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This story has been entered onto the site by Richard, on behalf of Sid Campbel, and they fully understand the conditions.

This is the account of Sid Campbel, a medic, serving in the winter of 1944, to the east of France.

Sid and the others with him were pushing through France towards Germany. The Allies were pushing back against the Axis forces and the Brits were pushing through a densely populated forest nearing the eastern border of France. These were some of the last German defences in France. Sid and the rest of the unit had been marching for several hours, with little more than 5 minutes break every hour or two. As night drew in, the forest’s dense foliage blocked out almost all moonlight, making it appear as though the night sky was clouded over and rain was on the way. On the rare occasions a chink of sky was visible through the leaves. It turned out, however, to be a beautiful night, with a large waxing moon the tranquillity of the sky was a far cry from the minds of the soldiers. The medics came off worst; they often watched wounded men die. Sid said he saw at least 10 young men die, long before their time. The night being so dark, it became difficult to navigate through the forest. The unit decided to call it a night, and retraced their steps for about 20 minutes until they got to an old train station. The station had clearly been occupied by the Germans at some point; most of the railway tracks having been pulled up, probably to be melted down and made into ammunition.
The troops were tired; they had been walking for hours and welcomed the relative comfort of the box cars that lay about. Sid and the rest of the medics set up their ‘dispensary’ in the old station. While most of the troops rested, the unlucky few started to patrol the area, sticking in groups to avoid the freezing cold. You could see the relief and glee on their faces when they were relieved of their posts, and they would sprint back to the cars or to the dispensary if they were worried about frost bite. Luckily none of them were damaged by the wind and the thin layer of snow.
The first explosion came near dawn. The bomb had hit about 40 metres from the camp, but the damage it did, the fire it brought, was inexorable. The second and third bombs proved more accurate, and led the way for what seemed like hours of bombing, hours of screams and shouts. Young men, trapped in the box cars, that just hours ago had been a safe haven, were being slowly roasted alive. The trees around them fuelled the fire, and the wind acted as a set of giant bellows. Sid and the rest of the medics could do nothing but watch, the fires blocking their entry. They could only deal with those that had been blown away from the cars, but most of them were killed instantly, and those who were not, would only live a few hours. The all clear sounded just 20 minutes after the first bomb had dropped, but the time had appeared to stand still. Sid recalls watching one of the bombs as it landed, he remembers how it seemed to fall in slow motion, how the noise as it dropped was deafening, and most of all, the faces of the men below it, just before it hit.
It took nearly an hour for the fires to have drop enough that the medics could attend to the wounded; and when they did they found a lot of the men had been killed, and a lot of them were still burning. The night could be seen as a miracle that few were dead, the bombs somehow missing the two most heavily packed cars, and hitting only the two less cramped ones. Possibly the greatest miracle of the night, was that not a single spark reached the station, and no damage was dealt to any of the medics, or any of their supplies. This meant the dealing with the wounded was much safer and quicker as ; the wounded could be taken out of the cold.
As good as these miracles were, they could not disguise the fact that many men had died a gruesome death, most of them under 24. The survivors spent most of what left of the night remembering the dead. The next morning they got up and continued where they had left off.

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