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5.6 Austria

We now became part of the Army of Occupation in Carinthia, billeted in the villages of Fack, Egg and my platoon at Ledenitzen, just south of the Worthersee at Velden. We moved into the local Volkschule, where we had a section per classroom with plenty of room for each man, my sergeants in their own rooms and I took over a vacant downstairs flat in the adjacent teachers building. The school caretakers occupied the other downstairs flat and they cared for me. The rest of the flats in the building were still occupied by the teachers who were all Nazi inclined and I hardly saw them; that is until the train loads of walking skeletons started to arrive from the concentration camps and stopped at the siding next to the school on their way to Yugoslavia and beyond, as this was the border point. Up to this time the teachers and the caretakers maintained that all talk of concentration camps was only Allied propaganda, but when they were able to talk to the returning concentration camp passengers they soon changed. I was shocked at what I saw, they were more than shocked!!

Gradually I was able to turn the school hall into a pub for my men, with whatever bit of recreational equipment I could get hold of, and had a truck off into Italy on a weekly basis to collect vino and food and our pub soon became a club for all the troops in the neighbourhood.

When an order came that all troops should indulge in organised recreation on Wednesdays and Saturdays I managed to acquire six horses from a nearby Hungarian prison camp and we spent most pleasant days riding through the forests. Invariably we would come across a woodcutter’s house and would be offered schnapps, poured from a small earthenware jug into thimble sized glasses; the consequences were invariably the horses were left to themselves to get us home.

I stabled the horses in the Gasthof stables, which at that time were empty, as the Germans had commandeered all the village horses. The Gasthof keeper, Herr Dietsliegh and I became great friends. To feed the horses I tried to get him to get the villagers to cut hay for them, but they were not willing until I formally requisitioned a hay field and then they were more than willing. When I left I handed the horses over to the villagers.

In 1972, nearly 30 years after, I was able to visit Velden and tried to make contact with my former friends in Ledenitzen, but found that the area had been so developed and changed with houses where there had been fields and a confusing network of roads and I went to the town visitors’ information office for help. They called in an interpreter who turned out to be former London Irish soldier who had married the daughter of a family who owned a string of hotels in Corinthia and who had been a regular visitor at my platoon's pub and who remembered me. He proved to be a valuable guide and took my wife and me to the Gasthof. Unfortunately Herr Dietsleigh had died a few years previously and there were new owners; however we found his wife nearby then living with their son. The reunion was fantastic but unfortunately too short. Our guide put us up at his hotel in Velden and treated us royally.

Our time there was taken up first in building additional wards in the roof of the Velden hospital, and then in building the start of the British 8th Army overland leave scheme in an army barracks in Velden. I had some 400 German prisoners on the building work converting the barracks, together with some a large number of Hungarians as cleaners and cooks when the place, called El Alamein, operated.

We catered for 2000 troops arriving each day, with each booking in at the Alamein Station booking office where they got their travel ticket, room slips and meal tickets for the overland journey to Calais. Each man slept the night in a bed with clean sheets, about four to a room, with similar stopping places en route. Once the scheme got going we had 2000 troops returning daily who also had an overnight stay before returning to their units. The dining facilities to accommodate 4000 daily were pretty enormous!

When we first arrived in the area I was given the job of acting Town Engineer of Villach until the Occupation people arrived. Here I was mainly concerned in getting the town's essential services repaired and working. For repairs to the roads I reopened the quarry for the cobblestones of which all the roads were paved; this is a somewhat specialist activity as each cobblestone must be of the same size. The fact that I was so able to provide employment for the old staff and many others made us somewhat special in the eyes of the local population!

The area around the Worthersee was developed as a recreational point for the troops from all around and the Austrians were not slow in catching on and opened a whole assortment of restaurants and entertainment places. A restaurant at Maria Worth, on the south side of the See, was very popular with an orchestra playing from a floating platform on the lake.

5.7 Going home

I was approached to sign on for a spell with the R.E forces in the Far East, but fortunately at the same time orders came for all us seconded personnel to report back to the South African Forces. Three of us from our group, Thompson, Dowden and I, set of in my White scout car with my driver and batman up front and the three of us lolling back on a comfortable seat at the back like conquering heroes. We drove down into Italy and from Udine across to Verona, on to Lake Como and then down through Milan to Genoa. We then visited the Italian Riviera at Rapello, Spezia, Pisa and Florence staying a few days at each. We were supposed to report in at the Rome Headquarters but when we got there we heard that there was at least a six week wait in the transit camp in store for us so we decided to carry on to Taranto still using our British Army travel passes.

At Taranto we said farewell to our driver and batman who I presume eventually found their way back to Ledenitzen, and our British Army passes enabled us to get immediate passage to Alexandria. On arrival in Alexandria we took train to Cairo where we found that there was an even longer wait in store for us at the transit camp at Helwan, which we were not interested in so we booked into the Continental Hotel and stayed there for about a month until our money ran out and we had no option but to report in as South Africans at Helwan. Fortunately our stay there was only a couple of weeks and we got our seats on a plane for South Africa.

The plane was a Dakota with 21 passengers and I found myself being bid farewell by the Senior S.A.E.C. Staff Officer, Col McLaren, and being appointed the Officer in charge of the plane with the dubious privilege of sitting in the back seat; three days with stops each night after some 8 10 hours bumpy flying each day saw us land at Swartzkop and home at last.

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