大象传媒

These are a couple of extracts from an oral tape Eric Ellis recorded for the RH7 History Group Memory Bank, in Lingfield, Surrey. -

We were a few miles up from Medenine, near the Marath Line,(Tunisia) soon after the battle of El Alemein. We were close to the front line and going to attack during the night. In the afternoon, we'd cooked a rice pudding in one of those petrol cans - they used to be square in them days, before we had jerry cans - and we used to cut the top off, you see. Just put it on the fire so it got rid of all the fumes out of the can. We made a big rice pudding in there. We only had marmalade to sweeten it with and water. Anyway, then we had to go to do this attack at night so we left it right there in the desert, in the middle, late that afternoon. When we arrived late at night, the attack was cancelled and we were pulled back to where we were and there was our rice pudding! We ate the rest of it the next day. We were always hungry in the desert. We only had biscuits, hard biscuits all the time. For dinner there were about three or four hard biscuits, a spoonful of jam and a tiny bit of cheese. If we were lucky we could make some tea. We had a pint of water a day to wash and shave in and make tea. We didn't shave in the front line anyway!

(Eric was in the battle for Arnhem, had two weeks leave and then went back to war)

In early 1945 the Battle of the Rhineland started. So the Highlanders that I was with then, the Fifteenth Scottish - they'd only been fighting since Normandy and were quite fresh.
They were really fresh troups. So of course they had to go in the Battle of the Rhineland, right up to Gock and Cleves, all up round that area and of course I was with them. I'd had a gut full, hadn't I?. After some fierce fighting we were right up on the Rhine and the Germans were way over on the other side. It was a nice quiet evening and the birds were singing. The next night, however, we were told "Right, you're going to cross the blinking river!" It was early hours in the morning and we got into these small boats - about 8 or 9 blokes in each one. They started dropping mortar bombs on us and in the middle of the river our engine stopped! I thought Christ! if we've got to get out of this boat we must sink with all the equipment we were carrying!
Fortunately the sailor or RE got the engine going and we made the other side to find most of the Jerries gone.

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