大象传媒

My father-in-law wrote this account and two others (also in the archive) about different events, several years ago, in order to help one of his grandchildren who was then working on a school history project. My father-in-law served in North Africa, Sicily, Southern Italy and was involved in the planning and execution of the Rhine Crossing. He died in 1996 aged 88.

This is his unedited account, typed from his handwritten manuscript:

I had visited Ostend and Brussels early in 1945 and also seen (from our occupied side) the stretch of river we were likely to use for the British sector. The Navy was to supply various specialist parties 鈥� boom defence, riggers, marines etc. and five parties from my branch which would lay under-water detectors up-stream from each of the pontoon bridges when these were successfully put across the Rhine, which when in flood could be more than a thousand feet wide. The U.S. 9th Army was to use two of our R.N. parties, and the British 2nd Army two also, with one going into the area of the 1st Canadian Army. I took a poor view of our parties being code-named 鈥淕arderias鈥� (I was C.O. of 鈥淕arderia 1鈥�) as the disastrous Arnhem operation a few months before had been code-named Operation Market Garden.

We arrived near villages called Ginderich and Buderich about mid 鈥� March, having passed through the Hochwald Forest not far from the Dutch border. The villages were pretty well emptied by now, but whilst we were in the forest the wonder of it was the song of birds 鈥� blackbirds, thrushes and the cooing of wood pigeons, taking no notice of men and their stupid wars. I had a driver who was from Liverpool, not long called up; we passed an old lady, trudging along the roadside and retreating away from the Rhine. She looked neither right nor left, all in widows black and with the typical basket-ware German pack on her back. My driver suddenly fell silent; 鈥淲ould that old woman be a German, Sir?鈥� he said. 鈥淵es Parker鈥� I said. He was silent again and then burst out with these words 鈥� 鈥淲ell Sir, it don鈥檛 seem right, does it鈥�. Indeed it did not, but there was no more to be done or said about it.

We camped with an Army unit in an orchard belonging to a small farm, one of many dotted along the river bank. Visibility was reduced by a vast smoke-screen, but a tremendous bombardment began about six-o鈥檆lock on the evening of 23rd March. All this passed over our heads, of course, and we had a good meal with our Army hosts. However the Army personnel were much more experienced in the noise of gunfire than we were and we felt less comfortable than hitherto when one of the Army officers remarked 鈥淭here's a few coming back, by the sound of it!鈥� At about 10pm a force of RAF Pathfinders flew over towards Wesel (which was on the opposite bank of the river) and in a few minutes the whole area was lit up with gigantic flares. Through binoculars I could now see Wesel in the distance, the road and railway bridges already collapsed into the river, after being blown up by the Germans who were concentrated in the woods behind Wesel itself. After the Pathfinders the bombers went in, the ground shook as if in an earthquake (and we were on the other side of the river!) and it seemed impossible that anyone could live on the other side, which seemed only to be a sea of fire. Yet a few 鈥渇laming onions鈥� (German ack-ack) went up and at dawn the British commandos were already across; my party occupied a sunken barge which stuck out from our bank like a sea-side pier, and we began to assemble the under-water gear. Downstream the pontoon bridge was well under way, although we could not see it; what we could see, however, was groups of commandos creeping along the opposite bank, taking advantage of every bit of cover as they were under intermittent machine-gun fire from a German group hidden in the mounds of brick, steel girders and rubble which represented what was left of the shore ends of the two demolished bridges. This machine-gun party stuck it out for most of the morning, peppering away at intervals, until the Army artillery-spotting planes hovered overhead and pin-pointed the targets for the artillery to wipe them out with shell-fire. Soon the Army was across, the Germans fighting a brave rear-guard action, with many 鈥淭iger鈥� tanks left at bends in roads and partly earthed-in, acting as forts to cover the retreat, of course a suicide job for the gunners in the immobilised tanks.

Meanwhile all we had to do was now routine stuff. It had been anticipated that once the bridges were across, the Germans would throw in floating mines, midget 鈥淶eehund鈥� two man submarines and possibly a team of crack swimmers to sabotage the bridges, a manoeuvre they had tried against Nymegen Bridge in 1944. All these could have been tried, as the Germans still had access to the upper reaches of the river. In fact none of these ideas were put into practice, and although we had plenty of alarms most of these involved surface items which were either caught in the booms or blown up by gunfire when seen in the searchlight beams at night or in broad daylight. Whilst sticking to our routine duties we became more and more aware of 鈥渓ife鈥� in the village. First I organised a burial party, so that we were able to clear the area round the two farmhouses (in which we lived) of all dead sheep and cattle. Soon the villagers were allowed to return to their homes, many damaged, some looted, and some still occupied by Allied personnel. Immediately apparent was the character of the Germans, mostly elderly men, women and children; immediately they were hard at it gathering dislodged slates, coiling up telephone wires, clearing the ditches and cess pits and sorting the remaining contents of their homes, the children putting in just as hard a day鈥檚 work as the adults. There was a 鈥淣on-Fraternisation鈥� Order in operation but this did not and indeed could not stop everyone co-operating to get the village back to some kind of normality. In this we had much help from a German Schoolteacher who acted as an unofficial interpreter, since we were quite cut off from the Army once they had advanced beyond the Rhine itself. There were little episodes in the village life, each a story on its own 鈥� until on 8th May the war was officially over and we returned to England a few days later.

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