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Introduction

This article is submitted on behalf of Mr Jim Jolly from Cleator Moor, Cumbria who served as a gunner with the Royal Artillery during the latter half of World War Two. Jim has kindly agreed to share his wartime memories with me, that I could write about them, that they could be donated to an archive and that others could read them if they wished. The terms of “The People’s War” website have been read and understood.

In the last few weeks of 1944, while based in the Netherlands, Jim contracted jaundice and spent several weeks in a Belgian hospital. As a result, Jim’s unit lost track of him and he was ‘Reported Missing’ to his parents back home in Billericay, Essex. This article concentrates on Jim’s experiences from December 1944 until demobilisation after the war.

Posted ‘Missing’

“Our unit was part of the Allied advance that went right through Belgium and into Holland at that time of autumn 1944. Then, a strange thing happened in Holland. Of all things, I got jaundice sometime late in 1944. I was whipped away and my unit left me. They abandoned me, actually!

I was left behind, we got called out and they suddenly missed me. Because of that, I was ‘Reported Missing’ because nobody knew where I was! They had just lost track of me. What happened was they got me rushed off in a Dakota. I don’t know where it took off from now, but it flew to Brussels in Belgium.

I was in a Military Hospital there in Brussels over the Christmas period. My parents had sent cards and other things for Christmas, and they all got returned home to Essex at the time. Eventually my parents got a note saying I was ‘Reported Missing’ because nobody still knew where I was. Actually, I was quite enjoying myself having bed baths by the nurses! My parents didn’t know what the situation was over that Christmas and New Year period. I don’t know whether they thought I‘d been captured, wounded or killed. Eventually, it was sorted out but I was away from my unit about six weeks.

Escorting German POWs

By the time I came out of hospital, the Regiment had all moved on. This would have been early in 1945. When you came out of hospital, they had to find your Regiment and it took a little time. In the meantime, it was a bit embarrassing walking round Brussels. If you’ve ever seen the ‘Hospital Blue’ you would know why. It’s a bright blue jacket, bright blue trousers, a white shirt and a red tie, but you were allowed your own forage cap. So it was really embarrassing in this ‘Hospital Blue’!

The next thing after coming out of hospital, was to trace where your Regiment was. However, to get back to your own Regiment you had to go through a transit camp. This was made up of all sorts who had come out of hospital: those who had been wounded, injured, lost or been sick in hospital. Of course you still had to work!

Now, in our case, the job of the transit camp personnel was to be the escort of prisoners. We used to gather up the prisoners and put them on board a train and then escort them on board the train to take them back and they would eventually go to a prison camp. I can’t remember where the previous train had been going from or to, but the officer told us that there had been prisoners on board and a lot had just jumped from the train and got off. So, he told us, “There’s nobody going to get off this train!” I must say they didn’t. They actually had men lying on the top of the train with Bren Guns to make sure nobody got off this train.

We were inside the carriages with loaded guns to make sure everybody kept where they should be. The windows had to be kept shut because of the temptation to these German fellows to throw notes and all sort of things out of the window in the hope they would get word back to their people.

While we were travelling along with that train, the V1s, the ‘Doodlebugs’, were going over the top. They were firing them over to Britain. You should have seen these Germans looking up saying, “Mein Gott! Das ist ein V1! V1! V1!” In English, that’s, “My God! That is a V1” It was really quite funny to see the expression on their faces.

‘Super-heavy’ guns trained on Dunkirk

Eventually, they phoned my Regiment and we found that the Field Regiment had been handed on to someone else. We were re-designated to become the 61st Super Heavy Battery. What happened was that the whole Regiment came back to this country to retrain. I don’t know of anybody else who they did that to actually during the operation. They sent us to Worksop in Nottinghamshire where there was a training depot.

The whole of our Regiment had to train on these two ‘Super Heavy Guns’, which I have a photograph somewhere. It was a massive gun, almost like a Naval Gun. It was carried in two pieces. The carriage was carried by one tractor and the barrel by another. The size of the barrel itself would be the length of my living room and dining room at home. My part wasn’t actually with the guns. I was on the radio side of things.

