大象传媒

During October 1945 our Area Commander devised another way of keeping the troops happy whilst awaiting demob. It became known as the 鈥淩uhr Tour.鈥�

I was to take charge of a 3-ton Army lorry and driver. Wooden seats were fixed in the back and about 20 of our lads climbed aboard. Then we set off for the industrial area of the Rhine valley.

I had some brief instruction and a map and fortunately had plenty of previous experience in map reading. We set off about 8 in the morning and by lunch time were in the Ruhr area. It was probably the worst devastation we had seen since our landing on the Normandy coastline during 1944.

The whole area of Dortmund, Wuppertal, Dusseldorf, Essen and Cologne, the heart of German industry and its 鈥淜rupps鈥� factories had been reduced to rubble, flattened by the massive British and American bombing raids in the final months of the war.

We were all aware of the bombing and destruction that had occurred in our own cities of London, Birmingham, Coventry so I can鈥檛 honestly say that we felt a great deal of sympathy, just thought it was fair retaliation on the part of the Allies.
I had several more of these day trips to the Ruhr before ending the final weeks of my Army life as an instructor in our regimental training school near Straelen, which we dubbed 鈥淭he 6th Form鈥�.

Sometime in 1946 when I was demobilised I read a magazine article which described what had happened in the Ruhr area soon after the war ending. Many German women and older men had set to work with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows to clear the rubble and level the sites ready for rebuilding when the younger men returned home.

In the summer of 1963 I was on a continental camping holiday by car with my family, and we made a detour for me to revisit the area. It was difficult to believe that it had once been completely flattened, but there were some landmarks similar to the symbolic ruins of Coventry Cathedral in England to remind us of the countless tragedies and horrors of the war.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Action desk on behalf of Harry Reeves and has been added to the site with his permission. Harry Reeves fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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