大象传媒

There was destruction everywhere; all the villages we drove through had been destroyed.
Our target, Antwerp.
If the Germans had got there first we would have been cut off again.
That was the nearest I got to become a prisoner of war.

The Germans never got there because with Montgomery in charge of the whole area and more re-enforcements coming in, the weather clearing, and the Air Force fighting back, the Germans had to retreat. There were heavy losses on both sides, but it was a near run thing.
There we were, in Germany, and had come to the Rhine.
Once again I must praise the Royal Engineers for clearing the way for us and making pontoon bridges. The Pioneer Corps were there with their sleeves rolled up. They were using shovels more than rifles.

I crossed the Rhine.
That was a problem, by now the Germans were shelling, but they never hit the bridge, they were getting close, we could see the bombs falling all round us but never a direct hit.
That crossing was far more dangerous than when we crossed the Channel. One false move and we would have had it.
Well we did cross and entered the town of Wesel, once again, a town smashed to pieces.
There was a wrecked hotel, from whereI managed to retrieve a couple of bed sheets. That was very good as up to then I only had a single blanket, and I used them for quite some time.

Onwards to Lunenburg, Hanover, all smashed to pieces.
We all stopped.
Rumours reached us there was a concentration camp ahead of us, and that typhoid had broken out. Typhoid can't distinguish between enemy and friends. We were all inoculated, I'd had lots of injections during the war, but this was two extra ones.
The camp was Belsen. The 11th Armoured Division liberated Belsen.
There were very few of us went in because of the typhoid.
There was an un-official truce, the Germans said they were not going to surrender, but they were going to fight further away. We never fought at Belsen itself, we circled it.
We crossed the Elbe and took thousands of German prisoners and saw the pathetic site of German civilians.
We forged ahead and reached Lubeck, and liberated it. It was one of the last big towns in Germany to be freed.
We heard by radio that Hitler was dead, and knew it was just a matter of days.
By now the Germans had given up the fight and were coming to us with open arms surrendering.

During my war I spent some time on my hobby of collecting newspapers. Here I managed to obtain one of the last editions of a local newspaper just one sheet that recording the death of Hitler.
In the paper it said he had fallen in action, but we all knew differently.
He'd committed suicide.

We raced for the Baltic.
The scheme of things was to prevent the Russians from crossing the river and getting to Denmark.
We reached the Baltic but the Russians were ahead of us on the other side of the river. They didn't cross, but we could wave to them.
We had a notice, which said Courtesy demands that you salute Russian officers, and the notice showed what a Russian officer looked like.

By now I was on the Baltic and VE Day.
It was just like another day. What could we celebrate? We were not allowed to talk to the Germans, except to give them orders.
It was really upsetting to see 1000's of refugees, fleeing from the Russian troops towards us. They actually looked on us as liberators and friends. There were soldiers that looked so tired, they must have marched hundreds of miles. None of them had weapons; they must have thrown them away a long time ago, as well as their helmets, which were probably too heavy.
That was what I saw on VE Day.

We'd captured a German radio, and we heard the Churchill speech in the afternoon and the King's in the evening.
I wrote a letter to my mother telling her about the day, and I remember telling her that the King had lost some of his stutter.
We'd heard the bells of St Paul's and listened to the description of the celebrations in the streets of London, what a relief!
VE day was a completely different scene on the Baltic, in the middle of total devastation; we were still eating biscuits and warm food out of tins. Even so we were running short of supplies, and the prisoners were still coming from about a 1000 miles away, we had a logistic problem, not enough supplies and too many people.
When we were taking guard duties we had to carry rifles, it was not a good idea to rely on every German to be grateful, but luckily they didn't give us any trouble.
They looked on us as liberators, but actually we were conquerors.

We moved towards Hamburg, and once again we didn't go in, and then on to the Danish border, passing through Flensburg, the centre of the new German government, led by Admiral Donitz, who was trapped there with the remnants of the new government, completely surrounded.
About a couple of weeks later the 11th Armoured Division went in and took them all prisoner.

Once again we weren't allowed to talk to the locals. That was not very nice, lots of children would come up and talk to us, but we had orders to ignore them.
This order was changed and we were allowed to talk to people (providing they were under 16).
I can tell you there were a lot of very old looking 16 year olds.
Christmas was spent there, and by then we were allowed to talk to the locals, but we weren鈥檛 allowed to go into their homes. There was a curfew at around 10 o'clock.

We made friends with three German ladies working in our office as translators.
I went to Germany as an enemy and left as friends.

I came home and was demobbed from Aldershot.
As my demob came closer I had apprehension about civilian life. I'd gone to war a boy, and came out a man.
It had changed me.
The thought of going back nine 'till five, catching the eight thirty train, briefcase, rolled umbrella, regular hours, it frightened the life out of me.

I got my single breasted suit, a trilby hat, an overcoat, and shoes.
When I eventually got home the only thing that fitted me from before the war was a tie.
Throughout my war I always carried a front door key, and that still fitted our front door.
My mother didn't know just when I was coming home.
I arrived, and rang the bell.
There was no answer, I went in.
There was a note on the kitchen table.
Dear John, gone shopping, make yourself a cup of tea. Mum.
That was my welcome home.

I took stock of my situation and worked out I couldn't stand being enclosed.
I wasn't going back to that nine 'till five.
My family didn't realise the change that had happened to me.
I answered an advertisement in the paper from London Transport, to become a bus conductor.
One of the first things I did was to get myself photographed in my conductor's uniform.
So there I was, going home every night, good food, at home, and back once again in uniform, I had a mobile job, I was wearing my medal ribbons with pride, and I was my own boss, almost, mixing with people again, and well paid.
It was really well paid, it was said if you worked on the buses or as a policeman you could easily get a mortgage.
There I was, very happy.
But it was not to last.
After about five years I had become used to civilian life again, I left the buses and went back to the office, and I stayed there. Still collecting newspapers as a hobby.

If people ask my now what I did during the war, I say I collected newspapers so that I could read all about it.
I went in as a boy, nineteen, and came out without a scratch
I remember my friends who didn't come back. My motor bike driver, he'd managed to acquire special leave to get married. We were in Belgium. A gun went off accidentally, it hit him.
I was authorised to do first aid in our unit.
I looked at his stomach; there wasn't any blood, just a small hole. I could do nothing.
He died.
Old Stan, when that German tank hit us.
I think of all the others,
I was such a lucky chap.
Later after the war I went back and found a club where Au-Pair girls went for entertainment.
I asked a German girl for a dance, her name was Anna Rose.

And we an Anglo German family are still dancing.

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