大象传媒

My grandfather, Percy Day, volunteered for military service, 'for hostilities only, in August 1939. In December he married my grandmother, Melba Appleyard. He joined 214 Battery, 63 Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery and was trained as a wireless operator/signaller but was ranked as a gunner. One element of his job was to man observation posts on the front line and help direct artillery fire whilst the other main element of his job was working on the telephones at HQ. After initial training he was sent to Newcastle to get a ship to Norway. However, that operation was cancelled and he was instead sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

Percy was in a force sent to the Ardennes region of Belgium but it was ordered back before the German attack there. They were later ordered to return to the Ardennes but by then the Germans had broken through. The roads became so choked with refugees that the soldiers had to destroy their trucks and march to the coast. At night they held onto the soldier in front and virtually sleepwalked. It took them three days and three nights to reach Dunkirk. Once there Percy fell asleep on a cobbled street. When he woke everyone around him had left. For three nights he slept under a truck on the beach.

When Percy reached Dunkirk the harbour had been bombed and blocked by sunken ships. Rescue seemed remote but he saw a destroyer at a place just outside Dunkirk called Le Pann. The ship was next to a wooden jetty that had two bombed out sections. The first had a stretcher over it but soldiers had to jump across the second. It was ordered that if anyone fell he would have to be ignored, presumably because of the danger of German aircraft. Percy managed the jump and got on board the ship. He fell asleep and when he woke up he was in Ramsgate.

After returning home Percy was put to work round the east coast helping set up anti-aircraft batteries. However, for much of the time between Dunkirk and 1944 he was training for the return to France. During this time he learnt German and by the end of the war he was fluent.

Percy returned to France at Arromaches, atop a tank, three or four days after D-Day. His artillery unit was assigned to the Irish Guards of XXX Corps, part of the breakout group. He was give a gun and put in a truck and his team was told to drive quickly inland and get as far away as possible from the beach. They were told to scavenge petrol and avoid Germans. Often they encountered Germans going in the opposite direction but both would simply speed off their respective ways.

Five days before Operation Market Garden Percy and three others were sent into Holland in a wireless truck. They went to particular places around the country and transmitted every evening. To do this they had to put up a huge aerial mast. They would transmit from woods in the hope that the Germans would not spot them. When Market Garden started Percy witnessed the parachute drop ar Arnhem from a quarry about three miles from the city. Quite what Percy was doing is unclear but he may have been transmitting messages to confuse the enemy, reporting to HQ what he had seen, or been listening in to German radio frequencies.

My grandfather often used to tell us about an occurence during XXX Corps' invasion of Germany. There had been a German counter-attack and HQ had lost contact with an observation post in a church tower. Percy was told to go and investigate and so he and a driver set off in a truck to the post's position near the frony line. It was a foul, wet and windy night and the area was heavily wooded. A soldier stepped out into the road wearing a cloak to protect him froom the rain. He told them to avoid the main road because the enemy was shelling it and told them to instead use the farmtrack to hte orchard near the church. Percy and the driver thanked him and followed his advice. When they arrived they found chaos. Two panzers had broken through the lines and were shooting up the main street. The church tower had taken a direct hit. The officer in charge exclaimed 'How the bloody hell did you get here?'. They explained that they had gone the back way and Percy thanked the officer for sending Alott to warn them of the two panzers. The officer looked puzzled and so Percy repeated what he had said. The officer then told Percy that he did send Alott down the road to warn them but that he only got twenty yards before being killed. He then pointed to Alott's body.

Percy witnessed first hand the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp Belsen and he was assigned to take Germans around the camp so that they would see the wickedness of the Nazi regime. He said that most Germans thought that it was an Allied propaganda stunt.

Percy was not de-mobbed until 1946. His commanding officer told him that his knowledge of German made him indespensible to the Occupation force's telephone exchange. Whilst the officer was on leave Percy asked the stand-in officer if he could be de-mobbed and that is how he finally left the Army. After returning home to Huddersfield he went back to work as a builder and plasterer. Both Melba and Percy sadly died a few years ago

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