大象传媒

Edited transcript of a taped interview with Herbert Nicholls

The Germans weren鈥檛 interfering with you as long as you did as you were told. They could be quite vicious, very very strong discipline. Some of them they鈥檇 talk to you. I mean there was a lot, come the end, I mean they used to train here to go to Russia, the Russian front, and up by Saumarez Park there鈥檚 a couple of fields there, and there was two or three tanks in there, and there was trenches, only about two feet deep, and some were half full of water, and they鈥檇 have to lay in there, in their training, and the tanks would pass over them, and the tanks were going all the time, and we used to watch them, and they鈥檇 just dive in time, and you鈥檇 see the splash of water. Brutal, brutal training. And some of them they could speak a bit of English and they鈥檇 tell you 鈥淩ussian front鈥� and they were terrified of going.

I don鈥檛 know much about the other areas, because you never moved around much, and something could happen, like there was some airmen that came ashore at Port Soif, well we didn鈥檛 know about it until weeks later, and that鈥檚 only a quarter of a mile away. And all along the Coast there was barriers, and sometimes every curfew they would close them, and sometimes in the day they would close them, and, I suppose, I don鈥檛 know, it was routine or something, and they would close them. And of course all along the Commons they were all mined, it was all mines, barbed wire and mines, and the bays, the sandy bays, they had these obstacles on for the landing craft, with mines on, teller mines, then in certain areas, close to the coast, there were these squares in the road, in the form of a draught board pattern, across the road, and every night the guard, because they鈥檇 close the roads at curfew, and the guards would go there, they were little square boxes, and they took them out and they put the mine in, and they put them along the side, that was the practice every night, the guard would do it. It was just that if tanks had landed and come up the road and that they would have to go through these.

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