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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the authors permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 22b: September '44 - January '45. The River Maas (Meuse) and the Ardennes. Our 1st Class Mechanic's progress.

The Army had the airborne setback at Arnhem, but reached the River Maas (Meuse) in September 1944. The MSM took Butch along with him in his jeep to Antwerp Port, to collect some supplies now the city was free. There they saw American sailors actually burning winter jackets and rubber over-boots. The jackets, sheepskin-lined, beaver-collared, looked new. What waste, even though for these sailors the European war was over, they were about to sail to the tropics to fight the Japanese.

The MSM asked if they could have a coat and pair of boots each and the Yanks told them to help themselves. So Butch got his wish!
The 133 Company crossed over into Belgium and the foothills of the Ardennes. These, visible in the distance, were not too much higher than Kinder Scout in Derbyshire, but were heavily wooded - impenetrable it had been thought, prior to 1940, by armoured columns. At a stop, Butch got talking to an R.A.O.C. captain instructor and a driver who had brought his pick-up to be repaired. He was impressed by the Sheffielder's efficient work and told him he should complete his education towards being a first class mechanic, adding that he'd be his examiner.

"It will be in two parts. First part: make me a hinge in steel. I'll be back in 90 minutes."

With the machines and steel in his Workshops' lorry, Butch used his 'savvy' to cut, turn, grind and assemble a neat four-inch steel hinge.

The instructor returned and examined it admiringly (so Butch thought) and said
"Well done, lad. You've passed first class!"

"What about the second part, sir?"

"Our Intelligence believe the Germans will counterattack through the Ardennes. There will be no second part. You're a 1st class mechanic, laddie!"

At this the captain wrote out a temporary certificate, then left.

Butch clutched it to his chest.

"A 1st class mechanic! And pay increased from seventeen shillings and sixpence (87½p) a week to twenty-one shillings! (£1.05p)-plus any fiddle money!"

He was ordered to move on to help infantry units' vehicles - alone this time, and, unusually for him, forward of 133.

The roads had become dangerously icy as he climbed uphill, so bad that infantry vehicles were slipping and slewing across the road. He helped to retrieve one, but decided it was too dangerous to go on, and pulled off to a side road that was comparatively flat, and stopped. He'd wait until 133 caught up.

Soon D.R. Billy Grills, bike skidding off the main road as he caught sight of the familiar monster lorry, came and told the first class mechanic to stay as an advance guard through the night. In view of the cold, two others would be detailed to relieve him and they would all do just one hour on guard, two off.

`Thank God for the Yanks', he thought as D.R. Billy pulled away and he pulled on his US Navy sheepskin lined, beaver-collared storm coat and his Yankee rubber over boots.

"I'll let the lads who relieve me borrow the coat and boots - what a kind little chuff I am."

He reflected that some lads he knew at home would, at this very hour, be working with molten steel, tapping furnaces or working with tongs, handling red hot bars in the rolling mills: "They'll be warm, but there again, I'm here in a foreign land looking up at the stars for twenty-one bob a week... and freezing to bloody deeath!

Thank God I've only got one hour, then it's in the cab with the engine on."

Time elapsed, he walked round and round the lorry - counted about a hundred times, looked at his watch: "Christ, two hours have gone".

He sat in the cab for a long while, tried to have a nap... the sods, it was the desert all over again. They'd gone and left him. He wished Ritchie was with him. Two first class mechanics together. Could the army afford it?

He heard rumbling and low voices, and walking the short journey to the main road, was surprised to see streams of civilians, young and old, heading purposely downhill, in the moonlight, some in or alongside carts piled with possessions; one even had an armchair with a cat curled up in it. There were dogs, goats, even the occasional cow, slipping, 'slairing', as Sheffielders say, on the ice.

Intelligence, probably via Bletchley, was right. When he asked a woman in English where they were going, she said the Germans had broken through the Ardennes in a counterattack.
Ike was caught off balance by Von Rundstedt's Ardennes offensive, and British General Alexander (from Tunis to Sicily to Italy to Greece) had to send troops from Greece to help him.

It was December 1944. The main Russian offensive had stalled in the east, giving the Germans time to muster a force from the ruin of their armies defeated in Normandy. They surprised everyone by the major counterattack on 16th December 1944 with twenty divisions, seven of which armoured - the feared Panzers. These included their `Tiger' tanks, which had been more than a match for the Russian T34 on the vast Russian Plains, with the superior 88mm guns firing much greater distances. In the Ardennes though they were not manoeuvrable enough, especially their new King Tigers. Bridges had to be strengthened, they had to have greater support units, fuel etc. than the standard tanks and there were tales later of SS troops abandoning them and resorting to hand to hand fighting.

The German aim was for Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army to cross the Maas (Meuse) near Liege and make for Antwerp and for Manteuffel's 5th Panzer Army to sweep wide over the Maas between Namur and Dinant, then into Brussels.

In fact neither army crossed the Maas - Dietricht was stopped near Stavelot half a kilometre from a vast fuel dump. Manteuffel simply ran out of fuel, but they succeeded in cutting the US front in half and Ike gave command of the whole northern sector to Montgomery, to the fury of his own generals.

