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Meanwhile, the 4th and 5th Wiltshires had begun the task of clearing Burger Park itself. Before the attack was launched it became known that the chiefs of the Bremen forces had withdrawn into this area to make their so-called "last stand." Their "fortresses" were massive concrete and brick surface air raid shelters, of which there were several in the Park. The 4th Wiltshires, supported by tanks, worked their way through the Park roads against only spasmodic small arms fire. This clearing operation continued until after midnight, and it was while returning down the road to make contact with the 4th Somersets that Major Pope, a Company Commander of the 4th. Wiltshires, spotted the air raid shelter in which Major General Siber, the Bremen Garrison Commander, had his headquarters. He returned to the shelter with a Company Commander of the Somersets and the two majors entered the shelter to find General Siber and his staff and accept their surrender. Six hours later Major Pope accepted the surrender of Lieut. General Fritz Becker, Commander of the Bremen Defences.
The general presented his luxurious radio to the major, the radio having been his only source of news since the R.A.F. had cut his last telephone line two days earlier. Next morning the radio was tuned in to the German news bulletin, and the announcer was heard to state: "Lieutenant General Becker, the heroic defender of Bremen, is still holding out."
A platoon of the Wiltshires had just begun to attack a small barracks area, and were being fired on by a Panzerfaust, when a party of Germans came out of what proved to be a Gun Operations Room for the Bremen A.A. defences, a reinforced building standing in the middle of the barracks. A number of staff officers and other personnel were disarmed and taken prisoner. There was no serious resistance round the headquarters of either of the two generals, situated within eight hundred yards of one another in the middle of the Park.

On the 27th April, 214 Brigade, the D.C.L.I., the Worcesters, and the 7th Somersets moved through the city unopposed and occupied the northeast corner beh1nd the docks area.
While these formations had entered the centre of the city and the docks area, other units of the 43rd. Division had moved speedily on the right flank and stolen most of the thunder by capturing the chiefs of the city's defences in their hideouts in Burger Park, among them being an admiral, the Chief Warden of Bremen and the Permanent President Courts Martial. In one period of only forty-eight hours the 43rd. took over 2,500 prisoners.
After the fall of Bremen the demoralized enemy were given no respite. The Division's role was now to press on right-handed round the northeast side of Bremen and prepare for the assault on the port areas of Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven. The Dorsets and the Hampshires, in 130 Brigade, led the advance, with the D.C.L.I., the Worcesters and the 7th Somersets of 214 Brigade, deployed on the left flank over country that was almost a swamp. 129 Brigade, with its Bremen captures to its credit, followed up in reserve.
Roger Dog was parked by the hedge that bordered a narrow lane that curved through a small village, and Alf and Nobby stayed with it while Captain McAllister and I went to investigate a nearby farm.
We pushed open the gate and walked across the field towards the farmhouse. About twenty yards in front of us the farmer was also walking towards the house, and he glanced round without pausing as the gate slammed shut behind us and then continued on his way as though totally unconcerned by our presence. A much smaller man, in an old grey suit and a cloth cap, stood near a henhouse in the middle of the field and watched us with considerable interest. It was a perfectly natural rural scene, with nothing to arouse one's suspicions, but I was suddenly and inexplicably uneasy. I felt that all was not as innocent as it appeared to be.
I surveyed the scene more closely, wondering what it was that had aroused my suspicions. The farmhouse was just like any other farmhouse, with no unusual features to attract one's attention, the outbuildings were also quite ordinary, the fields contained nothing but a herd of cows, and the little man standing by the henhouse was no more ominous than the farmer plodding along in front of us with his walking-stick. As I watched the farmer walking home for his midday meal I suddenly saw what was wrong.
It was so blatantly obvious we both should have noticed it immediately. The ground had softened with the warmth of the early spring sunshine and yielded under the pressure of our feet, leaving traces of soft earth adhering to our boots, but the farmer's walking stick bore no trace of earth. It was not being used as a walking stick should, but was carried over his shoulder, and the chrome ferrule at the end, pointing towards us, was as bright and as shiny as the rest of it. I nudged Captain McAllister's elbow and voiced my suspicions. "By God: I think you're right," he agreed, after taking a long look at the stick. Then, raising his voice, he shouted: "Hey, you. Kommen Sie hier."
The farmer stopped, hesitated a moment, then turned and sauntered slowly towards us. I kept my rifle aimed at his middle. When he was within reach of us Captain McAllister snatched the walking stick from him, studied the ferrule for a moment, and found that it unscrewed. The stick was hollow and rifled. A quick twist of the ivory handle revealed the breech and the trigger. The farmer's face was inscrutable.

