大象传媒

Memories of 105574 Major R F 鈥楬enry鈥� Hall MC, The Dorset Regiment,
on His and Her Majesty鈥檚 Service

Part 5

I stayed on the bank until it became light and helped gather up any chaps who had managed to get back across the river and were still waiting to cross and then returned to Battalion Headquarters. I returned to the bank and saw Germans in the wood and a small party of Dorsets dug in on the North bank. I organised four Bren guns in concealed positions to cover this party and to fire that night to cause a diversion when the Airborne were due to pull out.
Brigade ordered an Officer patrol to go over the river that night to tell the Airborne to withdraw, if they did not already know and to bring back any of the Dorsets that were left.
Tony Cottell and I were detailed. We went off in his jeep but had only gone a few hundred yards when we had a head on collision with another vehicle. There were no lights and it was very dark and wet. Tony was concussed so I went on alone with my driver in my jeep as near to the bank as possible and then sent my jeep back.
As the Poles had got a lot of their chaps on to the other side I thought it was only polite to call on the remains of the Polish Brigade who were in a large barn. I got hold of General Sosabowski who commanded them and asked him if he would like me to bring back any Poles. He was quite indignant and said, 鈥淣o, my Poles will stay on the other bank and they will fight till they have killed Germans and they are dead themselves. But, he said with a big bear hug, 鈥淵ou will come back and tell me how many Germans you have killed!鈥� Every time I reported to him I had another great bear hug. I stood this for a few nights and then I bypassed him.
I crossed the river in the first flight of the Canadian Assault Boats. There was no need to tell the Airborne as they were already waiting to cross so I went east to the Dorsets area but could find no Dorsets. I dealt with a few Germans and German Posts and cadged a lift back with the Canadians.
I reported back to Brigade and found a Dorset Officer, Mike Whittle, there also reporting. He was in his underclothes, having swum back with all his party which I had seen, as well as an Airborne Quartermaster. Brigadier Walton wanted to award Mike Whittle an MC but 鈥楤utch鈥� Thomas, our Divisional Commander, turned up at that moment and he wanted to court martial Mike for withdrawing without orders. Mike got nothing, poor old Walton got the sack!
For the following two or three nights I repeated this trick, crossing in a rubber boat I had found and I brought back a few Dorsets and Airborne and beat up more German Posts. One of the ones I did was a machine gun post in the corner of a hedgerow. As the ground was very flat I had to plan my approach and my withdrawal carefully because I decided to pop a couple of grenades into their position and get out quickly. I was quite successful and that was the end of that German machine gun position.
Both General Horrocks and General 鈥楤oy鈥� Browning promised that the Battalion would be allowed to wear Pegasus flashes in recognition of our efforts. Nothing happened until Colonel Huddlestone, Colonel of the regiment, moved for some special recognition. Then 鈥楤oy鈥� Browning, who had commanded the Airborne at Arnhem, made a personal gift to 4th Dorsets of a three foot replica of the Airborne Colours. I have seen it at our regimental museum and it looks like the one Roy Urquhart had at his Headquarters in the Hartenstein hotel which was presented to the regiment on 1st October 1948.
Colonel Baxter, the honorary Colonel of the 4th Dorsets, presented the Colour to Colonel Wells, Commanding Officer, 4th Dorsets, who handed it to Philip Roper who, as the only survivor present, was Colour Officer.
What would Market Garden have been like if we had had helicopters in those days? The antics I got up to with my Battle Patrol and on my own would be impossible today with the modern night vision abilities.
The citizens of Oosterboek erected a memorial at the caf茅 on the top of the hill at Westebouwing in memory of the 4th Dorsets attack. They have put a plaque on the wall of the caf茅 and a bench nearby and it was officially dedicated at 1200 hours on 16th September 1994. The Airborne museum raises the 4th Dorsets flag at the bench every day.
We stayed at Homoet for four or five days. Not much went on, a little bit of fire from the other side of the river. The 5th Battalion of the Dorsets and 7th Hampshire remained on the bank of the river to prevent the enemy coming across. After 4 to 5 days there we were relieved by the 82nd American Airborne and we had 48 hours rest out of the line but after 48 hours the Americans decided they could not take it any more, so we had to go back and relieve them!
We stayed there for another two or three days and as we had lost our Commanding Officer who was captured at Arnhem the 2nd in Command went to find a billet for us south of the River Waal. I then led the Battalion back the way we had come and back across the bridge at Nijmegen, through Nijmegen, which was then burning, having been bombed by the Germans, to an area South East of Nijmegen, called the Holy Land.
It had been a pilgrimage area before the war and had replicas of all the Biblical places such as Pontius Pilate鈥檚 Palace, Gethsemane and Jewish villages and we stayed there probably a week, resting up and getting reinforcements and more equipment.
After our rest in the Holy Land we moved into a position in the Reichswald forest. I had great fun there because the Germans were in the wood, and we were in the wood and we patrolled and caused a certain amount of havoc among the Germans. One trick I invented was firing a 2 inch mortar with a smoke shell with the butt of the mortar up against a tree so that the smoke bomb bounced off the trees and zig zagged towards the enemy, causing a much confusion. On several occasions I put one of my snipers forward and when the Germans started to jump up in panic he managed to get one or two of them.
I put him up for a Military Medal and he managed to get it. After that the Ardennes offensive happened and we were moved from the Reichswald forest right down South to the Sittared Geilenkirchen triangle to cover the North flank of the Bulge that had been made in the American line.
On 21st November we were ordered to move into a wood near Geilenkirchen that 5th Dorsets had captured so it ended up with both the 5th and 4th Battalions of The Dorsets in this particular wood. The wood afterwards was called 鈥楧orset Wood.鈥� It was very wet and dark and we moved in and I got my company settled in for the night quite successfully but it was part of the Siegfried line and there were quite a lot of German trenches and bunkers in the area.
