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Dateline — January 1945
Only 1 day after New Years day. We’ve just arrived down in the Ardennes to relieve the Americans who had been taking a bashing from the Germans trying to smash their way across to Antwerp. We had earlier been up in Holland on the River Maas and then they pulled us out and sent us down to Louvain to hold the line there. We’d had a great time for a few days in the town in St Jaacobs Platz where, according to custom the officers had served us tea and rum in bed on the morning of Christmas Now we were marching through the forests of the Ardennes with the Americans driving past in trucks and jeeps. About 2 feet of snow everywhere. I remember one of them saying ‘Hi there fellas, tough up the road. They’ve thrown everything at us bar the grand piano. Good luck and good-bye’.
A couple of days to get bedded down in the village they chose for us (was it Hotton or Marche`?). Forgotten now but still. Then we are told we are going to make an attack over the hill and down the other side to take a small village. Start time 0500. (I wonder why in the British Army attacks always have to start at about 0500 in the morning? They say it’s because then we can expect to catch the enemy off guard. Now, normally, we have to ‘stand-to’ at about 0430 in order not to be caught off guard. Do they think the Germans don’t do that as well? Still, that’s what the officers have been instructed to do at the Officers Selection school so they do it. No doubt they’ll still be doing it in another hundred years time as well! So off we go. Into the Bren carriers and away to the bottom of the hill we have to take. Out and up and over we go. Proceed in an orderly manner up the hill. Still snowing. Up through the woods. Getting near to the top. Two dead Germans lying on the ground. On top of the hill. Start to go down the other side. At the edge of the trees we get down on the ground to recce. Large open field, all virgin white, leading down to the village we have to capture and then on the other side of the village another hillside going up and away from us. ‘Right lads, let’s go down, came the voice of the Major. ‘On your feet’. Up we get and start to advance down the hill. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. On the hill opposite two German 88 millimetre guns have opened up on us and life gets a bit hectic. ‘Race you to the bottom’ becomes the general thought and away we go. Meantime someone has called up the RAF and down come two screaming fighters (Typhoons?) to blast the German gun positions. We reach the comparative safety of the village street. Looks like the Germans have gone. So, on to the end of the village main street and a little further, when, wallop, a shell lands a few feet in front of us. There’s a Tiger tank dug in a couple of hundred yards away blazing away. Snowing like the dickens now. We hastily turn into a track leading up the hill to the side of the tank but out of its view. Couple more dead Germans lying on the side of the road. It’s now beginning to get dark. We go to the top of the hill and the Major says, ‘Right, lads, we’ll dig in here for the night and go on again in the morning’. Dig in. What with? We ain’t got no shovels. We were only supposed to be going into the village and stay there for the night. Have you ever tried to scoop out a small hollow in the ground using one of the British Army’s bayonets. About 8 inches long and round like a meat skewer. Manage somehow. I’m the Company signaller and have to lug around a No. 18 wireless set on top of everything else. We make a brew and eat what we have left from the days rations. Still snowing like hell. Next morning up with the larks. Only there ain’t no larks. Too bloody cold and too much snow about. It’s now about 3 feet thick. But some one has managed to bring up some shovels up with breakfast.. Anyway, off we goagain.
Choosing our way carefully to skirt round the Tiger tank so they could not see us, we go back into the forest and try to work our way down and around. The slope of the ground is getting flatter now. Then we spy a house off to our left in the trees with a large garden at the back. And then a Schmeizer machine gun opens up on us. I dive behind a tree and hear the bullets shick, shick, shicking into the trunk. Then all goes quiet again. The Major asks one of the fellas to go forward and see what he can find out. Off he goes. A few minutes later there is an almighty explosion. He had trodden on an S mine. Horrible things. You tread on the little plungers sticking up out of the ground, it jumps up out of the ground and sprays you with ball bearings. He caught the full blast. We had to lie there for the next half-hour listening to him dying as he called out for his mum. The Major then decides we should pull back a bit but decides to call for an artillery stonk on the house. We give the map reference and start to slowly pull back. Just one problem. The Artillery is over the other side of the hill and have to lob their shells over the top and hope to hit the house at the map reference we gave them. Unfortunately, the hillside is covered by very tall pine trees so that the shells, as they start to fall, hit the tops of the trees and fall slap bang in the middle of us. Another two or three of us dead or wounded. Still, never mind, aye?
Back up the hill. ‘Far enough’, said the Major, ‘we’ll dig in here and hold the fort’.
Now we dig our slit trenches. And it snows. Brother, it snows. There must be all of two or three metres of the bloody stuff about… We get some good? news on the radio. We cannot get relieved. There’s too much bloody snow about. We’ll just have to stay put until they can make their way to us. Marvellous. Transport can’t move because of the snow. Aircraft can’t fly because of the low clouds. No food left but we can still make one final brew. We are dressed in the usual Army issue battledress, with a greatcoat and a ground sheet. And it is flaming cold. We spend the day wondering what the hell is going to happen next. Spend the day creating a shelf inside the trench on which to sleep that night. Kind of a another trench inside on the wall, just enough space to lie on with your feet in the bottom of the trench. Wake up next day. Feet in about a foot of water with ice on the top. Bloody marvellous. We hear a gun barrage going off along the valley. We later learn that the 7th Royal Welsh Fusiliers have made an attack to try to open the road further along the valley. They paid a terrible price. 27 dead. You can still see the memorial today alongside the road through the Ardennes on the road to Bastogne. We are still stuck in the snow. Another night, another morning, waking up with your feet in a foot of water with ice on the top. One more day, one more night and hip hip hoobloodyhooray. They’ve managed to get to us. Three days meals in one for breakfast. About nine or ten o’clock. Get my tin mug out of my pack, get it filled with tea. Put it on the ground on the top of the trench. Go to take a drink and it’s empty. Accuse my Major of having pinched my tea. Pained surprise on his face as he denies it. Then I notice. There’s a hole in the base of my mug. A large jagged hole. Look in my pack and notice the jagged tear in the top flap. Inside at the bottom is a one inch long by half inch wide piece of shrapnel. Count myself lucky. A few inches and that could have been in my brain. But we are now relieved. All we got to do now is march back to where they have reserved some space for us in another village. Only about three miles or so. Before we get there half of us are staggering and almost unable to put our feet on the ground. ground.
Back in the village and ‘Get some water boiled and get your feet in the water to thaw them out’ was the command. Take off my boots. Holay!. My feet swell like balloons. Put them in the hot water and the pain is almost too much. Crawl to see my Major. Tell him I can’t walk. Have to see the doc. ‘Oh God, don’t leave me now, you’re my signaller’ says the Major. But, off the see the doc. Along with about another 6 or eight of my mates. ‘Trench feet and frost bite’ says the doc. ‘You’re off to hospital’, and away we go to Namur to the American Field hospital. Couple of days there and we are shipped off to the British Base Hospital in Lille. And the final insult. A pimply faced young second lieutenant military doctor, probably just failed his exams to become a real doctor, threatens us with a court martial for not obeying orders and not changing our socks and washing our feet twice a day when engaged in trench warfare!!!! I show him my spare pair of socks (the Army issued you with two pairs in those days!) with jagged holes in the legs and feet where the shrapnel had torn through.
Larry Southgate.

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