大象传媒

This is the final extract taken from the personal memoirs of Major Desmond Scarr. Entitled "recollections" the memoirs were written in 1989 and distributed in hardback form to close family and friends.

Promotion

It was during our stay on the Waal at Dreumel that I was promoted to Captain and took over as second-in-command of B Squadron. Sad as I was to leave 6 Troop I welcomed the change of role and could not help selfishly believing that my chances of survival had improved- now I would operate a couple of hundred yards behind the leading elements instead of right out in the front. I was clearly no hero and that evening got rather drunk in company with my squadron leader Major Tom Carter, with whom I was to work closely for the rest of the war.

In enemy territory

In the middle of November the regiment moved south with 30 Corps and there followed a period in which we acted as infantry. The British Army had just penetrated the German frontier and the regiment was given a small section of the front line near Geilenkirchen to hold, pending further advances. It was very First World War stuff requiring us to live in trenches and dugouts patrolling forward from time to time. It was good to be operating on German soil at last, but it was a miserable place.

Kenneth Scarr

At about this time my brother Kenneth Scarr became the third Scarr brother to join the regiment. As second officer of a troop he had command of 7 Bren gun carriers. Douglas was at regimental HQ, commanding the anti tank troop. Three brothers (from a total of five) in one regiment in war is perhaps not a good idea and was justified only by the very wide frontage on which we operated. Kenneth was in C Squadron, and more of his war later. Meanwhile he had one adventure that resulted from being the obvious choice for the public relations job of conducting an ENSA entertainments party during their visit to the regiment鈥檚 area.

Driving forward with his charges in a bus one day, Kenneth found himself surrounded by derelict houses on a very deserted stretch of road, with a signpost pointing to a village which he knew was still in German hands. He had repeated my Normandy nonsense of very nearly driving straight through the front line when not intending to do so and quickly withdrew. Needless to say Kenneth made quite a story out of it to us later but he was careful not to tell his troupe and dancers what had happened!

Forward troops were repeatedly exhorted by commanders to set up road blocks to prevent visitors (who were often senior officers) overshooting and ending up in German hands, and there were cases where this was the unfortunate outcome. In fact the signposting of units and HQ was superb, given that the army had by 1944 developed a very sophisticated heraldic system for identifying who was who, and where they could be found. But in a fluid situation the system could not always prevent mishaps.

Belgium and the Battle of the Bulge.

We continued to hold part of the line just beyond Geilenkirchen at Suggerath until 18th December. At that moment the Germans launched a major attack against the Americans in the Ardennes. This attack made rapid progress and we, as part of 30 corps, were ordered south to protect the crossings over the river Meuse. B Squadron ended up in the centre of Liege guarding the main bridge over the river. All this was much more exciting (and comfortable) than holding waterlogged trenches and we awaited developments with interest. Stories were rampant that the Germans were sending ahead of them groups of men dressed in American uniforms and speaking good English, so we were on the alert for such ruses. We spent that Christmas in Liege untroubled except by a stream of V1 bombs which invariably seemed to cut their engines when directly overhead.

In the event, the German advance was pushed back before it reached Liege and by the New Year we found ourselves again in the North holding part of the line somewhere near Heerlen. We were billeted in that town and could not have been better looked after by the Dutch people.

Early in January 1945 Kenneth, Douglas and I took two days leave together, the highlight of which was a champagne celebration of the birth of Gillie, Douglas鈥� daughter, news of which had just reached him. Back in the line we spent January in our static positions and on the 31st moved back towards Nijmegen ready to take part in the battle to clear the west bank of the Rhine.

Onto the Rhine

This battle began on 7th February 1945 in miserably wet conditions with many roads flooded to a depth of several feet. It lasted until mid March, and at times the going was every bit as tough as in Normandy. One of my first recollections of this phase was entering what had been the town of Cleeve, the place that provided Henry V111 with one of his wives, Anne. It was the first major town in Germany to be taken by the British and it had been given the full treatment. It seemed to me that hardly a stone remained on stone. I recalled a conversation with a German airman, a prisoner I was escorting in 1940, and his prophecy of aerial destruction on British cities so I felt a grim satisfaction at the sight of these ruins. Of German civilians there was no sign and I imagined that they had fled in good time.

Kenneth is wounded

As second-in-command of the squadron I sat in a command vehicle, an armoured half-track, filled with wireless equipment and maps. I controlled the forward radio link to the four troops, a total of about 20 outstations that could only work under strict discipline since only one person could talk at a time. I also acted as an outstation on the Regimental network so could hear the messages passed by other Squadrons to RHQ. Thus one morning I heard C Squadron report that one of their officers had been wounded 鈥渂ut not seriously鈥�. I knew at once from the codeword that it was Kenneth and felt grateful for the additional words that I knew had been put in for the benefit of Douglas and myself.

Since B Squadron were not themselves heavily involved at that moment I took leave to try and find Kenneth. After a short while I traced him to an advanced dressing station nearby. This was in a large barn and seated round the walls were dozens of wounded men. After a while I picked out Kenneth who greeted me cheerfully although clearly in some pain. He had been hit on the thumb by a bullet and had received some other near misses, one of which had passed through a tin of cigarettes in his trouser pocket. Kenneth was upset because at the same time as he was wounded, his sergeant, Sergeant Darvell MM, Had been killed. After a short talk I had to return to B Squadron and Kenneth was sent down the chain and ended up back in England. It was nice not to have to worry about him after that.

