大象传媒

TROOPER ARTHUR GEORGE THOMAS ROSE 14374759

I was born in September 1924 in a Suffolk village called Walsham-le-Willows close to the area, which within twenty years would be full of allied aircraft launching bombing raids on Nazi Germany. My first job after I left school in 1938 was in true "Open All Hours Style". I was the errand boy in the local village shop on my trade bicycle. My widowed mother and myself then moved to the nearby village of Great Ashfield. My older brother John was by this time serving in the regular army in India on the North West Frontier. I was then involved in building the aerodrome at Great Ashfield, which became home to American bomber aircraft. The villagers and the GIs became close friends and regular visits were made by the Americans to Great Ashfield until the 1980s when increasing age curtailed them.

In 1942 at the age of 18 I received my call up papers. After 6 weeks of general military training I discovered an aptitude for radio communication, morse code and driving. My posting was therefore to Catterick. Here I learnt how to drive a tank, fire a gun and use the radio. Each day we went out over the Yorkshire Moors to practise these skills and took turns in manning the radio back at base.

In 1943 I transferred to the recently formed 79th Armoured Division under Major General Percy Hobart. The 79th became the only all armoured formation in the British Army. I witnessed the testing of some of the so-called "Hobarts Funnies". These were tanks, which had special adaptations to deal with the hazards and difficulties involved in the D Day invasion of Normandy. I was based in Saxmundham Suffolk. One day I was detailed to drive a car commanded by a Lieutenant to Beccles Aerodrome to collect Major General Percy Hobart himself. We were to take him to Fritton Lake near Great Yarmouth to witness the secret technical trials of the new DD tanks, a Sherman amphibious tank capable of navigating at sea. Of course as it was war time all sign posts had been removed and the lieutenant was to give me directions. I recognised the landmark bridge at Haddiscoe, which travellers to the Norfolk Broads will recognise today. Along with Major General Hobart were other big names from Whitehall at the Lake. Unfortunately this early trial did not go well and the tank went down and disappeared into the Lake with the crew bailing out as quickly as they could. Hobart was not best pleased and immediately ordered us to take him back to Beccles aerodrome. Unfortunately the Lieutenant and I did not improve his mood as I took a wrong turning due to the lack of signposts. Hobart using colourful language directed his anger not at me but at the Lieutenant for not giving me correct directions. As we saw him safely back onto his Dakota the Lieutenant turned to me and said "one bloody good bomb and that bloody lot will hit the deck and we'll all get promotion". So much for a concerted war effort!

D DAY

The D Day preparations continued for me at Linney Head in Wales and Orford on the Suffolk coast. Here we practised daily with the mine clearing flail tanks and the DD or Duplex Drive tanks. These were Sherman tanks with a collapsible floatation collar to make them amphibious. Again as with the earlier trials at Fritton Lake I witnessed some of these sinking. Unfortunately not all crews were able to bail out as before and I saw men killed before even firing a shot in anger.

I saw a lot more of Hobart during my training. An officer would be driving his staff car empty whilst the Major General had taken a jeep, which enabled him to get across country quickly. I did not know at this stage that I was to become one of his team of personal drivers 2 years later in Europe after the war had ended.

In April 1944 the training was over and we moved to Horsham in Surrey ready for the invasion on June 6th. Then came D Day itself. I embarked from along the Thames in a U S built Liberty Boat feeling very apprehensive. There were thousands of troops amassed and the weather was bad. The crossing was so rough that we were concerned that the tanks would roll over the side. We spied the Isle of Wight through the porthole and then we were out to sea confined to our hammocks with much sea-sickness amongst us all.

I was scheduled to land on Juno beach but came ashore instead at 11 a.m. on Sword beach not far from Arromanches. As I clambered off the landing craft I was met by the bodies lying on the shore line from the earlier 6.30 a.m. attack wave. It would be another 24 hours before the Pioneer Corps were able to take them away for burial. All was total confusion as we walked onto the beach and 15 or 20 of my comrades were injured around me although none were killed. I recall seeing a large building damaged with holes from the heavy bombardment. After what seemed like a couple of hours we were able to get into the Flail tanks and do the job for which we had trained. We cleared the beach of mines enabling the infantry to come ashore. The long chains attached to the front of the tank "flailed" and blew up the mines. This took several hours by which time the Germans had retreated. At about 6 p.m. we headed inland to try and find somewhere to rest up for the night. Sleep was impossible so we took shelter under the tank, as shellfire was still heavy.

