大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jane Pearson, a volunteer from Age Concern, Dorchester on behalf of John Cook Montague (deceased), and has been added to the site with the permission of his daughter, Cilla Claire Maine. Mrs Maine fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The following has been taken from a tape-recorded account (later transcribed) given by John Montague to an American historian in 1991.

鈥淚 was born on 20 June 1913 in Manchester. My father was Chief Leader Writer for the Manchester Guardian and when I was 10 he retired and my family (mother, father and seven of us 鈥� 5 boys and 2 girls) moved down into the Cotswolds.

In 1939 I volunteered first for the Air Force, then the Navy and then the Army, but I was blocked off from all three because I was in a reserved occupation working for Tyresoles, a tyre retreading business, as Transport Manager in Stockport. Actually I think all the Services were getting more volunteers than they could cope with. At that time they were not used to handling millions of men.

Then, in February 1940, the Russians invaded Finland and I joined a volunteer outfit that was going out to Finland. It was run by a Committee who had Government approval. We went to Norway by steamer in a convoy, then by train to Finland and finally were in barracks at Lapua, fairly far up the Gulf of Bothnia. A company of Hungarians, from their regular army, was there too. Russia was still allied to Germany and continued so until the Germans attacked Russia. We were attached to the Finnish Third Army Corps, and moved south and east to Savonlinna. We didn鈥檛 ski, but learned to build a snow hut with blocks of snow. We only amounted to a Company, nearly all British with a few Australians, Canadians and Americans. Although we did a fair amount of training, we had not been in action when the Finns were forced to make peace. By that time the Germans had seized Norway so that there was no clear route home.

At first different individuals tried different ways of getting out 鈥� those that walked into Norway were never heard of again. A few got out on ships from Petsamo in the extreme north. The Finns treated us very well. We were allowed to get work outside if we could, or to stay in barracks. Some friends and I worked in the forest on the south coast and made a little money. It was purely manual felling with box-saw and axe, and one bought one鈥檚 saw-blade and axe-head on credit from the foreman, and then made one鈥檚 own saw-frame and axe-handle from fresh-cut birchwood. Pay was low and one had to work all the hours one could to earn enough to eat and gradually re-pay the cost of axe-head and saw-blade. It was a good long trek through the forest to get food at a village and carry it back in a rucksack. Our basic food was potatoes fried in lard with onions, and coffee, some milk, bread and butter. One worked on one鈥檚 own in the forest 鈥� extraordinarily silent except for the creaking of trees in the wind, a few birds and, very rarely, an elk drinking at the lake. But we could not have had better friends than our foreman and loggers.

Then I got taken on at the Ford plant in Helsinki, assembling trucks. After a time a friend called Scott, and I, with help from the Finnish Army, went north by rail to Rovaniemi, at the north end of the Gulf of Bothnia. During a meal in the caf茅 there we saw scores of German soldiers in uniform, but of course they took us for Finns. We had learned to speak Swedish which is widely spoken in southern Finland and also far easier to learn than Finnish.

We paid cash to some drivers for a lift up north on their truck. The main hazard was the police checks at Ivalo 鈥� a small town that was a big market for reindeer. We saw many of them and many Lapps too. This was in the Arctic and fiercely cold. We slept in a hut outside the town and there paid 1000 marks to a Finnish driver to let us go with him. There were two problems 鈥� not being found by the police at various checkpoints, and the cold. The driver gave us a Primus stove to keep warm, and juggled the heavy loads of paper so that we were in a nest in the middle of the truck. The stove did fine, but we were scared by the load of paper as it gradually slipped and we had to try and shoulder the rolls to keep them apart. Before each police control we had to put the Primus out because of its noise, and once the fuel spurted out of the airscrew and caught fire. Scott鈥檚 eyebrows were singed but, with thick woollen gloves on, we were able to kill the flames with our hands. Then the truck was through the last checkpoint and we all had coffee and rejoiced.

When we reached Petsamo we picked a ship ready to sail, went on board after dark, and down into the boiler room and hid below the grid in the bilges. Before they sailed next day they searched the ship, and put us off. They were very nice about it, but the Germans had told them that if any stowaways were found the ship would be sunk. We tried two other ships. In the first we hid in the hold and were soon frozen and had to come out. In the other we hid in the bilges again, but we were found before they sailed. After that we had neither food nor money left 鈥� we had paid everyone along the way. With the Finnish Army鈥檚 help we managed to go back to Helsinki the way we had come.

Soon after that the Germans made difficulties about us, and the Finns did the best thing for us that they could. They arranged for the whole unit to be transferred to Sweden. We went into barracks in central Sweden, and were very well treated by the Swedes. With half a dozen others I went working in the forest as a logger again. After several months I got a sudden message and was put on a small aircraft flying from Stockholm to Scotland. By great good luck, Art Baker 鈥� an American engineer under whom I had worked at Tyresoles and who had become Chief of the Spare Parts Division of the Ministry of Aircraft Production - had mentioned me as a useful man to Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister. This was in November 1941. When we got back to Scotland I was put on a train to London, and 鈥渄emobilised鈥� there. I arrived in Cheadle, Cheshire to the great surprise of my wife who was staying with her mother."
(continued in Part II)

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