大象传媒

How do you get from central Europe back to England just after the end of the war? The Army had a way. Leave convoys were organised to run a shuttle service form Villach to Calais. Don records the journey and some interesting details of places seen on the way home for the first time in three years.

Sunday 26th August
Beautiful day. Still not officially informed that I am going on L.I.A.P. This afternoon went with John to Winklem fishing. It was absolutely perfect and I soon got a fair sized fish. By the end of the period I had 4 of keeping size although many small ones were only too willing to be caught. John got about the same number.

Monday 27th August
Again a beautiful day. Got all the Brigadier鈥檚 history ready for dispatch with the exception of a few. Fishing to Winklem again tonight. Got three. L.I.A.P postponed until 29th.

Wednesday 29th August
Up at 07.00 this morning to FFI at the Central MI room. A hell of a lot of chaps there and we had to wait until gone 09.00. Capt. Rooney did the inspection and was very thorough. One or two chaps failed to pass. I don鈥檛 know what was the matter with them but they were ousted. Back by 10.30 to resume frantic packing, stowing surplus kit, changing so by 12.30 I was ready and dressed. Took Jimmie into the mess. George Brown thoughtfully brought his pipes down and we had rather a riotous lunch concluding with 鈥淲ill ye no come back again鈥�. I was quite touched. After saying goodbye all round collected my kit and said good-bye to Helmut. Both he and Willi are full of forebodings as to their future but I have taken the chance to see the BM and asked him personally to give them good recommendations. This he promised to do. I also had a word with Camps about Jimmie鈥檚 position. He promised to publish it tomorrow. About 14.00 we moved off with Denner to El Alamein. This is a very large barracks with quite a lot of new huts put up. Arrangements seemed quite well done. Officers, Warrant Officers and Sergeants separately from the others and one drew passes, tickets etc and billet slips. I was billeted in a big barrack called Qattara. In the same room were Arty Shaw, Bill Goldie George Garrat, Danny Hauley, Chubb Goodman and Byrne of 2LIR are also on the party as well as Alf Lowndes, Brindley Rooney. It was hellish hot in battledress - almost the hottest day I remember in Austria. We drew our free issue and NAAFI and got a cup of tea at 16.30. A wash and shave in the evening then made my upstairs bed. Then to the open-air picture show 鈥淛amie鈥� with Edward G Robinson. Goldie had a stack of cake he had brought with him that we enjoyed when we retired. Our kitbags had already gone on the truck at 18.30 so we went to bed. Unfortunately it was damned hot, the pillow was non-existent and there was a choral party going on until midnight in a nearby room. However, I had many thoughts.

Thursday 30th August
Up at 06.00, quick wash and pack up, then breakfast 鈥� very unappetising. Haversack lunch and on truck at 07.30. It was a converted three tonner with straw pad seats and backs. Not bad considering. We moved off sharply and went along the valley to Spittal. A pleasant run. Much building of hutted camps for the displaced personnel. Spittal is a very insignificant place but in a good position. The next place was Lienz. A quiet valley road with forests and very green fields all the way. Some bomb damage here. After Lienz we ran still along the valley and crossed the Italian border. I noticed a peculiar method of storage of unthreshed corn. A frame some 30 feet high with a small roof and row of horizontal poles on each side into which the corn is pushed well off the ground. The Italian army now mans the frontier posts and barracks. The don鈥檛 look much different. You sense the difference in Italy somehow. Headed for the Brenner pass through some very craggy high mountains but the architecture doesn鈥檛 change much, the same cuckoo clock houses and I saw at least six replicas of the church at Treffen. The last Italian town you go through, La Fortezza, is as the name implies, a fortress. A mighty structure dominates the valley and river, which is wide here. Some bomb damage here. One enemy ammunition train I saw in the siding at least a mile long blown to atoms. On the other side of the road a Hungarian hospital train wrecked and heaped up. Huge coaches almost standing on end. We now ran through the Brenner Pass. An experience. Not the tortuous tracks I had expected, but a good wide tarmacadamed road 25 feet wide with hardly any gradient. The hills, fields and picturesque highly painted villages with many figures either of saints or pub signs made them absolute treasures. The brilliance of the scenery cannot be described, everything sparkled clean and full of colour. We started the final run down to Innsbruck overlooking the town. It looked incredible with its church towers onion capped and particularly with green copper towers near the wide river Inn. It has been rather badly knocked about. The French First Army is in control here. It was curious to see Goums dressed in American uniforms with their traditional turbans leading mules loaded with logs. Road signs also appear in French an additional language difficulty. The camp here is rum by 56 Division called Enfidaville situated in a large castle overlooking the Inn. We have camp beds five to a room. A good dinner and drink of beer in the mess and so to bed. The town looks beautiful in the darkness in a pattern of light spots reaching up to the stars as invisible houses on the mountains opposite light up. At the western end of the valley is a terrific bluff, an absolute precipice dropping down to the river. Met Les Finch in the mess and toasted him on his wedding. He speaks highly of the arrangements. He鈥檚 on his way back.

