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The Maas.
The Casualties of mines.
After the battles for these two towns, the war went into a quieter period, quiet in comparison that is, if were possible to ignore the continuous casualties from mines and shell fireA far as we were concerned, it was fighting patrols, night after night out on the miserable flat lands that made up the Maas river line. Apart from the Enemy patrols, our greatest danger was mines, "Schu mines in particular. Schu mines are made of wood and cannot be detected by normal mine sweeping, there was no metal in them at all, just wood.

These mines took a terrible toll, the injuries nearly always the same, it blew a mans foot off and left the remainder of the bone split up through like a stick of rhubarb, every day, men were coming in injured on Schu mines. Holland seemed to be infested with them. We tried everything to counter this threat, there was a lot of talk about mine dogs, some units thought they were wonderful, and that with these dogs, they had found, and lifted, huge numbers of Schu mines without suffering any casualties, my experience was quite different, we found that the poor dog, when hearing the violent explosion of a mortar or shell near by, would disappear, with its tail between its legs never to be seen again! I, for one, did not like putting my life, my feet, or by future ability to father children in the gift of some scruffy canine.

The accepted manner of finding these mines was to get down on ones hands and knees and crawl forward, prodding the ground in front of you with a bayonet, hoping against hope that you would prod and find the mine without prodding the top, setting it off. Even when found, these mines had to be lifted with the very greatest care from the surrounding soil without it blowing up 6 inches from your face, at times damn near impossible. Picture if you can, a squad of Sappers, backsides in the air, slowly crawling along on their hands and knees prodding the ground in front of them, and in the middle of a battle field, can you imagine how the Germans would have laughed at such capers? but, that was the method that was used at that time! One sergeant while prodding, came up with a schu mine stuck on the end of his bayonet. YUK

The Garden Roller Man!
Oh God! What next?
Next, someone came up with the idea of using a long handled garden roller. (Please do not put this down, thinking this is too far fetched) because it is perfectly true! A garden roller was obtained that had a long handle fitted, spikes had been welded on the drum and the operator had a cut down gas mask to protect his eyes, then, a woven rope protector was fitted round the groin, with the addition of long sleeved gauntlets to complete the ensemble. The idea, was to push this contraption along in front of you and as the weight of the roller set off the mine, it would jump up in the air on its swivel and drop down again without causing injury, believe it or not, this did actually work, but how often are you likely to find a bit of ground flat enough to successfully use it? At this point you may think "What a load of rubbish" and that is just what it sounds like! Rubbish. Apart from the fact that I was one of those soldiers who pushed this blasted thing. Imagine if you can, a cold and wet battlefield with all hell let loose, and this lonely soldier bravely pushing this bloody garden roller all by himself. Much to his mates amusement.

No. No, we knew the best way to remove them, get a huge armoured bulldozer, drop the blade and cut a deep furrow in the ground, when the mines exploded they did no damage at all. If, dear reader, you think this is a bit "way out" then let me tell you that to counter the threat of these mines, they also tried running a bren gun carrier up and down over the mines, all that succeeded in doing, was to blow its tracks off. The garden roller device was demonstrated in front of the Deputy Commander in Chief. Air Vice Marshal Tedder. Result: The war diaries of the company state "The garden roller experiment was a washout"!

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