大象传媒

I WAS THERE

How does one start to write about their war story?
At the beginning in 1939, when as a young man with views of the war that would not cover a postage stamp? Or a few years later when the same views could have filled at least 20 books? Or in 1945, when a grey suit was handed out to me, and papers that said I was now free to try and pick up the threads of my life again?

ARNHEM

This is a war story that has been written about before in history books 鈥� but everyman lived out his part of it in his own way. Deeds of heroism were done, but received little publicity, because none returned to tell the tale. Oosterbeek, a sweet little suburb about a couple of miles from the town of Arnhem on the Rhine, holds many stories. This is a small part of mine while I was there.
It must have been about the sixth day, and things were getting a little too hot to speculate on a life insurance policy. The 4th Parachute Brigade under Brigadier J.W.Hackett, were spread around the houses and gardens of this little piece of Holland. It was like being bridegrooms billeted out at a shotgun wedding, with father-in-law in hot pursuit, trying to winkle us out with shotguns, making our prospects a wee bit uncertain. Especially, when the 9th S.S.Panzer division of the German Reich were using the main road as a skittle alley 鈥� the shells from their Panther tanks being the balls and us as the skittles.
A gun pressed into my ribs as if it was boring for oil, and the words 鈥淎us鈥� 鈥淎us鈥� put me in the picture. Funny how at times like this, one picks up the language so quickly.
I was taken to an angle between two houses and lined up with about twenty other men. Stripped of our camouflaged jumping smocks, we must have looked a sorry sight, facing a very trigger happy German soldier. He was nursing a spanda on the back of a kitchen chair, with us on the receiving end. This guy was so nervous, for at that time, I don鈥檛 think that they knew what the number of the opposition was, and the chips flying out of the wall near his head, gave him a clue that one of our lads was in a nearby house. This made him a very worried man and did not add much joy to our comfort. This was the moment when Mrs. Jackson鈥檚 little boy Syd was also getting worried about things. So I
decided to sink or swim, in one mad moment. I just walked away. This was not the action of a brave man, but the call of survival to a very scared man.
Shouts followed me to come back, at least I think that鈥檚 what they meant. But without looking I shouted back, and with many shrugs of my shoulders I walked on, expecting to be shot between my shoulder blades. My thoughts at this time were numb, and to control my desire to run. I think this saved my life, and the fact that Fritz would not let the others out of his gun sight for one moment.
I got across the road and went to the back of the house opposite, and then man oh man I gave my feet a free rein, and did they do their stuff.
I headed towards a house that I knew was being used at the time to operate on the wounded. It was a big house set back from the main road. It must have previously been used as an office and for board meetings, because in the centre of the front room was a long heavy table that was used by our doctors.
Here in this setting, I witnessed many more scenes. An occasional grenade thrown in the front window added colour to the scene 鈥� red mostly. It was like a genie at a pantomime, popping up with a flash and lots of smoke just to add to the pandemonium. It was a pantomime of the most macabre character.
To fall into a fitful and exhausted sleep, to wake after a few minutes to find that your pillow was an amputated leg complete with boot. A German running in and out chased by a paratrooper, through one door and out of another, without a second glance at the carnage at their feet.
A couple of nights later (or was it years?) our officer decided to evacuate, before we were evicted permanently by the German tanks down the road. So, a gruesome train of men, stretchers and half dragged bodies moved in silence across the flower beds of the gardens and then into the street. The night noises were eerie, because around us, we didn鈥檛 know if it was friend or foe behind every bush and tree or dug in under our feet. Everybody was so trigger happy, that they only asked questions after they had made sure that the moving object did not move any more. At about three in the morning, we came to our next home.
It was a large house, set in forest grounds, on a hill just on the outskirts of the village. This was the last time we were to move house, but we did not know this at the time. I have never done so many moonlight flits without paying the rent in my life, unless you count the bodies left behind as part payment.
The rooms were bare of furnishings and a large kitchen was to become my store, workshop and resting place for the overflow of wounded, shattered men. They lay everywhere 鈥� in the hall, corridors and cellar 鈥� and after a few days the inflow made movement very hard indeed. The first thoughts were of food. Under the circumstances this was almost impossible, but after lots of risks and trouble we managed to get some and to make it hot too. What would you do today if about three to four hundred guests turned up at your house? Water was our next concern. We tore the bath out of the floor, bent the waste pipe up in the air, and set out with this on a stretcher. We managed to fill it from a standpipe about half a mile down the road. As we did so, a supply drop came in (which the Germans got) and the guns started to open up at the planes. With the bath on the stretcher we made the return journey back at the double up the hill, only to find that the bath was only about one third full of a thick muddy fluid. The water was made drinkable by passing it through petrol cans filled with gauze 鈥� it gave only a steady drip, but we were able to manage.
The officer in charge thought it would be a good idea if some form of identification was made to let people know that this house was being used to tend the wounded and to protect our house from being shot at 鈥� as if anyone cared!
A Canadian soldier said we needed a red cross flag on top of the house. So we made a flag by pulling the fourteen feet banister rail out of the stairs and tying a sheet to it. We put a red cross on it by dipping our hands in a seven pound tin of jam and painting it on with our fingers. We managed to get it up to the attic, and through a hole in the roof. I stayed in the attic to fix the pole to the rafters, while the Canadian soldier climbed up on to the roof to hold the flag straight.
After that the flag was like a red rag to a bull. Our poor old house was gradually shelled, starting at the top and working down floor by floor, as each floor became the top one. But I am proud to say the flag held out to the last day and most of the jam had been washed away leaving it stained red but still fluttering, a symbol of the area it flew over as our German landlords evicted us for the last time. I hope they enjoyed the stick grenades I left in the oven to bake for them.

CHRISTMAS 1944

Christmas 1944 was drawing near and the strings of the bag had at last closed on me, as I found myself a very tired soldier in Stalag XIB for the final stage of the war in Europe. The conditions that became your lot when you found yourself a guest of the German Reich, were nothing compared to the hunger.
The snow was falling thick and fast in the weeks prior to Christmas, and the pretty little German town of Falling Bostel, was looking like a Christmas card, marred only by its weeping sores of prison compounds for soldiers and women of nearly every nation.
In one of the huts set amid the hospital block, we were preparing to welcome Christmas.
The hospital block wasn鈥檛 much different than the other blocks, except that you had to be nearly dead to get the comfort of a little extra space, and a few of your kind to try and stop you getting any worse. To get you better under these conditions was next to impossible. But believe me, we tried.
We had decorated out shack with garlands made from paper bandages dipped in many concoctions won from the camp dispensary, to colour them. Red Cross parcels were few and far between, but just before Christmas an issue came 鈥極NE BETWEEN FOUR鈥� I think the Germans did everything in fours. All issues worked out one between four, and many private wars broke out over this method of issue. You either made up a four or you didn鈥檛 鈥� and hell has no fury like a stomach scorned!
Christmas day came, like all days they must come and go, and our pudding with a bit of
green on the top was brought in well alight with stolen medical meth, - but the taste!
Those of the cast iron stomachs that managed to get it down and keep it down, must by
now be permanently on stomach tablets or have had a new tummy fitted. But we made it
Christmas that day. Why? Why do so many hungry men save and share their much
needed food, and take such risks and pains to make this day so special? That is one
reason I laugh when people say that there is no such thing as Father Christmas. For the
spirit of Christmas is always there on this day, no matter where you are.

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