大象传媒

These chapters summarise two interviews with George Bailey, with his daughter Margaret Lole and his son-in-law Bryan Lole present. This chapter covers the channel crossing on D-Day and George's earlier experiences as a sapper in Europe.

(Margaret) You were lucky. What about that time when you went on the ship, over to France? Hit a mine, didn't you?
(George) Oh ah, a underwater mine.
They put us on a boat called the Prince Leopold, one of the old Belgian ferries, and twelve o'clock at night, the two engineer companies were on this boat, my company included. Anyway ... I shall have to slip that.
They took us over, twelve o'clock at night. The signal went up and the convoy went over the Channel, from England to France. Seven o'clock that morning, a bugle was sounding in the bottom of the boat for everybody to get up, get dressed ... and the mine ... it went against the side of the boat. That's what happened. It was exciting, that was. No boats at all, there was just our boat sinking, it had broke its back.
The man on the microphone said "This is your captain speaking. When we give you the order to abandon ship, undo your boots and yer haversack, and jump overboard. Well, by a stroke of genius, it didn't happen.
(Margaret) You were rescued, weren't you?
(George) Yeh, the ferries were ...
(Margaret and Bryan) They picked you up on another ferry, didn't they? And took you back.
(George) Yeh.
(Jim) That was before your ferry had gone down?
(George) We transferred. They got a plank, I forget how wide it was, and then spots all round the deck were picked out, and were marked straight away for being a parking point. I was second man off.
(Margaret) I'd be the first one off, wouldn't you?
(Bryan) This was two days after D-Day by the way. It wasn't actually D-Day, it was just after D-Day.
(George) That was the second one.
(Margaret) It did, it happened twice to him.
(George) It happened twice, yeh.
(Jim) Were you all in your bunks when ...
(George) ... lying on the floor ...
(Jim) ... when the captain actually made this announcement?
(George) Lying on the floor, and we'd already been told to undo our boots.
When we transferred, it worked like ... the Navy were marvellous. The one that came up to our boat was a destroyer, and the other that were going on was a transport.
He said "Now lads, take it easy. We're going to try to get you all off if we can", but the swell of the sea was going up twelve foot, then going down again, with the swell of the water.
Anyway, they got us on board the destroyer, and there was no room for anybody else ... it was jam-packed. And they brought us in to Portsmouth.
Well when we got to Portsmouth, there was great big convoys of double-decker buses, corporation buses, waiting for us, so they took the two companies of men off and ... they had to pass a doctor, there was ten of us. Being first in the queue, I was one of the first, so there as ten of us had to be inspected by the medical.

(Jim) You say a couple of companies of men. How many men would there be in a company?
(George) Well ... there again, you've got me.
Because with it being a company of lacks-a-daisical kind, you know ... "You twenty men will come here this morning" ... we'd go down and we'd be sorted out for summat else, but I should say ... about forty.
(Jim) Yeh ... so there'd be about a hundred men in the first ship that was sunk under you, apart from the sailors, that is.
(George) We never lost any men on those ships.
(Margaret) No.
(George) I say, when we'd been inspected and transported down to camp ...
When we were doing this sort of thing, it seemed so normal to us. Then, twelve o'clock that night, ten coaches were all lined up ready waiting, because they picked us up, took us back to Southampton and sorted us out in tents. Then in the middle of the night, there were more marched down the street, goodness knows what it was. I never did know why we were there.
Marched down the street, there was another boat waiting for us. Same kind of boat, same weight, same amount of men, everything the same. So it were working properly.
(Jim) Was it another ferry, or ...
(George) It was another ferry, yeh. That one was called Apollion.
(Margaret) Apollo.
(George) Something like that ...
And there was no argument ... as soon as the boat filled up, we were moving off. They moved us off, and then in the middle of the night they stopped half way across. They were waiting there for the next morning, somewhere around seven, so they could pick everyone ...
But it was one of the most marvellous sights you could ever see. It were a wonderful sight to see, hundreds of all kinds of boats, and they were all lined up, and all travelling nice and slowly across.
(Margaret) That would have been Dunkirk, was it?
(George) No, Normandy. Dunkirk had gone.
(Jim) Could you hear any kind of fighting from the beaches when you were going in? Could you hear any ...
(George) You could hear that.
