a small piece of shrapnel had gone right through my right foot, also a much larger piece in my right upper arm, I wasn't bleeding anywhere. In the five minutes those bombs had killed nine of my mates and wounded thirty-three others, I was one of the lucky ones.
The first lull in the mortar attack the wounded were picked up and taken to the nearest 'Field Dressing Station' a marquee in a field just behind the lines, there the wounds were dressed. Serious cases were dealt with as soon as possible by a team of army surgeons. When transport was available we were moved farther down the line to an old school that had been converted into a 'Field Hospital', that's where we spent our first night. By now the numbness in my legs had gone. As each hour passed I could feel myself relaxing as the tension slowly melted away, I felt a great sense of relief, for me, my war was over, if only for a few short weeks. Tuesday the 17th October 1944 is a day I shall never forget. The next day we were transferred to a a hospital in Brussells.

With my wounds healed I was back in the line on the 6th December 1944.

14552923
PTE Price R S
1st Battalion
Herefordshire Regiment
11th Armoured Division

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.