大象传媒

We eventually arrived there, only desultory fighting being now the order of the day and the prisoners were being rounded up in their thousands. The marshalling yards at Kiel were just like a plate of spaghetti, or as if a monstrous fiend had dipped a spoon into the rails and stirred them round and round to resemble an inverted whirlpool. What a shambles! Proof, once more, that the R.A.F. and Americans had done a good job.
Then came the surrender. Unconditional. Monty must have loved every moment of it as he signed the Armistice on Luneburg Heath; a fitting end to a fine General鈥檚 campaigning.
But there was still one more place to be freed 鈥� Denmark. Apparently it was stuffed full of S.S. and Wehrmacht who had retreated and retreated until they could retreat no more and in addition we had word there were several thousand wounded troops in the hospitals.
The invading troops were to be Para, but in a very different role to that they were used to. The idea was to fly them to Kastrup airport in Copenhagen, unarmed, and arrange to send them back to Germany for internment. The idea of being unarmed didn鈥檛 appeal to anybody at all but it was pointed out to us (by a high-ranking Officer, who wasn鈥檛 going there) that the surrender had been signed and that the troops there would honour it and not make a fuss!!!
It was with mixed feelings that we flew off, militarily naked, so to speak, and landed in Denmark and proceeded to Copenhagen and our billets, which were in very comfortable hotels, and the following day the word went out to the various German units to prepare to move. Their own Officers and NCOs supervised this - our lads were more or less onlookers. It was very eerie to be in the City, full of armed Germans (they retained their arms until they came to the Danish-German frontier, where they were disarmed and marched into Germany the same as any other POW) and us with nothing. Thank goodness they didn鈥檛 turn stroppy, especially as the Red Beret must have brought some of them a few evil memories. The wounded, who were many, were put into Red Cross trains and were returned to their homeland by rail.
All this was done, without any fuss, no fights at all, and when the last got on the ferry to go to the mainland we all heaved a sigh of relief, went back to Copenhagen, where to our honest amazement, we were feted like heroes! To say that a Para could do no wrong, wasn鈥檛 any exaggeration and the local Resistance people became our guides and mentors and kept us in the picture as to what was happening where and when.
Now one of the odd things that happened immediately the City (Copenhagen) was free of Germans was that both breweries, Tuborg and Carlsberg, went on strike; why, I never knew, but with one proviso - the Para could have as much beer as they required but not a drop to be sold to anyone else. Well, what a beautiful situation; we had the only booze in the area, not even the Navy could get any, and consequently you can imagine how ultra-popular we were. If you wanted a drink, befriend a Para and get invited to the Mess, where it didn鈥檛 cost a guest a penny as we footed the bill for all drink. And where did all the money come from to pay for this? Firstly, from the Germans who, at embarkation points were informed that they had to surrender their kroner as it was forbidden to take Danish currency out of the country. This they gladly did (sic) - I expect they were grateful to us for ending the war and wanted to show their esteem. All this money was handed over to the Army, excepting the odd kroner or two we required for personal reparations, due to us for the suffering they had caused, and secondly from the sale of surplus cigarettes to the population at 拢1 for 20 - their price, not ours. So money was no problem and we spent freely and gained the friendship of a nation.
Our guides and mentors told us one day that a very special parade was being held very shortly and this turned out to be a parade of all the girls who had fraternised with Germans during the Occupation. Actually some of us lads had witnessed this type of parade before in other countries we had liberated; it consisted of the females, without a stitch on, all their hair cut off, and with placards hung round their necks, proclaiming that they were whores, both professional and amateur, who had consorted with the detestable Boche, being marched all through the town and being jeered at and pelted with rubbish all the way. A degrading spectacle to us, but to the people of the liberated countries, a soft punishment for making life a bit easier for the enemy, and knowing what these people of many different nations had suffered, who could blame them?
Denmark was a country literally flowing with milk and honey as the Germans had fostered it as their main food-producing area. All types of food were plentiful and most troops took advantage of this to send parcels of difficult to obtain goodies home to the delight of their families. I was there for six weeks of a lovely sloth-like existence, which enabled me to get the shakes and fears out of my system and thank the Lord that I had managed to survive, more or less whole, the six years of war that we had been through, although very, very few of my old boozing school and subsequent mates had.
Almost every time I asked a mutual acquaintance whom I would come across, about Tom, Dick or Harry, Dodger, Knocker, Ranger, etc. the answer was always the same: dead or missing; arm or leg off or blinded and here was I, still firing on all six cylinders. I do not hold with being maudlin, what鈥檚 to be is to be, but one can鈥檛 help wondering if it was all worth it? Our wartime friendly nations are against us, the enemy ones are our friends; the ex-enemy are at the top of the heap and here we are - at the bottom! A nation that gives million to the Arts and can鈥檛 find the money to help bone marrow sufferers; I could go on and on but what鈥檚 the use? The politicians cook it all up, then call the Armed Services in to restore the status quo, who do their job excellently, sort it all out, and hand it back to the Politicians in a nice, neat bundle, who then proceed to cock it all up again.
Is this what my mates were killed and maimed for? What supreme cynicism, they must have for us - the patriots. The Nation should never forget, that the highest to the lowest in the land, owe their jobs and their very existence to the men and women who fought for their Country and the many, the too many, who would never see the so-called fruits of victory.

