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The following work, entitled ‘The Journey’, is a personal account of the Rhine crossing in 1945, by Corporal Colin Goodall.

Spring arrived early in 1945 and the Combined Forces were mobilised to cross the Rhine. On the twenty-fourth of March, a bright, clear morning in Southeast England, the 6th Air Landing Brigade of the Royal Ulster Rifles set forth on their journey.

Our ‘Horsa’ glider was towed by an R.A.F. bomber and piloted by men of the Glider Pilot Regiment. We had a cargo of eight men, one jeep and trailer and my 350cc motorcycle (for I was a despatch rider). The flight was uneventful except for a few bumps when we were in the slipstream of the plane that towed us. This made us feel rather sick as though the bottom of your stomach had fallen out.

As we flew closer to the Rhine, we could see that the ‘Flack’ was coming up thick and fast with airbursts all around us. I looked out and saw one aircraft go down very close to us. Pieces of shrapnel came through the bottom of our glider and most of us received wounds of various degrees. The pilots had trouble finding our landing site owing to the smoke and dust caused by the artillery bombardments.

Suddenly, we went into a steep dive. With a mighty bump and seemingly endless skid, we crashed through a fence, which tore off our undercarriage and brought us to a full stop. The impact threw both pilots from the cockpit and tore our harnesses from the side-wall of the glider. We rolled over and over, not knowing what was happening. For the next few moments, I felt sure I was the only survivor of the crash-landing. My Sten gun had snapped at the butt, saving me from a broken arm.

I managed to crawl into the rut left by the undercarriage and was then joined by L/Cpl Gilliland M.M.. He had flown in the tail end of the glider. This had snapped off as we landed, allowing him to get free. During this time we were under heavy machine gun fire that came from the nearby railway embankment. We lay low until the offending gun had been silenced and then saw that the rest of our lads had taken cover in the hole left by the wing of our glider. The two pilots were lying about twenty yards away, severely injured, where they had been catapulted from the cockpit.

When things had quietened down, we started to get the vehicles off-loaded. My motorcycle was bent like a banana. Luckily the anchor points had held fast, stopping the jeep and trailer coming forward into us which could have been a disaster.

We managed to get the two pilots and more seriously wounded men onto the jeep and stretchers and made off into open ground to the farmhouse, which was our rendezvous point. The wounded were then taken off to the cowsheds along with a number of other Airborne and German casualties. Our Medical Officer, Capt. Rees, was very relieved to see us with Field-aid Medical Supplies and his driver Rifleman Johnson.

I spent the rest of the day in charge of around fifty Prisoners-Of-War who were later put into a P.O.W. cage. By late evening, the wounds I had received during the flight and the back injury I sustained crash-landing were starting to take their toll and I must have passed out. Coming round, I found myself in a cellar alongside other casualties. We were waiting to be evacuated, across the Rhine to a field ambulance station where we were cleaned up and our wounds dressed.

We were then transported by ambulance train to Bruges Hospital, Belgium where I spent six weeks recovering before completing my journey back to England for a spell of sick leave. By this time, the war in Europe was over.

Unfortunately, my duties as Battalion Headquarters Dispatch Rider ended upon landing on German soil. Luckily though, I am still here to tell the tale for which I thank God and my brave comrades. Some of them were not so lucky, but they will never be forgotten.

Colin J. Goodall

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