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ARMISTICE

Immediately after VE-Day, we were moved to a village not far from Hamburg where we were to guard some barns into which the weapons of the surrendered German troops had been collected and stored. Nobody was really interested in them, so we were to enjoy a quiet time after the previous few weeks of fighting which had been .hard going. It was a pretty little village in which I was able to find comfortable billets for my Company in the houses there. We were actually able to sleep on beds, have baths and have a much-needed rest We brought out our best battle dress, the Officers and Pipers put on their kilts and we began to look like proper highland soldiers again.

All was going well for us until one day, one of my Platoon was accidentally killed. We buried him in a small grassy area at the head of the village, carefully recording the exact position so that the War Graves Commission could eventually transfer him to a British Military Cemetery. We did our best to hold a proper burial ceremony conducted by our Chaplain, with a guard of honour, a bugler to sound the Last Post and a piper to play a lament.

The next morning, we found that the villagers had secretly put lots of flowers on the grave. We were amazed that this had happened only a few days after the war in Europe had ended and it proved to us that the British Army’s treatment of the German civilians was somewhat better than that which had been meted out by the German soldiers to the people of France, Holland and Belgium and all the other countries which they had been occupying. Furthermore, it was a sign that there had been a real armistice and that the people of our two countries could begin to live together in peace — and so it has turned out. Eventually, the weapons were all taken away and we went off to more permanent quarters in Cuxhaven., but we were sorry to leave the little village where we sadly had to leave one of our men but where we were proud to become accepted as peacetime soldiers.

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