大象传媒

THE REICHSWALD FOREST

During the 鈥滲attle of the Bulge鈥�, our Division, which was part of Montgomery鈥檚 Second British Army, had been put under the command of the US First and then US Ninth Army in the battle to repel the invaders from the Ardennes. When that affair came to an end, we were moved back up to Holland to prepare to invade Germany through the Reichswald Forest which contained a section of the Siegfried Line which was that country鈥檚 main line of defence. To our surprise, we found that we would come under the command of yet another Army, in this case the 1st Canadian one! You can imagine that in later years, I took pride in being able to tell people that I had served in the British, American and Canadian Armies - and that in a space of only two months!

We didn鈥檛 like the Reichswald; it was a thick forest, mainly of pine trees mostly close together and there was an eerie silence all the time 鈥� except, that is, when we weren鈥檛 being subjected to heavy artillery fire in which the shells tended to explode in the trees over our heads and causing heavy casualties. Once, having spent the night in my slit trench, I found that the tree beside it, which had formerly been a very high one, had been reduced to a stump only about three feet high.

Sometimes, however, you just had to laugh. On one occasion I had leapt into a ditch when I thought I was being shot at and I felt a sharp pain in my left buttock and thought 鈥淢y God, I鈥檝e been hit!鈥� I put my hand down to the injured place and found that it warm and sticky . 鈥淚鈥檓 bleeding all right鈥� I thought and started to wonder:-

a) Where鈥檚 the man who shot me?
b) How badly am I wounded?
c) Where鈥檚 the Platoon Sergeant to take over command?
d) How can I possibly explain where I am wounded?
e) Why is there a strong smell of rum in this ditch?

RUM? Then I remembered that my Father had given me a hip flask as a 鈥済oing away鈥� present and it had been in my hip pocket full of rum. I had obviously landed on it and the neck had broken off! No blood; no wound; no cushy time in a military hospital being crooned over by admiring nurses; no sickleave. Oh well, better get on with it and capture Germany instead!

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