大象传媒

The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Gord and Leslie Davison.

I was awakened by the sound of voices and gingerly looked down into the cow shed. What I saw was not encouraging, to say the least. About a dozen German soldiers were down their standing around talking and smoking. Why they were there I have no idea but I quickly put my hand over Vic's mouth and motioned him to keep quiet. We lay there for about two hours, hardly daring to breath, until finally about 2:00 p.m. the all formed up and moved out.
With a rather large sigh of relief we decided that some food was in order. Maagi had made up three sandwiches for each of us, black bread as usual. We decided to eat two each, just in case we have any further problems and were unable to make it across the river that night. As soon as it was dark we moved out. We kept to the fields but basically followed the road, which ran due south. Although we were well within must have been the enemy front line, we were not challenged again and about 11:00 p.m. and arrived at the dyke. Up we went, over the dyke road running along the top and started down the other side towards the riverbank. The dyke was covered with small trees and bushes and we made quite a racket getting down the riverbank.
We got quite a shock when we arrived at the bottom. There was a towpath running alongside the river's edge, this was for the horses that towed the barges up and down the river. What we have not been prepared for was the fact that there was a sentry walking up and down towpath, he in turn connected with another century about 100M to the east and on the return trip connected with a century 100M to the West. We had to assume that this sequence continued for some distance in each direction so there was no hope of going around the Germans. I checked my illuminated watch and discovered that it was 11:20 p.m.
Whilst hiding in the scrub at the bottom of the dyke VIC and I discussed the situation quietly. It soon became obvious that the only way to get into river was across the towpath. The question was what were we going to do about the sentries? Finally I had an idea. Sentry duty in the British army is two hours on and four hours off. If the Germans used the same system it was possible that the sentries would change shifts at midnight. So, possibly, the changing of the sentries would give us our chance to cross the towpath and be on our way.
We waited breathlessly for about 40 minutes and, sure enough at midnight the sentry marched off to what I can only presume was some sort of guardhouse and left the path clear for us. We squirmed our way across the path and attempted to inflate and the boat with a compressed air cylinder which was attached. However is the thing made such a noise that I turned it off immediately and finished inflating the boat with a hand pump. We threw it into the water and then Vic climbed in. Then I slid into the water and started to push the boat into the current by swimming behind it with my hands on the stern. With Vic paddling with the fence post and me swimming behind we made good progress and there was no activity from the shore. Apparently we had gotten away without anyone hearing us and the only problem we had now was the current, which had strengthened considerably. It was sleeting and the water was quite cold. However because of the exertion required to push the boat and possibly the fact that we were fully clothed, I didn't feel the cold at all. We had been in the water about half an hour and still couldn't see the other bank, I was getting worried that, maybe we were not making any North to South progress but were just drifting with the current. I had been told it was about 400 m across, if this was the case we should have been over to the other bank by now. It became obvious that we were making very little progress and I just prayed that we would not be swept back to the north bank.
All we could do was keep paddling and pushing, and we just tried a little harder. Our efforts were rewarded after about another half-hour when Vic shouted as he could see bushes on the south dyke and within minutes I could feel the bottom. After reaching the bank we pulled the boat to boat out and started to climb the dyke, we soon reached the dyke road, which ran across the top and then we had to decide whether to walk east or to the West.
Our problem was that, although we knew that the allies were in control of the south side of the river in the immediate vicinity, we didn't know just how far that control ran, and at this point, because we had been drifting downstream, we didn't know really where we were.
After some discussion we decided to walk to the east, this decision being based on the presumption that we had been drifting west. After some time we came to a 'T' junction with a road running to the south, which fortunately had a sign post pointing south which said 'Nijmegen 20 km'. We knew that the allies were in control of Nijmegen literally whooped with joy.
Unfortunately our enthusiasm was dampened a little when we got to the bottom of the dyke. The road to Nijmegen was under about 3 ft. of water, we were not aware that the Germans had blown the dyke walls in ordered to force the allied forces back from the river. Nevertheless this only slowed us up a little. We could see where the road was by the telephone lines at the side of the road. The field of the tarmac under our feet kept us on track.
