大象传媒

My family and I moved to Deal from Aylesham on the day of the Miners Strike in 1983, next door to Bert Hll in Harold Road. Bert was a strong looking chappy with broad shoulders, 6ft. and in his 70s, a widower who was very independent. After doing the new house up a bit and getting to know Bert my neighbour a little, as he used to sit at the bottom of his garden reading his morning paper in that warm summer sun. But whenever I asked him what he did in the forces he would say "Ho, I don`t talk about the war". From time to time my wife and I asked Bert it we could help him in any was but he always refused. He would say"Ho no, don`t fuss; I`m alright. Then one day he said "When are you having your hair cut because Carol can cut mine if she wouldn`t mind"? I said OK Bert, when Carol cuts my hair I will give you a shout to come round, which I did. Then he came round every time after that to have his hair cut. Some time later we got chatting and I asked him what regiment he was in when he was in the army; he said the Green Berets(Commandos). I said t;hat I had a book called the Green Berets; he said "Have you? I`m in that book", so I went and got it out to show him. He said say again, I`m in this book as he started to shake as he fumbled through the pages. As the memoties began to flood back which he had blotted out for nearly 50 years he said "That`s me, kneeling with a gun, with a look of we are in control of the area, looking over the cliff top, but I said to the lad taking the picture, a 大象传媒 reporter, don`t hang about; you only got three seconds , no more, to take your photo because it`s pretty hostile around there. I think this was in Norway."

Bert later told me he would have got the Victoria Cross but he didn`t get killed so he received the George Cross instead. He started to tell me that his younger comrades were being killed all around him, cried out for their mothers as they were being pinned down by one enemy gun position. So he stuffed into his clothes everywhere he could with ammunition magazines and, carrying a macnine gun under each arm he charged the enemy position, taking it out completely with hand grenades. Later, when checking himself, he found that he had been shot in the heart but the bullet was lodged in his chest packed bullet magazine that had stopped the bullet from wounding him. I asked him why did he do it. He said "We were all getting killed, some younger ones crying for their mothers, terrible, somebody had to do something" Bert said "I only hoped that if I was shot that I did not cry out aloud and that I died bravely."
Bert also said that he would rather go in to battle with some of those that did not have any idea where they were firing - i.e. the newly recruited were not so accurate at firing guns as they fired indiscriminately, as opposed to a fully trained soldier who could hit a bull`s-eye at 300 paces, meaning 20 trained men could all fire at one man; 20 untrained men firing would have everybody卢s heads down or at leastt 20 different targets.

I asked Bert why he joined the army so young in the 1920s. He said, looking at me directly "You got four square meals a day" (in a telling manner) "You was always hungry and there was only my mother to look after us " His father had died earlier.
The night before we went into battle the troops were given beerr and spirits but Bert would never drink before he fought as he wanted all of his senses about him. He would swop his drink for cigarettes to smoke after any battles.

When Bert was captured in France and put in a POW camp he and everyone else were manacled. When Bert was on working party duty he would chuck his manacles down a cesspit. The Germans kept wondering where all the sets of manacles were disappearing to and caught Bert throwing his manacle away. The Germans put a gun to his head and said put your manacles on and keep them on. Bert, being Bert, refused and said that he was not an animal. They sent for a British offficer in the camp to tell him to put his chain back on. The British officer "asked" Banger to put tham back on. Banger still refused; the officer asked Bert why not. Bert said I will only put them on if you "order" me to. The British officer then ordered Bert to put them back on. Banger obeyed the order.

In the POW camp the food was atrocious, very few food parcels etc. Banger would eat grass but he said that he could not eat the rotten turnips that some of the younger recruits ate. He thought he would escape from the camp before he died of hunger. He went off to the coast whgere he found a small rowing boat and started to row back to Deal but landed at Folkestone, due to the heavy channel tides. When the police picked him up exhausted, he told them that he had just rowed across the channel from a German POW camp in France. They accused him of being a spy and slung him straight into prison. Bert tried to show them his massive hands which had heavily cut blisters from all the rowing, but they still kid not want to believe him. Then the police sent for one of his commanding officers in the army that could recognise him. Unluckily for Bert, when the officer saw him he said, "Well done Banger; you can have 48 hours leave to see your young wife, then it`s back to war." Bert was the first man to escape a POW camp and return to England

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