大象传媒

Whilst in Holland, somewhere near Eindhoven, being in Air Formation Signals, two of us had to drive out to an outlying field to see what was wrong with the telephone there and/or the teleprinter link.

When we set off in our jeep it was early evening and getting somewhere near the front line we were getting anxious, when suddenly in front of us a military Policeman, complete with Red Cap, appeared from nowhere and flagged us down. He told us we couldn鈥檛 go further along the road as there were Germans down there, so we had to turn back.

In trying to retrace our route and realising what a narrow escape we鈥檇 had, we lost our way, and by this time darkness was coming on. We decided there was nothing else to do but seek shelter for the night in some building. We then strangely found we were on the edge of a deserted aerodrome, although at that time we did not realise it was deserted. It was eerie to find no one about. We came up to a brick-built hut, thinking this would do for the night, but on going in mindful of booby-traps, we found the whole hut was full up to a height of three feet, of un-coiled 35mm film!

We tried the next shed and found that one papered from wall to ceiling (including the ceiling) with American dollar notes! So the Americans had been here, leaving the place deserted. By this time it was fairly dark. We found some iron bed frames, with no legs, in another shed and tried to rest or sleep on these. All was well until I saw a rat come in. I was up in a flash.

So we found pieces of wood to rest the iron frames on at one end, and to get the other ends up off the floor we used the two spare jerricans, full of petrol, from the jeep. It was all rather rickety, but we must have dozed.

When it was day-light we set off, remembering to have the sun behind us. It was too early for people to be about, but after a while we did find someone who couldn鈥檛 speak a word of English, but with signs he put us in the direction of Eindhoven.

Finally we arrived back at base, where everyone thought we had been captured or shot. We were then reprimanded for not having rung up to say what had happened.

There were no mobile phones in those days!

Basil Higgins
Crossways
Dalwood
Axminster
July 2005

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