大象传媒

OPERATION WOODCHOPPER.- Austria

During the winters of 1945/46 and 46/47, the powers that be considered that inasmuch as there was no longer any fighting going on,we obviously did not have enough to do, and on the precept that the 'devil makes work for idle hands', some Brain of Britain put forward a scheme to help out the Viennese population with their heating problems. This idea was accepted by the other Brains in Britain and so many of us were consigned to the woods. The project was appropriately named - " Operation Woodchopper " !

The particular woods allocated to the "B" Squadron, 16/5th Lancers of the 6th Armoured Division was near the town of Leoben in the very heart of Steirmark in Central Austria. As lumber camps go - I suppose it was fairly standard with rudimentary sleeping arrangements and even more rudimentary toilet facilities, but the food was good and as we were sharing our rations with the general population, hunger was not a stranger to us.

The first day in the woods was quite a revelation as we were not to actually chop down the trees as the very old timers of lumberjacks would be doing that task, our main task was to clean off the branches,split the logs, then drag them to the the already made timber chutes which consisted of a large split flat log at the base and two other spilt flat logs as sides of the chutes. This whole chute was invariably ice covered and caused the cut and split logs to descend the mountain side at a fair rate of knots, I've forgotten how long these chutes were but it was a long way down the mountain side and woe betide anyone hanging about at the end of the chute as the log just flew off the end ! These were then piled on a horse drawn flat bed truck and duly finished up in the heating stoves of Vienna after being cut to appropriate sizes.

The cleaning of the logs was not a problem but the splitting of the various sized logs was a matter for a professional and one of the old chaps was constantly showing us how to do until in the finish he inspected the log - marked it where it should be spilt - and we then placed a wedge on his mark and clobbered it with a sledgehammer.
Strangely no accidents occurred although the woods rang with the old favourite " when I nod my head - you hit it ."
The log magically slplit in two and was dragged off in the prescribed manner. I do believe that the task before us was accomplished in the best of humour with even the locals enjoying the fun of trying out our newly aquired German/ English languages, simply because we knew what the problem was - and solved it ! Needless to say it was even more fun as we were on our own with no N.C.O's or Officers milling around telling us what to do - we just did it - it was also too cold to hang about - and had a lot of fun in the process. It was a most enjoyable time with the odd day off to catch up with our ski-ing lessons.

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