大象传媒

During WW2 on the continent I was in the First Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, a tank Regiment equipped with flame throwers. Our Squadron was attached to the various American Armies, and we had been put on stand-by after being in action with the 9th Army. This particular time we were in a small Belgian village, and we were billeted with the civilians, one tank crew to one house. We were billeted in a "Big House" at one end of the village,and the rest of the Squadron was scattered around the village.
We were to be in the village for about a week, but nothing can be certain during a war. We parked our tank outside the house in the driveway,and that was about the only good thing about our billet. We found out
later that the German unit who had been there before us had used this house as their headquarters, and the Spinster who owned the house was used to having Officers in her house, and so didn't like having a Sergeant and four troopers there. We went to the next village on our first night there, as we had heard there was a show on for the troops, one of the crew stayed behind to write letters and as a bit of extra security even though there was a night guard on duty. We came back at about 10 o'clock and found that the house was locked up, and after banging on the door for about 20 minutes the door was opened and we were subjected to a lecture about being out at that time of night, the Germans didn't treat her in that manner,and she had to get up early to go to Mass,about 6 o'clock. She went to church about three times in the morning. Our mate who had stayed in couldn't open the door for us as she had taken the key to bed with her. She spoke very good English, but I think she learnt a few more words after that and she threatened to report us to higher authority.
We reported the incident about being locked out, and our troop officer told us to find somewhere else to stay. He said that the house owner would be struck off the house letting list and would be classed as hostile, and so wouldn't have any more soldiers billeted there. One of our crew could speak a bit of French so he and the Sergeant went around the village looking for somewhere to stay. The only things we took into the house were our bedding, washing materials and personal weapons. Wewer told by the Old Maid that we couldn't take our guns into the house when we first arrived there, but obviously we ignored that. The rest of our equipment was left on the tank, as we had to be ready for a quick getaway if necessary. We had our meals in the village hall did maintenance on the tank and had a nice easy time.
It wasn'tlong before new accommodation was found, an old farmhouse on a side road. It was a double-fronted cottage with the entrance door in the centre, but to get to it you had to go in between two large heaps of manure. The front door was always open as it led straight through to the yard at the back which had no exit except through the house. If the farmer wanted to take his animals to the fields (he had one horse and one cow) they went through the farmhouse and along the road for about half a mile. In the kitchen where the farmer and his wife spent most of the time, there were fowls and ducks wandering about all over the place, on the table and chairs, and if the farmer wanted to sit down, he would just knock the poultry out of the way.At either side of the
passage there were rooms, and we were given one of these which had the door locked
so that the farmyard animals couldn't get in, and, surprise, surprise, there were six
single beds, all with blankets. When we were at the "Big House" we had to sleep on
the floor on a 'bag of straw', a palliasse I think we called them, and they are not
comfortable as any ex-service personnel knows...................Both the farmer and his wife were old, but they were the most friendly people we had met and they couldn鈥檛 do enough for us. We managed to communicate with one another with the help of our mate who could speak a bit of the language, and we found out then that it was a 鈥榖it鈥� as well. We didn鈥檛 go out in the evenings after we had got settled in the farmhouse because we were more interested in these two old Belgians and their stories about the German occupation. It was then that we heard about the 鈥淏ig House鈥� and we were told that the old maid was a German sympathiser and she was disliked through-out the whole village. As I have said before, we had proper beds to sleep in, but didn鈥檛 ask where they has come from, because it could have been that the old couple were the same as the old maid, friendly with who-ever was the occupying army and so these beds could have been supplied by the Germans. We reckoned that if our country had been occupied, there would have been a lot of fraternizing with the enemy to make life as easy as possible and so we didn鈥檛 blame them.
We had parked our tank on the road outside but as we had been there for about another four days, we had run out of jobs to do on it. One morning we got up as usual to go for breakfast at 8 o鈥檆lock but found no-one in the village hall, every-one had gone although we could hear the tanks moving in the next streets. Our Sergeant ran round to where the tanks were driving away, while we went back to the farmhouse for our equipment and the tank. We soon loaded it up, said a quick 鈥榞oodbye鈥� to the farmer and his wife, and went to look for Harry who was coming back for us. Apparently, no-one had thought about us as we had changed billets and so every-one had expected some-one else to tell us that we had urgent orders to move. We were the last tank to leave the village but couldn鈥檛 get lost as the tank tracks left their marks on the road. We didn鈥檛 know at the time, but it was the start of the Ardennes push, but what we did know was that there wasn鈥檛 a United States flag showing in any of the upstairs windows, and as some-one remarked, the villagers were probably getting the German flags ready to hang out, most definitely the OLD MAID. The village was occupied by the enemy a few days after, and we all hoped that the farmers were alright.

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