Command of B Squadron

After a grim struggle against retreating German paratroopers 43rd Division cleared the Reichswald and the country to the East. Now and again the situation allowed for the Recce Regiment to slip through and find out what lay ahead. Early in March Tom Carter took three weeks leave and I took command of the Squadron. My first operation was a curious night advance on foot. My orders, given out in a torch lit cowshed, were memorable in that one of the troop leaders, a great friend of mine, M.A.James, had returned that afternoon from leave. He was finding it difficult to attune from the fleshpots of Brussels to the nasty realities of war! Soon after the advance began I decided that I would go forward, in pitch dark, and see how we were progressing. A few hundred yards on I came to a crossroads where there stood one of the regiment鈥檚 light reconnaissance cars. I opened the door, which was ajar, and put my head in and found myself looking straight into the faces of two dead men, both sitting bolt upright in their seats. Their car had been shot up earlier that day and had burnt out. Whilst I was recovering from this unpleasant surprise I heard footsteps approaching from behind and these turned out to be my own troops who, far from being ahead of me, had been well to the rear. Another example of the fog of war.

We were all getting very tired by this time and there was little time for rest. After 3 days and nights in which I had no sleep at all we were given a short break. I keeled over and slept for 24 hours. But the German resistance west of the Rhine was crumbling and in due course we found ourselves lining observation posts on the river, awaiting the crossing of the last obstacle between us and the heart of Germany. We crossed the Rhine on 26th March, over a sapper built bridge at Rees.

To The Baltic

Although there were several weeks to go, slogging across the North German Plain, little or nothing remains in my mind from this period except a craving for sleep. VE Day, 7th May, found us just south of Bremen, exhausted and not much able to celebrate the occasion. But we were glad to be alive and did our best, eating, drinking and singing a few songs.

Keeping the Peace

There followed a year in which the regiment formed part of the occupation forces, B Squadron was stationed in the village of Sulze, a few miles north of Celle, itself a few miles north of Hanover. In August had come news of the end of the Japanese War, a development extremely welcome to all of us in Germany. We did not immediately understand the nature of nuclear weapons but even when we did it did not alter our view that their use in those circumstances was fully justified. Kenneth was in India at the time and would have been much involved in any prolongation of the war in the Far East, as indeed we all might. But we were spared that.

In November I was promoted to Major and took over command of the Squadron. Our operational role was the maintenance of law and order since there was no other authority in the land for this purpose. The Germans themselves gave no trouble but the countryside was full of displaced persons, some of whom banded together to cause mischief. They were mainly Poles who had an abiding hatred of the Germans and in our area a few isolated farms were attacked and those inside killed. So we found ourselves giving protection to the Germans against the marauding Poles, an odd reversal of where we stood in 1939.

One day, in late autumn, a Pole was brought to my office in Sulze having been arrested on suspicion of murder on the lines described above. After a short interrogation I left him in my office with an armed escort in order to telephone RHQ. While I was doing this I heard a scuffle and returning to my office found it empty. I then heard a long burst of sten gun and going out to the street met one of the guards, a young trooper who said, 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry Sir, I had to shoot him鈥�. He was pale as a sheet so I said, 鈥� Don鈥檛 worry. You were only doing your duty鈥�. He had in fact hit the escaping prisoner at a range of 50 yards, which was remarkable shooting for a sten gun. Sadly, the Pole died almost immediately. We got the Germans to bury him in their churchyard. There was a sequel in that a few weeks later two elderly Polish men came to the office to enquire about the dead man. I explained what had happened and took them to see the grave. They seemed satisfied, although clearly saddened by what they had learned, shook my hand and left. In general our relations with the Poles were very good and they regarded us as liberators. I in turn remembered the tremendous courage of the Poles who fought on the allied side. The only difficulty in our relations in that post war period came when we failed to respond to their enquiries 鈥淲hen are you going to march against the Russians?鈥�

Our relations with the Germans were formal and in truth the area we were in was rural territory inhabited for the most parts by peasants. However, near Sulze I got to know well a German family who lived in a large house at Feuerschitzenbostel. The chatelaine was a charming woman, Christel von Harling, who spoke excellent English and made us welcome. Her husband had disappeared on the Russian front and when I met her again ten years later he was still missing.

My last memory of this period was a flight in a light airplane (an Auster) with Douglas that took us over Cologne. The damaged but still standing cathedral stood out in a wasteland pitted for miles around by enormous bomb craters. It was like looking down on the moon at close quarters and the scene left me appalled and depressed.

Demobilisation

In the early months of 1946, with demobilisation speeding up, 43rd Reconnaissance Regiment was disbanded. Those that remained were transferred to the 14th/20th King鈥檚 Hussars and for my part I marked the first anniversary of VE day by donning my demob suit in Aldershot and after two weeks leave in Cheltenham, reported back to the Bank Of England. I was back in the same office I had left on 1st September 1939. I was to stay for only a brief period. The war was really over.

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