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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Jean Holmes of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Captain Donald Patrick Post and added to the site with his permission.

I was 17 when war started and I joined up in 1939. Following training in Scotland, (where we got really wet) I took part in the D-day landing, and didn’t get my socks wet. We entered Caen and the Falaise gap. We were used as reinforcements to other divisions. The 59th division was disbanded and became the 49th. I served with the 7th Duke of Wellington regiment through France, Belgium and Holland.

In Arnhem and Elst I spent a bitterly cold winter, on patrol in whites. I didn’t wear gloves so I could handle a weapon and suffered frostbitten fingers. They are quite dead even to this day.

I was wounded by mortar shell and sent to the British hospital in Ghent for six weeks. (In the year 2000 I had an operation on my knee. The surgeon requested the notes of the original operation to remove fragments of shell carried out 60 years ago, and he got them!)

I was married in 1945. I was given 28 days’ leave and then we were meant to be going to Japan, but the atom bomb put a stop to that.

I spent the immediate post-war years (until January 1947) in Germany chasing war criminals, recovering gold, art treasures stolen from churches and museums, following up information received from local people. On 3 occasions I escorted German scientists back to England. I took one called Fusch to the US HQ in Bushy Park. I was told he changed his name to Fox and worked at Cape Canaveral.

We spent ten days as guests of the Dutch people when we went back to Arnhem to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the liberation. I also went to Caen for the 60th anniversary of the D-day landings.

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