大象传媒

The following is a letter, written from Sicily by Major J.A.F. Sewell, MC, to his young cousin Robert. It was submitted by Mrs. Helen English.

11th RHA, B.N.A.F.

July 27th '43

My dear Robert,
We had rather an amusing adventure the other day. The Boche was running away hard back to the line he's holding now and of course he left some of his men behind. Well, I and my signaller, Heslop, and my driver, Hills, drove up to a farm one morning very early to establish an Observation Post. We got going and had been there for about 4 hours when the sun was nearly overhead and I thought that the stable in the front of the farm would be a better and cooler place to observe from than the outside wall. So Heslop and I went round and inside.

At first I saw lying in the manger what I thought was a sack of potatoes, but as my eyes got accustomed to the light I saw that my sack was wearing jack-boots. Neither Heslop nor I had a pistol so I told him to run and get one quickly; he was away what seemed a very long time, while I kept still and watched the Boche, for such was my lack of spuds. I thought he was dead at first, but when Heslop brought the pistol I saig "Gutne Morgen" and the fellow sat up suddenly. He was not asleep, he'd been foxing. He had a little Browning automatic on him and a hand grenade, which he handed over without any fuss. He said he had heard us come up and walk about and wirelessing back to the guns and could have shot all of us. When I asked him why he didn't he hadn't any answer, but swore that he was not afraid. He was very grumpy. He was only 20 and scared of what the horrid English would do to their prisoners.

As he kept quiet we gave him a little food and drink and I chatted to him in German. He had been left behind by his pals when out tanks had machine-gunned their lorries and they had all bailed out and leapt in again and driven off without him when our tanks stopped. So he thought his pals were rotters. He had lain low in this farm and was pretty hungry. We found him quite nice in the end and as we handed him over to the infantry he said, "Thank you for the kind treatment and the best of luck to you."

It all goes to show that the Germans are quite like us until they give up Hitler, whom, I'm afraid, most of them still stupidly admire.

Yours ever,
Jack

(PK)

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