By the time we went back overseas, it was well on into the war. Most of our troops were back into Germany. So, we weren’t sent to the Front at that point. Most of France, Belgium and Holland were all clear, but at Dunkirk and one or two other places there were pockets of Germans left. It’s never talked about much when the war is discussed, but there was a pocket of Germans left at Dunkirk.

I don’t know how many thousands they had in this ‘Dunkirk Pocket’ perhaps 15000 to 25000 troops, but they kept getting supplied by the sea. It was the only way the Germans could supply them. The Navy tried to keep the submarine supplies going in there. However, we had them pinned in by a semi-circle with British, Polish, Czech and all sorts of Allied troops.

Our guns were in De Panne, which is just over the border into Belgium. Our party took over a German bunker for our O.P. position. The guns were in De Panne, some miles back. That was where I finished up at when the war ended.

The end of the war

Funnily enough, we didn’t celebrate V.E. Day very much. There was this young girl outside, who would have been sixteen or seventeen years old. She just dashed out and said, “The war’s over!” She couldn’t believe it, but anyway that was how we found out. I went back to the area years later with my wife Mary and we saw her again, but she couldn’t remember it!

Unfortunately, we had a very nasty accident there in De Panne. It was tragic really. We were based in a garage with the vehicles. On the other side of the road all the hotel buildings had been bombed from the original ‘Dunkirk Evacuation’ as that was where all the evacuation beaches were at. All those buildings were damaged in some way, but the Germans had also mined them. There were all these unusual ‘skull and cross bone’ signs with “Achtung Minen!” written on.

One of the lads decided he wanted something for the fire in the corner of the garage, so he said he would go across there. He said these signs had been there for years. We told him he shouldn’t go in there. But anyway, he went in and got his wood and it cost him his life. He trod on a mine. There were six mines there and he found one of them. I mean, that chap went all through the war and then stepped on a mine, which he needn’t have done. There was no need to go in there at all.

Later on, in 1945, I managed to get a special licence to get married to my wife Mary. I came back home and we got married on 14th November 1945. But anyway, I had to go back to the army and I didn’t eventually leave until 6th May 1947.

‘Mopping up’ duties

Firstly, after the war ended, we went to a place in Germany, I think it was called Lintoff. We had all the ‘mopping up’ to do at the end of the war. They put us in charge of a POW camp there. It was a big camp with about 15000 German prisoners, with searchlights, tripwires and all sorts of things to keep them in. Our job was to police this camp and keep everyone confined. Of course, there were a lot of prisoners who died in the camp. Because the Germans had been so short of men at the end of the war, they had called up young sixteen year-old boys and men of sixty-five. So, some of the men in that camp were just finished. We had to bring out the dead.

We got fed up with that camp because it was in the early stages after the war and there was all this ’Non-Fraternisation’ in force. You hadn’t to have any contact with the Germans at all, and especially you couldn’t talk to them. It was terrible!

Then, it would have been about early 1946, there was a notice went up on the Notice Board saying they were looking for Military Police. So, I thought this sounded more interesting when I saw how long it was going to be until my ‘demob’ number came up. I joined the Military Police, went to this training school and joined the 53rd Provost Company and I had a very interesting time with the Military Police.

It was just the same as the civilian police except that you dealt with the military, dealing with road traffic accidents, drunks, one suicide and all sort of black market things. This was all in Germany, mainly in WĂźppertal and DĂźsseldorf.

A Black Mariah and the Black Market

So, I was all in that area of Germany just after the war ended. It was quite an interesting time because we had to escort prisoners for some of the minor War Crimes Trials. It wasn’t the major Nuremberg trial, but some of the minor ones where some officers had shot airmen coming down in their parachutes or things like that. There was this one time when there were six of them and the trial was in Wüppertal and we used the zoo. The Wüppertal zoo building was used as a court. We had to go in there daily and take the prisoners from the local jail to this court in the zoo.

