大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Lincolnshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Raymond Smith and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Smith fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Any time off was usually spent looking around and acquiring a taste for Cognac. Money took quite some time to reach us and we were selling commodities such as soap, tobacco and cigarettes. One day off we paid a visit to the French town of Lille, had a look around and called in an Estaminet or two and had a drink. Didn鈥檛 think much of the red wine you could buy cheaply. Our stay at St Omer came to an end when we were ordered to Gravelines, a village several kilometres from Dunkirk. The allied forces were now in Holland, and the port of Dunkirk with several thousand Germans had been left surrounded, rather than delay our advance in trying to capture it. The purpose of our squadron going there was to give us front line experience. We were now a 鈥楩ield Squadron鈥� in other words, Infantry. Arriving at Gravelines which was in ruins, we parked the vehicles along a narrow roadway a few hundred yards outside the village. Marched into the village, we were detailed to make our billets in the ruined houses. This we did trying to make ourselves as comfortable as possible by collecting beds from other ruined houses. We spent a week on duty in forward gun posts, withdrawing to the village houses after dawn. My first effort at this was in a gun post made of sandbags and bails of straw situated outside a cemetery, along with a soldier. We had been detailed to spend each night during darkness with British army chaps because they were experienced. The chap I was with kept me awake during the night by telling me that a mad German Major crept around the gun posts and, finding chaps asleep, cut their throats. Whilst that did not make me feel brave, at least it kept me awake!

My first experience of shellfire occurred when a barrage of German shells flattened the houses opposite. We were under our beds very quickly and before the last explosion. An amusing episode, or so myself and several makes thought at the time, took place in the village where we found a small dump of German 9 mm ammo. Knowing this would fit our sten guns, we loaded and belted away at chimney pots. Suddenly a British Army Sergeant appeared and asked us why we were firing. We replied 鈥渇or Practice鈥�. He took our names and numbers but nothing came of it.

We left Gravelines all safe and sound and travelled to Ghent in Belgium where we stayed overnight, proceeding next morning to the airfield at Helmond in Holland where I met up with a friend, Jack Fairbanks, again. The stay here was very short, a matter of two or three weeks. A mate of mine and I were invited to the home of a Dutchman and his wife who expressed their gratitude at being liberated.

April, and the allies had made the Rhine crossing and after about the second day, the squadron received its order to cross. The ruined buildings were still smoking in the immediate vicinity of the river. Our best airfield in Germany was Rheine Hopstein, where we found ourselves billeted in tents. Flight Sergeant Ted Palmer must have been an electrician in civvy street because he soon had all our tents rigged with electric lights powered through a German portable generator he had found. Being only a short distance from the front line and in enemy territory, patrols were detailed around the airfield. Bicycles were commandeered from various German sources and the patrol of the airfield perimeter made on these. I found myself on one or two of these patrols which passed through a farm. Stopping there and having a look around, we found on successive days, a shabbily dressed young woman who we tried to converse with but we could not understand her. One evening we were called out to the farm fully armed with an interpreter. When we arrived there we found a large fire burning and rousing the family, searched the house. We found nothing suspicious but took the farmer to the RAF Police HQ. He was later released but it emerged they young woman already mentioned was employed as slave labour by the farmer.

Her living quarters were under a stack of bales of straw which had been made into a room upon which loose hay had been piled so forming a haystack. She had deliberately set the stack alight so as to draw attention to her situation. As none of the chaps could understand her when we met at the farm we felt sorry for the plight she was in because we could have helped earlier. The young woman was classed as a displaced person and was sent to one of the many camps for such people and from where she could be transported home if she desired..

The stay at Rheine Hopstein was very short and then in May came the unconditional surrender of Germany. At another nearby airfield I found a twin engined plane which I could not identify and later learned it was a twin jet propelled ME262 fighter plane, which, if the Germans had been able to manufacture in sufficient numbers, could have played havoc with the allied fighters and bombers.

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