大象传媒

I was called up on October 18th 1939 and served in the Duke of Wellington鈥檚 Regiment. We went to France with the British Expeditionary Force in March or May, and luckily for me we only got to Abbeville in northern France when we were cut off from the Dunkirk beaches and had to come inwards. I was evacuated from Saint-Malo. I was in England then until the middle of 1942 when they broke our battalion, the Duke of Wellingtons, up and everyone moved to different regiments. I went to the Middle East with the Royal Armoured Corps, and finished up with the First Royal Dragoons, which was a Reconnaissance Unit with armoured cars. We landed in Sicily and then, after the Sicilian invasion was over, we landed in Italy. Then they brought us back to England, about Christmas 1943, ready for the D-Day landings. I didn鈥檛 go over on D-day because they couldn鈥檛 do any reconnaissance owing to the trees and heavy undergrowth. The regiment went over about six weeks after. Then as soon as the Germans broke out through the Fallaise Gap, we could do reconnaissance, and I went right through then, through France and Belgium and Holland into Germany. I was on the Rhine crossings in Germany and we finished up in Lubeck in Northern Germany. The Russians had taken the island of Bornholm, which was Danish, and Field Marshall Montgomery said we must move fast and get into Denmark before they take Denmark over, like they did Germany which was split in half. This was one of the experiences of my life. They were on the verge of signing the Armistice, and I was told to get my armoured car and take an English officer and a Danish Liaison Officer up into Denmark, across the border, and get up there as fast as we could. Coming to the Kiel Canal, I thought 鈥淚鈥檝e been in the army for six years and I thought I wasn鈥檛 going to get killed,鈥� but right at the far end the Germans were still manning an anti-tank gun and a machine gun. Luckily, we had this Danish officer with us, and he said 鈥淛ust you keep quiet and let me speak.鈥� He spoke German, with being close to Germany, and he said, 鈥淒o you know that the war is over? It鈥檚 finished.鈥� and he must have convinced them that it was. We were the only men, me and this officer, from the regiment, that went into Denmark the day before anyone else went in. Then we left. We got to the Kiel Canal and we had to push up then through Denmark. The Danish resistance were coming out of the side streets and directing us, and we finished up in the city of Arhus on Jutland, the second largest city in Denmark, and I met these friends and we鈥檝e been friends ever since.

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