Friday 31st August.
A good night鈥檚 sleep and up soon after 06.00 for a quick wash. Packed up and had a very poor breakfast. Waited about until 07.45 when we embussed. Soon after starting it rained and turned very cold. The road out of Innsbruck was flanked by a most imposing avenue of poplars for many miles. It was very mountainous with the crests covered in clouds. We wound our way up through densely wooded hills in quite heavy rain. There were several biggish lakes and most marvellous dark green. They must be very deep. We eventually got down to the plain on the other side to little cuckoo clock houses and what looked like excellent trout streams. We passed through Oberammergau famous for its Passion plays, and noticed that the houses were more painted than usual. We are now in 10th American Division area. The ground flattened out here and we stopped at Schongon where there is an aerodrome. We stopped here and had a cup of poor (chlorine) tea and our wads. On again through flattish and quite dull country. We later went by a large aerodrome south of Augsburg, very badly dusted up by the RAF. Augsburg has been badly hit and many houses have been ruined. Soon after here we got onto the autobahn. Here the road is 4 track about 50 metres wide separated by a grass plot. They are dead straight and beautiful surface of concrete. In several places the road had been used by the Luftwaffe and several destroyed planes were about. We turned off the autobahn just before Ulm to a very large German barracks partly used by the Yanks. Things seem quite well organised by 6th Armoured Division. Good beer and dinner. Truckle beds.

Saturday 1st September
Up early 06.00 breakfasted by 07.00 and pushed off before 08.00. It鈥檚 quite a matey bus. Four Welshmen from 132 Fied Regiment and 152 Field Regiment, 2 REME Staff sergeants, Danny Hauley, Bill Goldue and another sergeant I don鈥檛 know from Faughs, the staff sergeant of 11 Brigade and a CSN of 152 Field Regiment. It was frightfully cold on the early stages of the run. We soon hit the autobahn through the ruins of Ulm. Very badly hit in the central railway station area and the Danube bridge area. The autobahn is frequently blocked by blown bridges and we had to make wide diversions to get round. The countryside is very agricultural and heavily wooded with pine trees. The small villages are little scarred by fighting 鈥� just the odd shell hole here and there. We kept on the autobahn and thus bypassed Stuttgart. A few miles further on we passed quite close to Pfotzheim which is absolutely plastered and hardly a house habitable. We bypassed Karlsruhe and sped on to Mannheim on the pine tree lined autobahn. Mannheim was very badly damaged. The whole centre of the town has been destroyed 鈥� not a whole building. We could see the ruins of Ludwigshafen on our left and stopped for lunch at Wilfredingin. After Ludwigshafen we crossed the Rhine by an American wooden bridge. The Rhine is about 500 yards wide and runs under a ridge of hills on the far side. It looked really magnificent. There were quite a lot of biggish barges 鈥� some sunk. The French are in command here. We ran through a small group of highly damaged villages before we got to Mainz. We ran alongside the Rhine most of the way. Mainz is very badly damaged apparently the whole thing happened in 20 minutes and 13000 were killed. Centuripe camp (78 Division) is in a large barracks very clean. We were quickly shown our room and truckle beds. Dinner is served in a magnificent mess made by the REs. A shower bath and have preceded dinner. Excellent dinner. (George Brown, ex LIR now i/c the cooking) After dinner contacted Dick Robinson who took me into their mess for some champagne! We then went to a small but select party that he had arranged. Bed at midnight!

Sunday 2nd September
Up 05.45 and breakfasted by 06.45. Left Centuripe by 07.30 through Mainz 鈥� a veritable graveyard. A long drive along the Rhine to Bingen. Could see Weisbaden across the river. A lot of vine cultivation and castles here. To Trier the land is rolling, agricultural and wooded. Very little sign of fighting. The west side Trier is absolutely untouched but on the east side of the Saar it is badly shelled. Soon after leaving Trier we entered Luxembourg. The frontier is not very well marked but there is evidence of fighting. We passed on quickly to the city of Luxembourg itself, a magnificently clean and unspoilt place with conical towers on the buildings and draped with many tricolours .Luxembourg was apparently declared an open city. In a few more miles we entered Lorraine by the iron towns of Longwy and Longayon passing the large iron ore smelting plants. The country opened out into agricultural fields with small and rather squalid little farms and villages. We passed Carignan and arrived at Sedan at 17.50. For the last 20 miles we ran through quite a lot of the fortified Maginot area. Large gun casemates could be easily seen and many concrete pillboxes along the roadside. At Sedan we were met by a band in a truck, which played us into the camp, apparently a French cavalry barracks. We were very hungry and dirty, the dirt from the road stinging the face and eyes. We had to do some documentation here and then at 18.30 to dinner. A really first class dinner. I should imagine by its excellence cooked by a Frenchman. A shave and a wash completed our restoration. So we have one more day to face.