Funnily enough, nobody called it a ‘kangaroo court’! But it was just the actual court where we took the German prisoners. First of all, we had to travel on the Schweberbahn, an overhead railway, which was really interesting. Because we didn’t have the transport, we were allowed to travel free anyway. However, I managed to get us a Black Mariah and how I did this was quite funny really,

I managed to catch a fellow at a petrol station who was dealing on the Black Market. It was just an off-the-cuff thing, really. I was there filling up a motorcycle with petrol and I saw this YMCA wagon coming along. I thought it strange, because I’d been over in Europe a long time by then and I hadn’t seen a YMCA wagon until then.

There was a civilian driving it and so I asked him what he was doing there. Anyway, he replied in German, « Was? Was haben Sie gesagt? » (“What? What did you say?”). Of course, I thought, “Oh, dear, it’s a German!” So, I asked to see his papers and they didn’t look right to me at all. Then, I asked him to follow me, and what he had in the back of the wagon. He replied in German again, « Nichts! Gar nichts! » (‘Nothing!’). Anyway, I asked him to open it up and it was full of Jerry cans of petrol! There were hundreds of gallons of petrol in the back of this YMCA van, so I knew there was definitely something wrong then!

Next I asked him to follow me back to the Section. It turned out, unknown to me that he was wanted by the civilian police! Apparently, he was a ‘proper lad’ for stealing vehicles. I’ll never forget the name of this fellow. It was Rolf Bass. The local police came down and they hugged me, kissed me, and couldn’t have been friendlier. They wanted to know how I had managed to catch this Rolf Bass. Anyway, I told them he was all theirs.

The result of this incident was that we had acquired hundreds of gallons of petrol, which we stored in the basement. We also had a vehicle, which we badly needed to escort prisoners. Being mechanically minded, I thought it would be really useful. I made the report out in the usual way, and sent it off. We used the petrol that we confiscated to run the vehicle. It had seating capacity down both sides of the vehicle in the back with bench seats. However, it needed a few things such as tyres, plugs and windscreen wipers. So, I went to see the local military government and they gave me a ticket to take it to a garage. After it was fixed up the vehicle became the ‘Black Mariah’ that we transported the prisoners from the jail to the court.

What happened then was that somebody, somewhere down the line reported me for using a civilian vehicle without authority and using military petrol! I’d done everything by the book, so I don’t know why they did that. Anyway, the next thing I received from Headquarters in Düsseldorf, was that I was under close arrest and I had to report to them. I asked what I had to do and I was told to put my motorbike and my kit in the back of the wagon and drive it to Düsseldorf.” So, I was up before the officer, and of course the whole thing was dismissed, but I remained in Düsseldorf after that.

However my pal Desmond, who was a ‘bit of a lad’, telephoned me asked what it was like there. He said to me, “I’ll be joining you shortly, in about a couple of days! I’m not stopping here without you.” Anyway, he turned up all right! When I asked him how he’d managed it and he said, “It wasn’t difficult I just picked an argument with the sergeant and hit him. So they sent me to Düsseldorf!” It just shows you what fellows will do! Then we finished our time out there and I was demobbed in 1947.”

Conclusion

After leaving the army, Jim began married life with Mary living in with his parents in Billericay, Essex. However, after a few years and the shortage of housing, Jim and Mary moved home to Cleator Moor, Cumbria, near Mary’s birthplace.

After retiring in 1987, Jim eventually became Secretary of the West Cumbria Branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. Since then, Jim has shared his memories about the war with schoolchildren, university students or anyone with an interest in those times. I have been privileged that Jim has shared some of those memories with me.

In June 2004 Jim led a party of the Normandy Veterans (West Cumbria Branch) to Normandy for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day. Branch members received a shield bearing the Coat of Arms of Workington, Cumbria from the Town Mayor of Workington to present as a token of friendship to the Mayor of Bayeux, Calvados, where the Branch members were based during this pilgrimage.

I am delighted to post this article on behalf of Jim. It is important that what happened during World War Two should never be forgotten and that international friendships begun in the war years should continue to develop.

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