We had a length of string with us so tied this to the boat and dragged it along just in case the water got to deep. It was rather hard work walking through waist-high water and consequently our progress was quite slow. Before we knew it we could see the glimmerings of dawn and decided that, as we didn't know for sure that we were safely in allied territory, we had better find a place to hide.
This had been a well-populated area and we noticed that we had passed quite a few abandoned farms, so we didn't have any problem finding a place to take cover. As it happened we were quite close to a small village which, I found out after the war, was called Zetten.
We picked the biggest house, which was two story red brick, and made our way up to the second floor, as the water was half way up the walls of the downstairs rooms. All the rooms had been emptied of furniture and of the three bedrooms upstairs two were empty. However the third bedroom was locked and it didn't take much imagination to figure out that this was the place where all the house furnishings had been stored. Although we knew that this was a home of the same Dutch people who had risked their lives to help us, we broke into the room and just hoped that they would forgive us in view of the circumstances.
The bedroom was stacked to the ceiling with the belongings of the occupants and also contained a fireplace. As we were soaking wet and quite cold, we went through all of the cupboards and drawers to see what was available. Vic found a man's suit but all I could find was a ladies tweed skirt and jacket. We stripped off and dried ourselves on some bed sheets we had found and decided that if we could get Vic's cigarette lighter to light we would make a fire in the fireplace and dry our uniforms. In the event we didn't need Vic's lighter as we found some matches and used some underwear as kindling to get a fire going with smashed furniture.
It was getting quite light now, about 6:30AM when I noticed there was a harmonium piled among the furniture. Vic and I wrestled it out to a relatively clear space and I started to play. I could play an accordion so the harmonium wasn't much different. You might think that this was quite risky, but we were pretty confident that we were in allied territory and we hoped tit might bring our presence to someone's attention.
After about 10 minutes Vic signaled to me to stop playing as he thought he had heard something. Sure enough we could hear a motor. In order for you to appreciate the situation, here we were, two British paratroopers, one dressed in a business suit and the other in a ladies two piece, on the top floor of a house with three feed of water in it, in a small village in no mans land.
Nothing but water as far as we could see and the strains of "roll out the barrel" coming from and old foot pump harmonium. It's hilarious when you think about it. I rushed over to the window where Vic was and we both listened, with some trepidation to what was obviously a motor vehicle. The question in our mind was what kind of vehicle would be operating in three feet of water and, secondly, was it theirs or ours? About ten seconds later we got our answer.
An allied D.U.K.W. (amphibious jeep) came round the corner with ten or so Canadians aboard. We started shouting "over here", "over here", and the jeep quickly made a beeline for us. All the Canadians had their riffles trained on us, so we put up our hands and waited until they got to the house.
They nudged the craft right up to the wall of the house directly under the bedroom window and the Captain in charge of the patrol asked us who we were and why we were dressed in this fashion. His reply was "well get your things and we'll take you to Headquarters in Nijmegen and we will soon see who you are". When we got to Nijmegen we were allowed to take a shower and given some denim fatigues to wear until they decided what to do with us.
After a good breakfast of Spam and eggs we were taken into separate rooms. A Canadian captain apparently an intelligence officer, then asked me to go over my whole story, whilst a male stenographer tool it all down. I told him everything from the minute I parachuted into Wolfheze, our dropping zone, until that morning. The only thing I left out were the names of the Dutch people. All this took about two hours and I noticed from time to time, the Captain shaking his head, apparently in wonderment.
When I had finished I was left in the room, under guard, for some considerable time. I can only assume that the two interrogators were comparing notes to see if there were any discrepancies in our stories.
Eventually the Captain came back, dismissed the guard and told me he was satisfied with my story. He gave me authorization to go to the quartermaster's store and get a complete new issue of military clothing. He also said that Vic and I would be going by transport first thing the next day to Brussels and flown home from there to Northbolt Park aerodrome.

Continued....
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