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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ WW2 People’s War site by Mrs M A Nallen of St Benedict’s Catholic High School on behalf of Mrs Groom and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

War Stories- Sam Wallis8F

This story is about Sam’s granddad and is written by his grandmother.

Sam’s granddad was a soldier in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry. He served in Italy landing at Anzio and working his way to Rome to capture the capital. Whilst in Italy he was involved in the Battle of Monte Cassino, the mountain with the monastery of St Benedict’s at its summit. He also fought in the Middle East and helped keep the peace between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine.

‘I met Sam’s granddad in 1942, I worked in Woolworths in the Bullring in Birmingham. I worked in the café. Once a week the café gave free meals to all the wounded soldiers. There were around one thousand soldiers at a time, of mixed nationality, some English, some Canadian, some Africans and some from the Netherlands.

After a while we started to go out together, then in 1943 he had to go to Italy. I wrote every day and so did George. Then I did not hear from him for weeks. I thought he had been killed like my brother Neville, who died on his birthday aged 20. Eventually I received a letter from a hospital in Italy close to Monte Cassino. It said he had been wounded trying to capture the mountains from the Germans who were on the top of the mountain, the soldiers assumed the Germans were also in the monastery. Our men were at the bottom. George was climbing up the mountain when a German soldier hit him over the head with a rifle butt. He was knocked out and temporarily paralysed. After some time he was found and tied to a mule. All the wounded were taken down the mountain this way. The mules struggled down the mountain down a narrow track. Many of the men fell to their deaths as the mules tumbled off the mountain when they lost their footings. George was in hospital for six months. He came home in 1946 when we got married.

A short time later he was redeployed to Palestine where he helped to repatriate the Jews from the concentration camps. This affected him greatly. He had to hose pipe the people to ‘delouse’ them, there were hundreds of them. They were starving. They were skin and bones, Our soldiers gave them the food they had and gave chocolate to the children. They were house in tents for shelter and they were supplied with clothes and blankets.

George came home finally in 1947.

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