We marched him into the village. Above the level of the hedge we had seen a red cap at the door of one of the houses and knew the Military Police had arrived. We handed the farmer and his walking stick rifle over to them, to loud cheers and applause from a group of displaced persons who were obviously delighted to see the local Gauleiter handed over to authority.
We returned to the farm. The little man was still standing by the henhouse, but he turned and went inside as we drew near to him. We followed him in, bending low to avoid hitting our heads, against the low roof, and found him sitting on a rough contraption of wire netting nailed to a wooden frame supported on six wooden legs 鈥攖hey were logs from a fir tree --driven into the earthen floor. A thin layer of none-too-clean straw covered the netting.
The little man patted the straw diffidently. "Dies ist mein bed," he told us, simply.
We stared in shocked disbelief. "Das ist Ihr bed?" I echoed, and he nodded.
"Wie lang haben Sie hier geschlafen?" I asked. "Vier jahren," he replied.
The poor little chap had been forced to sleep there for four years. With our limited knowledge of German we managed a little more conversation with him, during which he told us he was a Ukrainian and one of several displaced persons in that area, and that he had had nothing to eat that morning.
We escorted him to the farmhouse, where several blubbering women were going about their domestic chores in a half-hearted manner. One was just laying the cloth on the table when we entered. "Essen. Schnell!" I told her, and I motioned the little man to sit at the table.
The woman finished laying the table with a speed bordering on panic, and knife, fork, spoon, pepper and salt were place before the little man, who sat there in a bemused state as though he could not believe it was happening.
Soon a huge pile of sliced potatoes was frying in the pan on the roaring stove. He never took his eyes. off them and when they were fried to a lovely golden brown the woman piled them high on his plate and put the remainder back on the stove to keep warm. The Ukrainian finished the pile on his plate in a remarkably short time, then rose from the table, took the frying pan from the stove, dumped it on the table, and proceeded to eat the rest of the potatoes from the pan: To paraphrase Mr. Churchill's famous words: Never in the field of human endeavour was so much eaten in so little time by one so small! When we left the farm he was sitting contentedly on a bench near the farmhouse door, soaking up the sun and looking childishly happy now that his days of slave labour were over.

When-we got back to the carrier Captain McAllister told Nobby and me to continue into the village while he went to find out what was happening about the farmer. The village was only a small one,
little more than a hamlet, and as we rounded a bend in the road and came to the last few houses a young woman in a black dress whom we had seen in the applauding group when we handed the farmer over to the Redcaps, detached herself from her small group of friends as we approached and came and laid a hand gently on my arm. "Petrov," she said, pointing to one of the houses. "Petrov."
We had no idea who Petrov was, but knowing it to be a fairly common Russian name we assumed he might be some sort of a leader of the displaced persons.
She led the way to the house she had indicated and we followed her into the passage. "Petrov, Tommy ist hier. Tommy ist hier," she called in German, and we waited for Petrov to appear.
When he emerged from the room at the end of the passage and lumbered towards us we didn't believe it. Talk about a gorilla: He was easily the biggest man we had ever seen. Well over six feet tall, he was so broad his shoulders almost brushed the walls as he came along the passage towards us. His big red face, with several days' growth of beard, split into a wide grin and exposed an ugly array of big yellow teeth. Looking up at him was like looking into the mouth of a horse. He stunk of Schnapps.
"Ah, Dommy, Dommy, Kamerad, Kamerad," he boomed, as he extended a huge paw. My poor little sprat of a hand was swallowed by his whale of a paw and he pumped my arm so vigorously I thought he must be trying to wrench it off at the shoulder. Then he turned his attention to Nobby and gave him the same treatment, all the time booming "Ah, Dommy , Dommy. Kamerad, Kamerad. "
We were truly thankful he was on our side. He could have crushed either of us between his finger and thumb!