The only thing you'd got to get it, was the heavy stuff and the soft. When our people put a barrage up, they used the big heavy guns, same with the Navy, the Navy got big guns on theirs.
They couldn't stop, they had to go up. Right round from the south of the coast, right up. They couldn't turn round, they'd got to go all the way up through, then turn round and come back.
(Jim) How far up did they go?
(George) Well, they went out of sight. We were getting worried about one thing or another ...
(Jim) So all these big battleships were steaming north then back down south again.
(George) That's right. Yeh.
(Jim) What about aerial support? Were there lots of planes flying over from ... dropping bombs?
(George) Yeh, when they attacked ... when the fun and games started.
(Jim) But you were a couple of days behind that.
(George) Yeh.
(Bryn) Then you got sunk again, didn't you?
(George) Yeh, we did ... we got sunk. But they didn't take us back this time. They had left us in the water.
(Jim) So you were sunk three times.
(Bryn and Margaret) Twice.
(Bryn) Mined once, and we think it was a torpedo in the second. We don't know for sure, but he was sunk twice.
(Jim) What happened the second time you were sunk? Were you picked up by a boat, or ...
(George) Yeh.
There was boats picking us up, but instead of putting us back in the sea, we landed on the coast, so we were at Enfleur. There was one ... there was only two days between it, and that two days, we was sitting on the cliff, watching the great big warships, battering the German artillery on the coast.
(Margaret) That was a sight, then, wasn't it.
(Bryan) You ended up with the Canadians, didn't you?
(George) Oh yeh.
Well, we went up to Caen, to the big city of Caen, and just when we thought we were going to be a sunbathing expedition, the three lorries come, they wanted all the rubble they could get. Well, we found they wanted this rubble to fill the shell-holes with.
(Jim) So your two company weren't in any sort of general command, they were just being used as dogsbodies?
(George) That's right. That's how it actually did work.
Yes, they got us on this road, and went back to the city again, and it was a little fishing port, Enfleur is, it's a storage place now.
(Jim) What was the name of it?
(George) Enfleur.
(Margaret) In Holland?
(George) No, this would be France. And once they got us there, they sorted us out.
Working with the Canadians was a pleasure. We could do what we liked as long as we did it ???.
(Margaret) Yes, there's a photograph in the book where he's with the Canadians
(George) Oh, I suppose, today, it's the same.
We stood on the ??? of this cliff and we could see across the bay, a town going up in smoke, and it was Le Havre.
We got to Le Havre, there was so many thousand Germans ... they give up, 'cause of the bombardment, and we come back to the river again, where the river meets the sea, at Enfleur.
There was a big convoy of ... not guys ... ??? We got, like a jeep, two ??? fastened to the front, same at the back. All of the four men, there was four men to a jeep.
I said to ... "What's the rush? What are you ??? for?" He says "You'll know before morning", and he never told me, and it was the joining of the Canadian ... us helping them, with our ??? passing the coast.
We travelled all the way up to north-west Germany, by-passing all the ports and coasts.
(Jim) What kind of jobs did you have to do for the Canadians when you were travelling up to Germany? What did they have you doing?
(George) Well that's the 'musing thing about it. They warn't so much bothered about us as about themselves, well, they that worked with us.
And it'd be a bridge. We had a great obstacle, I was in France, Belgium and the other. We'd see a river, water. I took control of the boat in northern France, and the speed of the water was ... when the tide changed, so the movement of the water changed, and I had to be at the back end, in case anybody dropped of the bridges, to pick 'em up.
There was four on my boat, four on the other ... that was all a spare time job.
It all plays its ... we travelled along, and "Watch out, there's so-and-so to the left or right." You'd keep yer eyes open, in case they were waiting for yer.
(Margaret) You went through Holland, didn't you, dad?"
(George) Yeh, but that was a similar kind of job, you know.
(Jim) ???
(George) Just water and sludge.
(Jim) Did they actually flood any part of Holland to try and stop the advance? Because that's one of the things you'd think of them doing, isn't it? Actually open some of the dykes.
(George) Well, they never kept us on the coast itself, we were always put back-ends of it.
(Margaret) Where was it, Arnhem? The bridge at Arnhem?
(Bryan) You went to Narnvagan, didn't you?