I was to find out a few months later that my older brother John had also landed on D Day with the 3rd Infantry Division. I was never to see him again as he was killed on October 12th 1944 by a German sniper hidden in a church spire near the Dutch town of Overloon. My cousin Sid Manning was with him and told me that he and comrades returned fire and killed the sniper. I have since visited his grave at Overloon war cemetery and have been shown every courtesy and attention by the Dutch people both young and old.

The second day after the landing there was still much confusion but we were loaded onto lorries and began the long arduous journey toward Germany. The push was then to get to Caen, which Monty thought we could achieve quickly but this was not to be so and the "Falaise Gap" difficulties slowed our advance.

The particular memory I have of that summer of '44 as we fought to establish the bridgehead was of the hundreds of horses lying dead and smelling terribly in the heat. Thousands of Germans were captured or killed as we advanced. We fought our way into Belgium and I have good happy memories of the welcome we received from the people as their towns were liberated. In the late summer I arrived in Zottegem in Belgium where we stopped for a time. I was befriended by a family who gave me regular Sunday lunches and a photo of themselves, which I still have to this day. Their names were Pierre, Susan and their little girl Claudine. They lived at Honastreet 10 Zottegem. After Sunday lunch Pierre would lend me a gun and we would go out to shoot rabbits, which we then sold on the streets of Zottegem. This extra cash came in usefully later on when I reached Holland.

ARNHEM

I was in Eindhoven during the Arnhem struggle and recall looking up into the sky and seeing wave upon wave of gliders being towed by Dakota aircraft. It was like an Air Armarda. We had been told to get to Nijmegen and then on to Arnhem with our tanks to join up with the troops there. Monty had not reckoned on the geography of Holland. The only road we could travel along was 18 miles long, straight and raised high above the flat open fields. The Germans could pick us off one by one. There was no way of passing tanks that had been disabled. It was hopeless and murderous. We could not get to Arnhem as planned and the remaining troops there had to pull out after 8 days of fierce fighting.

HOLLAND

During October 1944 I was transferred to Buffaloes, which were amphibious personnel carriers to be used in crossing the Scheldt Estuary and capturing the vital port of Antwerp. The winter of 44/45 was the coldest and most unpleasant I can remember and the worst winter of the war. Early on there was too much mud to move the tanks and I recall there only being 9 inches clear underneath them and having to tow vehicles. The fighting died down as the weather worsened. I was billeted in a Dutch school. We were allowed 48 hour passes and the local people would give us hospitality in their homes. This is the time that romance entered my life and I met a Dutch girl called Marika. On my leaves I would walk along the railway line on my own to her house. Food was short in Holland, but if you had money as I did courtesy of Belgian rabbits, could be bought in nearby Belgium. I would take eggs, vegetables and some chocolate to Marika and her family who were very grateful.

On one occasion I was able to take her family some bags of coal, which had originally been travelling in the back of the lorry I was driving to Eindhoven aerodrome. I thought Marika and her family would appreciate them more than the troops at the base. Marika and I would go for walks and I taught her some English.

In January 1945 I left Eindhoven and had to say goodbye to Marika and her family, she and they were very sad. I had a letter from her 2 months later which was translated by a friend saying that she was getting married. My 3 sons and the elder of my grandchildren still ask me if they have any relatives in Holland!

RHINE CROSSING

We then headed for Enschede and the attempt at crossing the Rhine. I crossed this last great barrier to Nazi Germany on March 27th 1945. Firstly a few hundred gliders went over taking men to form the bridgehead. The engineers built a temporary bridge, although I crossed in a tank floating on a barge. The first sight that greeted me over the river was that of many dead cows, on their backs, hooves in the air and bellies swollen with the gas of decay. Then as we progressed we came upon the wrecks of the gliders and the pilots who had been killed.
Many of them could not find a place to land and several of the gliders were still in the tree tops where they had crashed. I heard later that 120 pilots had been killed. Soon after the crossing word came through that a congratulatory visit was underway from a VIP party. I was detailed in a Buffalo personnel carrier to take them across the Rhine for a look and see mission. Imagine how nervous I felt when I saw that it was not only Major General Percy Hobart bur Montgomery and Churchill himself along with several other big wigs. It was pure chance that I was chosen to transport them. Thankfully it did not take long before I brought them back again safely. Hobart was not impressed with the visit and wanted to get on with finishing the war despite Monty as his brother-in-law being a member of his family.

We were very apprehensive at being so far into enemy territory and regarded everything as being potentially booby trapped. I saw a fine specimen of a German helmet which I thought would make the perfect souvenir of all my experiences. I weighed up the possibility that if it were booby trapped I could be blown to smithereens and decided to give the helmet a wide berth.

