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Adventures in Cairo

I was only 20 when I went to war. I was posted to Gizer in Egypt, near the pyramids. I was over the hill from the Mena House Oberoi Hotel, considered to be Egypt's most luxurious and historic hotel. One day, I went to open a wooden hut in the grounds with some of the other lads. It was about 7 or 8 in the morning and we found a Locust, about two inches long and covered in golden, purple and brown colours. We also found a great big spider and decided to feed the Locust.

As we were watching the Locust consume the spider, we realised that there were two people watching us. We looked up half expecting to see a hotel employee, but instead we saw Churchill and Stalin! They had been walking in the grounds of the hotel and had stopped when they found us up to the antics that young lads get up to! The police and security could not for the life of them work out how we had snuck in and removed us from the premises straight away.

Finding Belsen and the horror in Hamburg

On the morning of April 15th 1945 I entered a forest in Germany at about 4.20 am with the other troops. We had to dive under a vehicle as planes dropped bombs all around us. Suddenly, out of the forest came the Medical Officer. He explained that he had just found the first Concentration Camp to be found during the war, Belsen…

We were only 400 — 500 yards way, and we continued until we reached the railway tracks. I can never remove what I was from my mind. I immediately saw the pits where bones and glasses and shoes were piled high. You could feel the utter horror in the air. I next went into the town and we ordered people to be out by midday. I got the impression that most of the guards who remained there were Polish.

I went to Hamburg sometime later and spoke to many people. I remember speaking to some German fellas, who suggested that Belsen was ‘propagandas and that I was lying. I know what I saw, and I wish it had been Propaganda, but it was not, it was very real I was asked to give an interview about my experiences when reaching Belsen, but I never did. It felt wrong.

I also remember the unbelievable destruction I witnessed in Hamburg. The entire city was ruined, it took my breath away. The most haunting thing was seeing three or four dozen children living among the rubble. They were all orphaned and between three and fifteen. None of them were begging. They had lost all hope and just sat there, hands cupped staring numbly. This was the worst thing that I saw, it was the most harrowing expression of what war can do to humanity.

In my view the public suffer far more then the soldiers. The ordinary people suffer and they have no safety net or weapons to protect them. At the beginning if 1942, three years previous to finding Belsen I was on a ship which took the Italian P.O.Ws to India. It was horrendous. When we went to get them we had to witness the tears of 200 grown men, crying because they had no idea about where they were being taken, and in a way nor did we. They had to lay their own train tracks and contemplate the fact that they may never return to their homeland.

These horrific sufferings of the ordinary folk are what stick in my mind. Not the shelling, the shelling can be rationalised by some military command. The suffering of the ordinary is soul destroying and an expression that no war can be justified.

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