On the 29th April the 5th. Dorsets, the Brigade Advance Guard, moved on to the villages of Quelkhorn, Wilstedt and Tarmstedt, with the Reconnaissance Regiment covering the advance to a point just short of Buchholz, where the Germans retaliated. On the front generally resistance from the enemy infantry was now almost non-existent, but between Wilstedt and Tarmstedt the Germans hit back strongly with Nebelwerfer and 105 mm fire, a last brief but unpleasant reminder of the early days in Normandy .
What delay there was, and it proved to be considerable, was due to two factors. The first was the difficult boggy country over which the Division was now operating, and the second, and by far the greater factor, was the introduction by the enemy, in these last few days of the war, of a new type of weapon; the magnetic sea mine used in a ground role. When planted under the road surface the mine was triggered off and eventually exploded by the vibrations of passing traffic.
The 5th Dorsets were the first to suffer from the introduction of this new menace, a Kangaroo being completely destroyed and an entire platoon killed on the road between Wilstedt and Tarmstedt. The explosions of these mines created craters 70 - 90 feet across, too large to circumvent. They were a nightmare to all, especially the Royal Engineers, from then onwards. The Hampshires, who captured Breddorf and Hanstedt on 30th April and Karlshofen on 3rd May, encountered ten such craters in half a mile.
The 4th Dorsets, who captured first Glinstedt - held in considerable strength until the artillery caused the enemy to scatter - and Augustendorf, by circumventing a causeway of craters, had to wait for the construction of three bridges before they could get out of Augustendorf again.
A third, and this time welcome, delaying factor had introduced itself at the beginning of May. It was abundantly clear at last that the end of hostilities was very near. The "surrender period" had already opened elsewhere, and an official "go slow" policy was introduced in order to avoid unnecessary loss of life.
The Germans were by now showing little fight and appeared to be quietly withdrawing northwards in front of the Division. This was confirmed when a patrol of the Hampshires crossed the Hamme-Oste Canal and returned with the Burgermeister of Gnarrenburg, who stated that the German troops in his village were leaving and expressed a desire to surrender the place, whereupon a Company of Hampshires went with him to Gnarrenburg and the rest of the battalion crossed the canal the same day, the 4th May. They were followed by the 5th Dorsets, who seized Kunstedt to prevent any possible interference with the Royal Engineers' bridging operations.
The end came that evening. At 20.30 hours the B.B.C. made the first announcement of the surrender to the 21st. Army Group of all enemy forces in northwest Germany.
I was standing with a group of my mates beside Roger Dog listening to the news on the NO.19 set when the announcement was made. The moment the announcement ended I took two strides into the barn which was "D" Troop's Command Post, picked up the tannoy mike and shouted over the tannoy to the guns: "Cease fire, boys. Cease fire. It's all over. Here is the announcement that has just been broadcast by the B.B.C." I then repeated the surrender message. I might well have been the first man to give the "Cease fire" order in Europe, though there are others who have claimed that privilege.
For many of us in the forward areas the victory was proclaimed by the firing of flares and Verey Lights, which spread quickly throughout the area amidst general rejoicing and thankfulness. Our task in Europe was finished.
Early next morning a party of War Correspondents arrived at Battalion Headquarters of the 5th Dorsets and informed them that at the moment of the German surrender they were the most forward troops in the British Second Army. Every other infantry battalion in the Division immediately disputed that statement! But it was generally accepted that the 43rd. Wessex Division, the most forward Division in the British Second Army, had done more than their fair share of the fighting. That morning, the 6th May, the first morning of peace in Europe after six long, tragic years of dreadful war, brought an atmosphere of almost unrealistic calm. The guns were silent. The tensions, the fears, the uncertainties, were gone. An all-pervading feeling of incredible relief enveloped us, a relief that the bloody war that had dragged on from one weary year to the next with no apparent ending in sight, was finally over.

That same morning, one of our trucks was being driven along a road by the side of a field on its way back to headquarters. The nine men inside it were laughing and chatting happily now that Going Home For Good was a clear close-up view instead of just a vague blur on a distant horizon, when it went over a concealed magnetic mine. All nine men were killed instantly.

[Note from Alan Burdon: This is where my fathers writing ends. I know that he was later involved in the liberation of Belsen concentration camp, but has not written about it. I have so many questions since reading this account but Dad is beyond giving me answers to them. After being almost constantly at the sharp end of the action from D Day plus six to the end of the war; with so many near misses and close calls of all those years ago, he finally succumbed to cancer on 30th September 1999, aged 83. May he rest in peace.]

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