(George) Neimwagan (pronounced Nymvagan).
(Margaret) Saw a lot of dead soldiers
(George) Yeh. Arnhem, Enskedy, then to the rocket site, the Germans had a rocket site, a pine forest, and they got these sliding ramps. The bomb went up the ramp to give it a chance take height ... fer distance.
(Jim) What, these were the V-1s or V-2s or something?
(George) That's right. It was only a shoot, it was only a slide ... ran like a ramp ... we call 'em ramps. The Germans, soon as they left the ???, they were finished then. There warn't any more ramps.
(Margaret) 'Cause you saw all the damage in the woods, didn't you, when you went through Holland?
(George) Yeh. We learnt a few lessons.
(Margaret) All the forests were flattened, weren't they?
(George) Yeh.
(Jim) Was that the bombing?
(Bryan) No, that was the army ...
(Margaret) ... shelling. When they were holding the bridge at Arnhem.
(Bryan) He told us that it was the shelling at Arnhem and that it just flattened all the forests. Just didn't exist anymore.
(Margaret) Just the cathedral left, wasn't it? Just a few buildings and the ...
(Bryan) He said there was a big church in the middle of Arnhem. He said that's the only thing he could remember being left standing.
(George) I remember the cathedral at Caen. They were all Sisters of Mercy, and they'd shelled the place, they moved a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the baby, and it had moved it. It was with ??? base on the ???. They'd ??? it, moved it, and winched it back again.
(Margaret) 'Cause after the Germans shelled it, there wasn't very much left, was there?
(George) No.
(Jim) That's in Caen. What happened to all the civilians? I mean ...
(George) You didn't know where they were.
(Jim) They just got out of the way as best they could.
(George) I was more interested in the Frenchmen. Soon as they capture them, they'd send them to us people to get them working. Everybody had to work.
(Jim) So they were put into labour crews.
(George) That's it. Labour parties, and if you'd only dropped on like I dropped on again ...
They found the wine cellars. There was these three lorries coming to the city of Caen, and there was a sergeant in charge of the lorries, he says "Fill these as quick as they come in", so we says "Right-oh."
So as soon as his back turned, one of these Frenchmen come up, and he says "You want a drink?" I says "I'd love one." He weren't my friend since school. "Help yourself, and you keep this." I says "Yes, yer on."
Oh it was a boiling-hot day, that day.
(Margaret) They were clearing the wine cellars, then.
(Jim) Who was going to have it? Was it the sergeant or the officers or ...
(George) Well, I heard about how many different wines I suppose there was. I mean ...
(Margaret) Who finished up with them, then dad? Were they sent to the camp ... the army camp?
(George) I don't know how they were.
(Margaret) No.
(George) We kept them with us as long as we could.
One mistake we made ... no friends with the nunnery.
We went to see this monument, see what we could do, and the same bloke who give us all the wines and that, come with two great big bundles wrapped up with cloth.
One was silk and one was satin ... cloth for making dresses ... well, whatever it might be what we wanted to make, and we was looking at it, and stroking it ...
'T were beautiful, and this Frenchman says "We're sending it to England for a present", when he'd no sooner got the words out a' his mouth, the two nuns come dashing down to the cathedral and started chuntering at us like goodness-knows-what.
I says "Here, tell 'em to go, or we shan't get no treat."
(Margaret) I take it, you'd taken the material out of the church, hadn't they?
(George) Yes. It belonged to the church.
(Margaret) Probably be the altar covers.
(George) Yeh, it would be. Because they did ... French people couldn't manage everything themselves.
(Bryan) That was still in Caen.
(Jim) So how long were you in Caen?
(George) Only two days.
(Margaret) A lot happened in two days.
(George) These bomb holes filled up, down this road, soon as they filled up, we were released, go somewhere else.
(Jim) So you were heading off under your own steam, then. Where did you decide to go?
(George) Well, there was either an officer, or somebody, close by ... tailing us. We twigged out that one.
There was a chateau about twenty miles above ... Le Havre way ... and he was one used to chase up and down.
There was three roads that went up North. There were three main stations in London, the attacking roads all went up to them.
(Bryan) You're going to tell them what you did in Germany?
(George) That was ???berg.
(Jim) I think we're just about running out. So if we stop it there and come back another time.
End of interview 1

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