That, in a nutshell, is why Butch found himself driving slowly downhill among the civilians, with an old lady sitting next to him looking eternally grateful, but unable to express her thanks in English apart from the two words she knew - `Tommy' and `Churchill'. Her daughter, who had been pushing a cart with meagre belongings, had begged him to give her old and infirm mam a lift. She herself was in the back of the lorry with their meagre belongings, but minus the cart, clinging to one of the machines.

133 had not forgot him, but they'd forgotten that he'd gone on ahead and Billy Grills had forgotten to tell them. Butch was usually a `tail-end Johnny' as a consequence of his job.

Eventually he caught them up and resumed his purpose in life; they crossed the Maas and made their way towards the small Belgian town of Maaseijk.

Near the town they stopped, sheltered by trees from German view, for supposedly just an overnight stop, but they were there four nights.

Most of the lads slept in the back of their lorries, nicely stretched out. With all the machinery in theirs, Butch let Ritchie stretch out in the cab while he slept underneath. After four nights he approached Captain Mascoid and complained:
"Sir, my trousers are green with mildew."

The army, including 133, had set up an HQ/hospital in the town with adjacent cookhouse, and Captain Mascoid got our Workshop lorry crew digs in a cafe, to the envy of the other lads.

That night, scrubbed and fed and in a comfortable bed at last, Butch couldn't sleep... Was it too comfortable, used as he was to roughing it? Was it thoughts of home?

Or was it the heavy footsteps clumping up and down the stairs all night, laughter, girls', women's, lads' and men's voices, speaking and shouting in French, Flemish, even English?..

Next morning he approached the Captain again: "Sir, you put us in a brothel!"

"So what are you grumbling at, Reid?" was the ex-ranker's comment, but he got a sergeant to check, and as a result, got Butch and Ritchie billeted with a telephone engineer, his wife and family.

This was good but the nights in the hills and under the lorry had taken their toll and Butch got an abscess in his nose. A medical orderly took him to the army hospital, passing the cook Cheeseborough's billet on the way. The `A' platoon cook had been promoted and inflicted upon the officer's mess as sergeant cook. He was off duty, standing outside his billet, hands behind his back and didn't acknowledge Private Reid. Butch thought he had a `serves you right for my trousers episode' attitude about him.

The abscess was lanced and as he passed Cheesborough's pog again, the sergeant cook called him over. He'd been waiting and got him a pint of hot tea and a large steak sandwich.

Can't you misjudge people? From then on they were good friends.

Stalemate on the Maas. Fraternisation

Monty had reinforced points at which he correctly guessed the Germans wished to cross the Maas, but in his cautious way he did not begin his attack from the north until 3rd January 1945.

Meanwhile there was a bit of a stalemate at Maaseijk. German supply lines had been heavily bombed and their armies were short of fuel, Allied air forces outnumbered the Luftwaffe, but the German Army was like a wounded beast - still dangerous, though they must have realised that they couldn't win.

The main bridge over the Maas at Maaseijk had a twenty-four hour guard at each side. British troops were on the West bank, German on the East. One evening when 133 were mounting the guard, Butch passed by with Brotherstone and Powell to find Wheeler there, defending democracy. Powell shouted that he looked "like a frozen turd standing there. Move around man, show the Jerries how smart we are".

"Tha looks like Lilli Marlene under 'gas lamp". Butch was amused but he immediately picked up interest when Wheeler said the Germans were willing to swap their tinned ham for our corned beef.

Somebody pointed out that Lieutenant Baker had warned against fraternisation, giving or selling rations to the Germans.

"We're not giving or selling, we're swapping."

Even while uttering this comment, Butch was off like the clappers and came back with a dozen tins of corned beef in a cardboard box from Cheeseborough's stock.

As if on cue a German soldier came towards the middle of the bridge. "Hey Tommy, hey Johnny, corn-ed beef? Ve hev pork for exchange."

Tins were exchanged in the middle of the bridge.

There was a regular exchange of German ham and British corned beef too by night boat patrols from each army, which theoretically should pass each other and check each other’s bank for military activity. In reality the boats met in the middle of the river, food was exchanged as well as fags and schnaps, and then each would return to their own side to get some kip.

Wheeler asked Butch to show him the cafe he'd first been billeted in, and the following evening, found them enjoying a coffee and the company of a lady of the night who joined their table uninvited. She was out to lure them with her long black hair and tight white dress with a slit to upper thigh, but unfortunately for her, she coupled her good looks and innocent expression with a surprising stream of vulgarities pronounced in a guttural Flemish accent.
"You come with me Tommiesh, both of you, and I'll make you bounce sho high, you'll hit the effing sheiling."

Wheeler, the veteran of Sousse's Ack Ack Annie, collapsed laughing at her graphic words, Butch too, spluttering in his coffee, and her chance was lost. She altered tack.

"Shee dose American sholdiers jusht going out? They are German troopsh checking on you British."

"They sounded like real Yanks to me."

"I wish they were real Yanks. I'd get shome business. They are Americanborn Germansh. - I'll have a drink for that informashion. I won't get anything elsh I can see".

They bought her a very overpriced drink and she left their company muttering to herself.

Pr-BR

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