From Denmark I was eventually, for my sins, sent to the Ruhr; this was the industrial heart of Germany, and it was just one big heap of rubble. In Essen you could look across the city and your eyes wouldn鈥檛 see a wall higher than three or four feet. Complete devastation with the notable exception of the infamous Krupps steel works, which was hardly touched at all. I wonder why?
It was a dismal hole of a place but somehow that was excellent for watching the various rackets springing up in post-war Germany, or perhaps it would be kinder to call them 鈥榝iddles.鈥�
One very clever 鈥榝iddle鈥� was the case of the missing petrol. This particular bloke ran a military petrol station and the SIB (detective branch of the Military Police) were coming across a lot of illegal petrol being used by civilians, and as this was a commodity which was very strictly rationed, they sought to uncover the source of supply. Eventually, after a lot of work, they tracked it to this particular filling station, so they stuck the bloke in charge in the 鈥榥ick鈥� and tried to grill the information from him that would clinch their case, but he said absolutely nothing, other than to protest his innocence and insisted that they checked his tanks with him present, to prove he was telling the truth.
After awhile they realised that he wasn鈥檛 going to incriminate himself and agreed to dip the tanks in the full knowledge that there would be a discrepancy anyway, and they would nail him on that alone if necessary. So they duly trooped over to the station, got the dipping rod, which is notched every so many inches, the amount of rod being wet when withdrawn would, when read in conjunction with the last notch, would give the gallonage in the tank. Every tank showed not a discrepancy, but a slight amount over. This disconcerted the SIB who dipped the tanks repeatedly, but always with the same result - a surplus; small, perhaps but certainly not on the wrong side.
They were dumbfounded, as all their evidence pointed to this particular man as being the black market supplier. The petrol was tested for purity - all O.K. Samples were taken from the bottom of the tanks to see if there was water at the bottom; still O.K. Eventually they gave up and released their prisoner without a stain on his character as they obviously appeared to be in the wrong.
What was the truth of the matter? As it so happened I knew this particular soldier from pre-war days and, in those far-off times, if there was a 鈥榝iddle鈥� going you could bet your boots he was in it somewhere, so I knew it had to be a 鈥榝iddle鈥� but how he did it was beyond me. As an Army photographer I had often worked with the S.I.B. as their recorder of evidence and it so happened I was on this particular caper and, after it was all over, I asked him how he had worked the oracle and, after making me promise not to tell the SIB, (I wouldn鈥檛 have, anyway) he gave me the bare facts and it was so ludicrous that I fell about with laughter. He said
鈥淵ou know, Jock, those bloody fools kept dipping my tanks to see the state of my stocks, which I knew were correct, but if they had had the gumption to measure the dip-stick they would have found it was six inches shorter than it should have been.鈥�
Truly a Prince among tricksters! I wonder if that dipstick is still in use in some Army petrol station?
Another fiddle was the great tyre theft; tyres for vehicles all over Europe were in very short supply and consequently were a Class 1 black market objective, and thus the Army had their tyre compounds extremely well guarded, in order to prevent any thefts of this most valuable commodity. But from this particular dump, tyres kept disappearing from stock with monotonous regularity, and they couldn鈥檛 discover how it was being done.
Guards were doubled, patrolling with loaded arms with orders to shoot first, if they spotted any movement during the silent hours within the compound, but no shots were fired and still the tyres disappeared. NCOs and men were changed without notice in case they were mixed up in the fiddle but still the thefts carried on. Vehicles were searched on entering and leaving the depot, special passes were introduced, the SIB were called in, all to no avail, the tyres still disappeared without anybody having the remotest thought on how it was being done and it was left to a tidy-minded NCO to nail the culprits, who, in this instance, were all civilians.
To put you in the picture the Army employed lots of German civilians to do the labouring work in the various establishments and the tyre compound was no exception, so, in the initial stacking-up of the tyres in their various sizes, from giant tractor tyres down to little ones for the jeeps, were, of course done by the hired help, but what the planners, who put the tyre depot where it was didn鈥檛 know, was that the town sewers ran underneath and had a manhole access exactly where the compound was built.
Some of the local labour cottoned on to this immediately and stacked the larger tyres over the manhole cover before any British busybody noticed it and stacked all the other tyres, according to size, around the tractor tyres. Now all the thieves had to do was to come along the sewer, find the right manhole cover, lift it up and put it against the inside of the tyres and they could drop tyres down the inside of the tractor tyres and thus down into the sewer and away. At night they could emerge, completely hidden and carry on their nefarious work.
The NCO who discovered this, had decided to rearrange the tyres, with the least-used ones at the back of the compound and the most required ones at the front and naturally, when the piles were moved around, the loosened manhole cover was discovered and, putting two and two together, quietly informed his Officer, who notified the Military Police.
They turned up with a van, put all the civilians in it and put them into the 鈥榥ick鈥� so that, if they were involved in the racket they couldn鈥檛 pass the word that the scheme had been blown. The large tyres were replaced over the manhole, just as before, and they waited. Sure enough, during the night, the thieves came along the sewer, removed the cover and climbed up through the tyres to steal some more; when it was considered that all who were coming were there, on went many jeep headlights and they were caught, arrested, and tossed into the jail, and that ended the tyre racket in that particular area. Very clever thieves and it was only the unexpected that caught them.
The thieving was unbelievable. It was impossible to leave a jeep without someone in it, not that the jeep would be stolen but the wheels, complete with tyres, would be. The vehicle would be swiftly jacked up, put on blocks, and the wheels removed, and on occasion, if time warranted it, the engine would go too! All spare wheels were chained to the vehicles in an effort to thwart the thieves.

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