After it was dark and my company was settled in for the night I did a very stupid thing. I got into one of the German bunkers to have a cigarette and of course the Germans just happened to shell it at that time and so I was wounded, wounded by my own lack of discipline, I had been fighting for six months from Normandy right up to the 21st November and I was tired and did something absolutely stupid by getting into this bunker so it was entirely my fault.
Just before I was wounded I reported to Battalion Headquarters to say that I was settled in for the night and Bob Roberts the Commanding Officer told me that the Battalion had been awarded a Croix de Guerre for its efforts on Hill 112. By that time Tony Cottell was the adjutant and the CO said that as Tony and I were the only two Officers left in the Battalion that had originally landed in Normandy, one of us was to have the Criox de Guerre.
I said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want a ruddy foreign medal,鈥� and Tony said exactly the same so Bob Roberts said, 鈥淩ight there鈥檚 only one thing to do and that鈥檚 to toss up for it.鈥� So we tossed up for it and he won the Croix de Guerre, but he was a jolly good Officer and that was all he did get and he well deserved it.
Luckily for me I was awarded a Military Cross for Arnhem later on. I don鈥檛 really think it was for Arnhem, but that was what the citation said, I think it was because I had been responsible for killing more Germans than most people (we killed 17 Tiger/Panther tanks, some SP guns 鈥� never kept a score of men).
I was wounded in the left chest and everybody thought I was going to die but I knew that I wasn鈥檛. I was operated on in the school near Geilenkirchen and was eventually evacuated via Brussels to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Birmingham and I managed to wangle leave from the hospital at Christmas and eventually got back to my Battalion after sick leave but by that time my Battalion had moved to Bari in Italy. I arrived there in September 1945 and took over A Company again. I then became a Regular Officer with the rank of Substantive Major dating from 3rd September 1939.
In April 1946 we moved to Trieste and my Company was sent up on to the Morgen line to sort out which part was in Italy and which part was in Yugoslavia. General Morgan had drawn a line with a thick pencil on a motoring map and some of the lines went right through villages and naturally they were disputed. We managed to settle that without getting anybody injured.
Then we moved to Mestre in February 1947. There 4th Dorsets was disbanded as it was a Territorial Battalion.
In February 1947 I was posted to the top of a mountain in Austria, at a place called Schmelz where I became Chief Instructor of the British Troops Mountain Warfare School, I stayed there and had a lovely time up the mountain, skiing and teaching mountain warfare and warfare in general.
Then in November 1947 I was posted to Accra in West Africa, seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force. My family had joined me up the mountain at Schmelz and they accompanied me to West Africa as well. I was lucky to be there during the Independence riots. They succeeded so we gave up the Gold Coast and it became Ghana. I commanded a platoon made up of British Sergeants and African NCOs as other ranks during the riots there I was Chief Instructor of the West African School of Infantry. I remained there until 1948.
I was then posted to Mons Officer Cadet School which was designed to take potential Officers for short service commissions (Sandhurst took Officers for regular commissions) where I was an instructor until December 1950.
In April 1951 I was posted, again with my family, to Vienna, to A Company, 1st Battalion, The Dorset Regiment. I stayed in on Vienna when the Dorsets went to China, prior to going into action in Korea and I became Garrison Adjutant as I had my family there. I had a wonderful time in Vienna, it was during the 鈥榝our men in a jeep鈥� time when Vienna was divided into British, American, French and Russian zones and policed by four men in a jeep. Everybody spied on everybody else. I was followed everywhere I went by British, French, Russian and American spies and there were all sorts of tricks going on all the time. They even dug tunnels under the ground into the Russian sector. Our intelligence organisation was over 1000 strong!
Whilst I was in Vienna Roy Urquhart, who had commanded 1st Airborne at Arnhem, came to visit and he and I had a long conversation about his part in the battle and our part of the battle. It was very interesting to compare the differences between both sides. In 1952 I was at a conference at the British Embassy when someone came in and announced dramatically, 鈥淭he King is dead, God Save the Queen.鈥�
In September 1953 I was posted to Hong Kong back to 1st Battalion The Dorsets, until December 1954. I was in the New Territories, guarding the border with China. We had great fun in the hills keeping the Communists out who were constantly trying to infiltrate across the border.
I was then posted back to the UK and stationed at Taunton as Adjutant of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Training Camp which was a very dull time.
Eventually in October 1956 I retired from the Army as a substantive Major with a gratuity but no pension. I do receive a War Disability Pension for my wounds as I was eventually unable to work as a result of being wounded.
I thank God I was trained so well at Inverailort and knew all the tricks of the trade, dirty and otherwise and had such confidence in myself and in my men that I was able to survive for six months during the war, do considerable damage to the enemy and brighten up the battlefield now and again with a laugh and a joke and a few silly things.
Looking back on the war I didn鈥檛 really dislike it, in fact I quite enjoyed most of it. There were some very unpleasant parts, I don鈥檛 think I was scared of anything because I was so super confident. It sounds a bit cocky, I know, but I don鈥檛 look back in horror to the war although of course I thoroughly disagree with war and would not like to have anything to do with any other type of killing.
As far as anybody can find out I am the only chap left who knew and who was trained by Fairbairn and Sykes and so I am often pursued by people eager to pick my brains for books and films.

Major R.F. 鈥楬enry鈥� Hall. 2004.

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