BELSEN

We then progressed on through Germany to Osnabruk, Bremen the on April 15th 1945 at 8.30 in the morning we entered a place called Belsen. This was within an hour of the first allied troops discovering this notorious concentration camp. The horrors that we met there have been well documented. I recall seeing mass open graves, bodies in trenches and the big pelvic bones of the dead piled up high. Later official estimates put a figure of 10000 unburied dead. We stayed for 4 days burning the gallows and the huts with our flame throwers. The place had no bird song, nothing was growing, everything was surrounded by death and bodies. I witnessed the prisoners who were still physically able beating to death their German guards with sticks, stakes and whatever implements they could lay their hands on. None of us made any attempt to stop them such was our revulsion and horror at what the Nazis had done here.

On my return home it was more than 20 years before I was able to tell my wife and family of what I had seen at Belsen.

WARS END

We moved on to a land in constant motion. The war was drawing steadily to its close and people were in perpetual flux, Russians heading East, others heading West like a great crossroads of humanity. There were groups of hundreds of Germans soldiers being guarded by just one allied soldier. Nothing stood still.

We began to relax more and reckless behaviour took over. Four of us in some free time stole a manually operated railway trolley and took it a few miles down the track to an abandoned locomotive that had been attacked by allied aircraft. Our aim was to get it going and take it for a joy ride It was sheer stupidity and we were lucky not to have been picked off by German snipers.

These were strange time and our behaviour reflected this. I recall going to demand eggs and food from a nearby German farm, we had no intention of paying for our booty. The farmer refused to hand anything over and set his Alsatian dog onto us. My mate shot the dog with his rifle and killed it saying "now we'll have some eggs". We left with our eggs and no money having changed hands. Strange times.

PEACE SIGNING

By this time tanks were no longer needed and in early May 45 I found myself at Luneberg Heath 2 days before Monty took the historic surrender in his tent. There were a lot of top brass present of course and an official photograph with Major General Hobart was taken with a big group of soldiers. I am in the top left hand corner. That evening of the signing marking the end of the war we celebrated. We built a big bonfire with whatever we could find to burn and, in the absence of fireworks, we fired off Very Pistols into the night sky. Unfortunately for one poor soldier who had by this time survived all the perils of the Second World War unscathed one of the firings landed on his head burning him badly enough to need hospital treatment! A Scotsman, overwhelmed with joy, excitement and a great deal of alcohol couldn't find words to express his emotions on this momentous occasion and rent the shirt from his chest in true biblical fashion. He then spied a rifle, picked it up and shot several rounds into a nearby wooden outside privy adjoining a German farmhouse. I still do not know if anyone was on the toilet at the time as the place was off limits to us all.

POST WAR

After all those months of fighting we then became the Army of Occupation, not allowed to fraternise with the local Germans. The sergeants however did wolf whistle at German girls working in the fields. The boredom was relieved by a lucky find of a large quantity of beer and alcohol stored in an abandoned German cellar. Our sergeant said "come on lads lets take this lot back to camp" Unfortunately when we got back the officers commandeered it. They did not reckon on our ingenuity. Before handing it over we were able to bury a good part of it in the woods near to our base camp. This secret stash kept us amused for a long time.

In late August I was seconded to be one of a team of 3 personal drivers for Major General Hobart. He had decided to treat himself to a tour of Europe before having to return home, starting in Belgium and finishing in Switzerland. I would go on ahead of the party to prepare accommodation for that nights stay - the Americans were very obliging and I had a pleasant tour of central Europe to add to my wartime experiences. As we neared Switzerland orders came through for me to report back to Bremen 450 miles away. We had covered 400 miles when the officer in charge ordered me to stop. He had friends nearby that he wanted to visit and we would complete the final 50 miles in the morning. Just my luck that a short way down the road the next day the front wheel came off the car. The officer was able to stop another car to get himself back to Bremen leaving me to deal with the useless vehicle. He sent a tank transporter for me which took me back at a crawling 20 miles per hour!

HOME

I was then sent back to England via Osnabruk to Holland then Belgium and a troop ship from Ostend in September 1945. I arrived at Tilbury Docks on my 21st birthday, September 16th 1945. No cake, candles or parties for me! Many of the officers on board were very nervous as we docked as they had smuggled illegal souvenirs, German guns and radios. Others had relieved German homes of linens and household goods as these were in short supply everywhere. The punishment for this we had been warned was severe. I was glad that I did not have that German helmet.

My time in the army finished on June 28th 1946 after 3 years and 9 months of service. I returned to my native Suffolk village, married a local girl in 1951 and now have 3 sons 3 grandsons and 5 granddaughters.

END

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