大象传媒

I enlisted in the Scots Guards in 1938 and after training at Caterham joined the battalion at Windsor. I voluntered to go to the Middle East and was on draught leave when I was recalled by telegram and rejoined the battalion at Chelsea Barracks. As I had not done a firing course I was sent to Pirbright where I was busy doing my shoots. We had a ropey old radio in the old black hut and we listened to Prime Minister Chamberlain declare war on Germany. I was busy getting ready to do a guard and so the first guard I did in the war was twenty minutes after war was declared. The general comment in the hut was we would all be dead by Christmas as we were busy digging trench systems as if the first world war was still continuing.
Wihin a month I was back at Chelsea barracks as a trained soldier where I assisted in the training of recruits and spent the London blitz in the barracks. I was in Hyde Park on the Saturday afternoon and watched the first German aircraft fly over to bomb the East End. The sudden explosion of anti-aircraft guns in the Park startled pigeons for miles around. In the distance I could hear the exploding bombs, my first experience of active warfare.
I returned to my battalion in 1941 and went out to North Africa a month after I was married in 1942. The campaign in Tunisia was short and hot and we had plenty of casuaties. My company commander,Lord Lyell, won the V.C. for attacking an 88mm gun position defended by heavy machine guns. Lord Lyell was killed, as was L/Sgt Robertson, a friend of mine and Guardsman Chisholm was wounded.When the fighting came to an end we spent some time in Tunis and then on to Cap Bonn where we trained for further fighting. Italy was a cold and dismal place with rain and sleet but I did manage to get to Pompe and into the crater of Versuvius which was playing up and finally exploded a couple of months later.
The Anzio landings were unopposed but we sat in the Paglioni Woods waiting for something to happen. General Lucas seemed unwilling to take the war to the Germans so they came looking for us. The fighting was fierce and vicious especially around the Factory which we took and lost and took again.We moved up to Smelly Farm (we had a ruder word for it)one night, where we lost some men when a carrier drove over a box of primed grenades which exploded amongst us.The the fighting was bitter and grew even fiercer. We were under continual mortar and 88mm, attack and often the Germans were only a spitting distance away. We became surounded in this position and had to fight our way out, finishing up in a house in Aprilia. I was talking to my corporal in the doorway of the house when he suddenly collapsed; a German sniper had hit him in the head.That night the Germans attacked with tanks and blew the front of the house down. I was wounded and captured and finished up in a German military hospital. From there I went to a POW camp in the north of Italy.
The battalion went into Anzio at full strength (about 800 men) and after six weeks fighting we were down to sixty men. We lost our C.O.,2i/c. all the company commanders and on one mornings fighting lost two officers, twelve sergeants and forty gurdsmen. I lost a lot of friends that day.
After treatment in this German military hospital I was despatched, together with many more POWs in a train the coaches of which were iron sided with only the mimimum of straw on the floor. This straw was full of lice and we were soon scratching away and trying to rid ourselves of the creatures. We had half a small loaf,and a slice of cooked meat which had to last us for five days. We had no water and as the temperature in the van was well below feezing we scraped the frost off the iron side to try to quench our thirst. The Germans gave us a barrel for sanitary purposes and as some of the men had upset stomachs
the position around the barrel became untenable. The train made a stop at Munich station during an air-raid and we kicked the barrel onto the platform. The German sentries exploded,as Germans tend to do, and we quite thought we were going to be shot. Eventually we arrived at a POW camp and I spent the rest of the war in Stalag 1V B (hut 56B,south compound)and Heilag 1V B ZW where I was liberated by the Russians.
The Heilag was a collecting point for repatriating POWs and was a bit of a propaganda place. We sent two repats back, one of American Red Cross and another of British POWs. One of these was an RAF pilot who came from my home town who had had a leg amputated. On the day before his departure he suggested that he would take letters to my family. I said no because I thought that if the Germans found the letters he would be kept behind. He said the Germand would never find the letters. He fastened them under the stump of his leg. He visited my mother and posted a letter to my wife who became most concerned. I was supposed to be in Germany and she was getting a letter from me posted in Yorkshire.
The Russian soldiers were from an Asiatic division and were very friendly. I watched from an upstairs window as the division moved through the village. A Russian woman soldier was doing her job directing the armour at the T junction. She was as round as she was high and had stainlees steel false teeth. As I watched, a drunken Russian soldier approched her, threw his arms round her and lifted her off her feet. On placing her on the ground again she drew her fist back and punched him so hard I heard the crack and I was tweny yards away. The drunk staggered back, hit his heels against the kerb and fell into a garden hedge where he spent the rest of the day.
When things settled down the Russians threw a party and we were invited. I have never drunk so much vodka and of course had been on the wagon since a binge in an Italian wine cellar on Anzio. I think I was drunk for three days.The Russians provided us with rifles and ammunition and two of us went deer hunting in the nearby forest. I shot a young deer and we carried it back to camp, our first fresh meat for two years.
We had a number of sick in our camp so we waited until they were fit enough to walk and one night we set off and marched all night until we arrived at the Free French area around Torgau. They handed us over to the Americans, who in turn handede us over to the Canadians, and finally we finished up with our own army in Brussels. From there we were flown back to England.

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