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These edited extracts from the transcript of an audio recording made by Sid Read of his memories of service in the Royal Engineers, are submitted to the People’s War site by a member of Market Harborough Branch, Royal British Legion on behalf of the author and are added to the site with his permission. Mr Read fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

So we reach the end of this moving account of one man’s war experiences. Sid Reed recorded these words in October 2002 as he sat in his beloved summerhouse in his garden at Hallaton, Leicestershire.
Continuing from Sid's Story Part 4 he says

"We moved from this place into an orchard because the Germans had fallen back and I don’t think they were very far away from us, but we didn’t know this. We dug in again and stayed in there for perhaps a month, I’m not sure how long. It started to rain and we were getting wet through and it was very miserable, but we managed to get away from there and moved into a French infantry barracks on the outskirts of Caen after it had fallen.

"But, what I had forgotten to tell you was that whilst we were in these trenches under the wall, we all watched 500 Lancasters come out of the clouds and bomb Caen. I saw Lancasters getting shot out of the sky, I think there were at least five that I saw hit with the Ack-Ack and the 88 millimetre guns that the Germans were firing at them. I saw some of the lads bale out when they were hit and I don’t think there were any of them that would survive it because the Ack-Ack fire was so fierce. When you think about it they were all good lads, they were, they were the best we had. This is what the war did.

"Then we moved up into the infantry barracks. Going down into Caen there was a Naafi which they had developed in a bombed-out hotel where we could go and buy cigarettes, and the Naafi things that we could get. I went down there one day with a bloke named Arthur Spencer, he was a mate of mine and came from Nuneaton. We walked out of the Naafi just in time to see a young woman, she must have been about 18, climbing over a heap of bricks and beckoning us to go to her. She was crying, hysterical, sobbing. And we went to her to see what was the matter, and she got hold of our hands and beckoned us to follow her. When we got over the bricks, we followed her down a pathway and she stopped when she got about a hundred yards up this path and it was all houses down, bricks and everything. She stopped and she looked at this building, it was a heap of bricks and windows and doors all down and everything, and she said in French, "Ma maison, ma maison". I knew a bit of French, and she meant "my home", or what was left of it. I ask you this question today, how do you think we felt.

"We were in the infantry barracks on the outskirts of Caen until after Christmas. They’d boxed the Germans in at Falaise, they’d fallen right back and Paris had fallen so they let us come back home on leave. I had a leave in January, I think, and afterwards we moved up to a place called Dixmude in Belgium and were there for about a fortnight. They then moved us up to Blankenberg in a hotel on the seafront.

"What we had to do then was clear the beach and find out where the mines and things were and move them. I remember them finding something, we didn’t know what it was. Some of our lads found it and it had a hand grenade attached to it and the officer said, "Well we’ll take it up on the prom and we’ll see what it is".

"But the b****y fool didn’t know what he was talking about. They took the hand grenade off it and it was a timing device and they had only just put it down on the prom when the thing went up! It killed the RSM, the Officer, four more men — one of my mates, and I can see him as if it was yesterday. His name was Jacky Peckner. Big Wilkie the RSM he was stone dead, his life’s blood all over the floor. Jacky Peckner had both his legs blown off and his arm hanging and he was still conscious. The Sergeant had a leg blown off. I don’t know.. .some of these things are so vivid. Jacky Peckner was alive but he didn’t live very long after that.

"We buried them in the cemetery in Blankenberg. There are six of them there. I’ve been back once to see them and it’s a funny thing about this, I can remember going into that cemetery where they were buried, and the headstones, and when I got there I felt the presence of those men all around me.

"The Company finished up in Hamburg in Germany, Wilhelmsburg, and we were billeted in Herman Goering’s girls’ school. I shall never forget it, the war was finished and we were free. We felt so joyful because of what had happened and there was a lad who used to play the piano accordion and the piano, and we were all so happy because we’d survived it all. We knew we were going back home.

"We were sectioned into groups for demob. One, two, three, four and five, up to twenty six and beyond. Those that had been in the longest were the first out and I finished up in 33 group but most of the lads that I was with were in 26 group so I can remember having to say goodbye to these lads and officers that I had been through all the misery with, and I can’t explain how we felt - because we’d survived. And I can’t believe to this day that after all the misery we’d been through we went from this place in Wilhelmsburg after I’d lost all my mates that I knew and we sang and smoked together and helped each other. Then they went.

"We were transferred to Wansbeck Kassern, a German infantry barracks and I was on a cadre course then for six weeks to be made up to a full sergeant. During this time I learned unarmed combat amongst other things, but do you know what, those "wonderful dockers in England who had suffered so much" went on strike and because we were a docks company we were brought back to England to work the docks. I remember coming back from Hamburg and finishing up at a place called Purfleet. We were under canvas and were woken at dawn to go to Canary Wharf, West Indian Dock and we worked from dawn until dusk until the dockers decided to return to work.

"When all this had finished, still waiting to be demobbed, we were posted to Weston just outside Derby and again I had to leave all the mates that I knew. I was there for a few weeks and I knew there was a place a bit closer to home called Old Dalby, just outside Melton. I thought that was near to home and it was agreed that I should be posted to Old Dalby in charge of a detachment of men that were waiting for demob. It was at Old Dalby that I was discharged but first I had to go to York to get my demob suit and hand everything in except my battledress. I chose a dark brown, herring bone suit and brown trilby hat. We were also issued with shirt and tie and boots and socks.

"I walked out in my new ‘kit’ and came home and that was the end of my service in the army. It is impossible to explain how I felt coming home after all those years and all that misery - because it surely was.

Sid finishes his fascinating story with these words addressed to his fellow Branch members.
"
There are so many more things that I could talk about, so many things, but doing what I am, talking about it, it brings back so very much to me, things that I’ve always tried to forget. I was brought up to believe in God and to be religious, and I was, to a point. I used to talk to my Padre, I can always remember him, Bernard Headley, when we were in Hamburg before we were demobbed, and he used to say to me, "You know Sid, when you get older you will think about all these things that you’ve been through".

"And it’s quite true, now, if I sit like I’m doing now, talking about it, it brings so much back, so much. And the things that I saw and the people, civilian people, that suffered so very much because of it.
Most of my army mates and most of my friends, even in the REA, the Welland Valley and Ashley British Legion branches that I was a member of, they’re nearly all dead and gone. Only about two left that I know.

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