Monday 3rd September
Up at 06.00. Had just got up when the orderlies came in with buckets of char. Excellent breakfast, Porridge, sausage and egg and marmalade. Started off soon after 07.30 through Sedan. The weather was fine though chilly. The party was in high spirits as we realised that this was the last leg of our 1000-mile journey. We sang for along time through Charleville M茅zi猫res, an iron town and rather squalid as indeed all the smaller French towns appear to be. The flat rolling fields, unhedged and freshly ploughed contrasted strangely to the sordid villages. Hirson was less dirty and apparently there is some solemn holiday in the country as the flags were still out. We now started to enter the zone of the last war and little villages like Le Cateau, Bapaume etc showed on sign boards. There is practically no contemporary damage other than the odd shell hole through a house or a wrecked German chassis. We passed several last war cemeteries, still nicely kept. We arrived at Cambrai just after 12.00. and stopped for lunch. Cambrai looked quite prosperous but the inhabitants seemed very poorly off, especially the children who hung around receiving odd bits of food from the chaps. We pushed off about 12.45 towards Arras passing an enormous German cemetery about a quarter of a mile square and the graves very closely packed. We passed a large British cemetery named Cabaret Rouge. A little further on we saw the way to the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge and we could see clearly the large columns of the memorial and also the road as we moved along. The country is really uninteresting and flat. Arras itself is a large place with few places showing any damage. It鈥檚 a much larger place than I imagined. From Arras we went on to St Omer, another largish and undamaged place. Then we started to contact BLA units, much to the annoyance of our chaps 鈥� why, I don鈥檛 know. Just outside Calais we had to stop for a level crossing but the truck behind us was not alert and crashed into the back of our truck. Goldie jumped out straight away and lugged the bonnet off as it was smoking. The drivers pumped extinguishers into it and finished it off. It bust the radiator and the oil filter so we had to tow it all through Calais very ingloriously whilst the rest of the convoy passed us. The crowd was shepherded quickly by CMP to Nissen hits and straight away to a good dinner. Our kit was being laid out in the square and quickly picked up. All OK. A wash and shave etc put us in good form for the documentation process. We lined up by units and were called up by name to a room where an officer gave us the griff re various points. We then received a pass and a railway ticket book and proceeded into a large room with tables and clerks where we had our aB64 stamped, signed a recall form, received a boat ticket changed our money, received 14 days pay and ration clothing coupons. Then to NAAFI to get 200 cigarettes and some chocolate. It was a most creditable piece of organisation. At 21.00 we sat down to an excellent supper with first class trifle. So we parade tomorrow morning for the last trip. It is hard to realise that three years have passed. I saw a chap named Howlett when I was having supper and he is the first chap I have seen since leaving England that I knew before.

Tuesday 4th September
A very restless night and up soon after 06.00. After a good breakfast I endeavoured to get some stockings for Susan at the gift Shop and after a long wait succeeded. We paraded at 08.50 and formed into parties of 18 for a truck load and as each truck filled we went off to the docks through the back streets of Calais 鈥� very dirty and dingy. We debussed some way from the embarkation point. The dock area was very battered and many people were engaged on clearing it up and rebuilding houses close by. The first ship filled up whilst there were sill several thousand of us still waiting. A small poor quality CMP sergeant tried to exert his authority over a rather mutinous crowd of blokes peeing. He failed and went away. We waited about three quarters of an hour. We then hailed the arrival of another ship and waited seemingly hours for the wretched thing to disembark its load. Officers went on board first and we were well back as we thought to make sure that we got on the top decks. Actually when our turn came we went miserably down into the bowels of the ship with all the kit. It was most annoying. However, we soon pulled out on the last stretch to Blighty accompanied by many lengthy warning on the blower by the ships O/C. Once the ship got moving we were allowed to send telegrams to our people advising them of our arrival. Everyone on board must have sent one, I think, to judge by the queues. We all felt frightfully tired and we dozed off all the way over. Some time after 11.00 we were off St Margaret鈥檚 bay, Dover, and about half an hour later we arrived at Folkestone and after an annoying wait were kitted up. We had more instructions bawled at us and officers with more baggage than they knew what to do with were provided with porters from the shore.

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