大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Tom Berrisford and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms nad conditions.

I had a rough war. I landed in France just after the first wave of D-Day landings, I went ashore with the tanks and other vehicles. I was wounded twice, once on the Dutch- German border and the second time I was gravely wounded at Belsen concentration camp.
I was machine-gunned in the stomach and was so badly injured that the stretcher-bearers left me there because they thought I'd had it.
We were in a ploughed field just outside Belsen, we were in the process of taking the camp. My two pals came over to me and used their field dressing packs to stem the bleeding, they got a stretcher off the "half-track" vehicle and put me on it. The pocket of resistance that had shot me started to fire again. Thay lifted me on to the top of a furrow and hid behind me!. I was praying to be hit again because I was sure I was going to die.
Eventually they got me to a First Aid post and a priest came and gave me the last rites!
The 15th Scottish Regiment were on our left, they had taken Celle, the town nearest to the Bergen Belsen camp. I was atken to them and given emergency surgery - I was operated on by a German surgeon. After the third day, I regained consciousness. I was in a ward of German and English people all of whom were gravely injured. They orderly came along and raised me up on my pillows and said "Look here's the Camp Commandant"
He was a giant of a man, unshaven with his hands and ankles cuffed - it was Josef Kramer, also known as the Beast of Belsen. He was hanged after the Nuremburg trials.

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