´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the authors permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 26b: The Brandenburg Gate

This was where the British sector met the Russian sector, where capitalist met communist as well as the defeated National Socialists. British, Russians, Americans, French and Germans teemed around the memorial to lost Prussian glory. And it was where Butch took fags to barter for cameras. He had become 133 Company's unofficial photographer. The German firm Zeiss was in the Russian zone and there were Red Army soldiers eager to barter these for British cigarettes. Winston Churchill's famous speech about an `iron curtain' descending across Europe didn't yet apply. All troops could go into each others' zones.

The Red Army was a mixture of all the peoples of the Soviet Union, with officers and senior NCO Russians. There was a political officer in every platoon constantly expounding the virtues of communism over the evils of capitalism. In every British platoon there was a `barrack room lawyer' - e.g. in Workshops there was one Harry Marks, son of a Brummie car industry shop steward, who also, more often than not, expounded the virtues of communism.
Probably the most feared troops of the Soviet Empire were the Mongolians - echoes of Genghis Khan resounding down the centuries! And trotting through the Brandenburg Gate on one September morning was the selfsame horse and cart driven by the selfsame Red Army Mongolian, Butch had met at Spandau. At least he thought it was him - all Mongolians looked alike especially when they were grinning like Cheshire cats. Harry Marks had assured Butch we all looked alike to them, and how happy and equal all different races were in the Soviet Union.

This one looked happy enough anyway - he saw Butch, stopped his cart, dismounted grinning, and slapped the Sheffielder on the back. There they were, unlikely comrades laughing and joking without understanding a word each said apart from `Stalin' and `Churchill'. Butch gave the lad a few fags.

Some in the Red Army were more equal than others and at this juncture a Russian corporal came up to them, had a few words with the Mongolian who then drove away, without a word.
Perhaps the corporal was a political NCO Even so, he was very friendly to Butch. He was an intellectual - a cultured cove. Russians tend to admire culture and an insult in Russian is to describe someone as `nye-kul-tur-ney', uncultured. The corporal in course of conversation asked if Butch knew Shelley and Keats.

"No", Butch replied. "Which unit are they in?"

The corporal was hugely amused at this. He thought the English soldier was joking. He knew of the Tommies sense of humour despite their being under the yoke of capitalism.

Butch was invited to his camp in the Russian sector of Berlin in woodland, just off the road leading to Potsdam. A time and date was fixed, the corporal advising him to wait for him a few hundred metres from the camp. The reason for this was clear when Butch arrived before the corporal, he walked towards the camp gate and warning shots whistled above his head into the trees. The corporal came out grinning. "The guard would have shot you if you'd got any closer!"

He was proud of the serried ranks of T34 tanks all bulled up with numbers freshly painted white, as if on parade for the Englishman in a big clearing in the woods.

"All lined up for your inspection - but we have more recent models hidden under netting - in case you are a British spy."

He laughed at his own sense of humour and in response to an invitation from Butch, said he would be pleased to visit the British camp at Spandau.

In fact Butch never saw him or the Mongolian again.

The Russians stopped their troops visiting the Allied sectors shortly afterwards, and banned our troops from their sector. It was of course to protect their ideology from Western contamination. Their troops had had a glimpse of freedom - who knows where it could end?

They had also seen the unacceptable face of capitalism, having been fleeced by spivs and street girls alike. The Red Army men were given four years' back pay at the end of the war, and there were people - even, we regret to say, in the US forces, PX stores and the British NAAFI, that grossly overcharged them. Bartering continued at the Brandenburg Gate though. Butch took a towel wrapped round a hundred fags.

One day a sergeant MP stopped him.

"What are you doing here with that towel, laddie?"

"I'm off for a swim, sergeant."

"Show me your swimming costume, laddie."

"I'm wearing it, sergeant."

The sergeant moved on. Phew!

He then did business with a German bloke, exchanging 80 fags for a Zeiss camera with film. He took a photograph of a young, pretty but dowdy girl who was forlornly holding up her mother's jewellery for food. Butch, being Butch, got to know this pretty girl - she was from East Berlin; civilians were still, at that time, allowed into the western zones until 18:00 hours each day. She came to barter and he gave her his remaining twenty fags to help her. One fag could be bartered for one egg and it was worth this little act of generosity to see her face light up. They arranged to see each other on his `bartering days' and other lads in Workshops Platoon gave him fags for her.

Like the relationship with the blonde cleaning girl on the Havel, the Brandenburg Gate friendship was platonic. The East Berliner was perhaps only eighteen or nineteen and he was getting on now - a mature twenty-six year old.

Friends reunited - for a month anyway

It was January 1946 and Butch was walking outside the barracks, taking mental stock of his finances. With the princely sum of twenty-one shillings per week mechanic 1st class pay, with all the money he'd accumulated and sent home to his mother for safe keeping, he reckoned he was worth two and a half to three thousand pounds. On the other hand, most of his friends he made during his army service were scattered to the wind - he might never meet up with them again. Friendships were more valuable than money. He'd still got photos of Roy Brotherstone and Jack Powell taken in front of a German tank, in his pocket. "Get us a copy," they'd said, and he'd got them each a copy, then was despatched to Berlin. Roy Brotherstone had said the German tank was the only vehicle Butch hadn't managed to sell!

"There's a mate of yours over here", a sergeant in the former Wehrmacht barracks, next door to Workshops," former Polizei barracks, shouted from over the wall when he caught sight of Butch.

All through his army career, Butch had thought he had a guardian angel looking after him, visualised in the shape of his Grandma - and here she was, at it again! The mate was Roy Brotherstone himself, in Spandau for a month prior to going on to Warsaw as a chauffeur, to the head of the British Military Mission there.

They had a month together to reflect on old times and enjoy new times. Butch took him to cafes and bars in Berlin, introduced him to yachting on the Havel, and Brothers even joined him to see the maestro at work bartering at Brandenburg Gate. Sergeant Cook `Rice' Cheeseborough was pleased to meet up with an `A' Platoon wallah, did them all proud with his picnic hampers for the trips out with the cleaning girls and Butch introduced Brothers to his other girlfriend from the Russian zone when bartering.

The sweet girl from East Berlin was extremely fond of Butch - it wasn't just the fags he brought her that attracted her to him. Perhaps he was a bit smitten by her too - he didn't often give so many fags away! He wondered whether sooner or later he would have to choose between her and the `feisty' blonde.

He never had to choose between them. First thing next morning they were told they were moving back to Itzehoe and two hours later the convoy was on the move.

No goodbyes to the blonde cleaning woman - the feisty yachtswoman. No goodbye to the sweet East Berliner.

Over the years Butch has forgotten their names*

No goodbye to Roy Brotherstone but he'd got his address at Connah's Quay, North Wales, and he'd learned from Roy that Wheeler and Petty were doing convoy duties between Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin and that Jack Powell and Rumsey-Williams were doing a Berlin - Warsaw run. Rumsey-Williams was due to go to work on D.U.K.W.'s. It seemed strange that he would be working on these amphibious craft now the war was over, but who can guess what's in the mind of the military? Captain Mascoid cancelled further deliveries of looted Nazi furniture, etc., to the U.K. and to a Brussels auction house he dealt with. 133 Company was falling apart - they were heading back to Itzehoe, it was said, to be allotted demob dates and numbers.

The convoy stopped halfway, at Wittenberge on the Rive Elbe, and in another of life's coincidences, he bumped into Wheeler and Petty crossing a road. They had stopped at the same town on their way to Berlin. It was a regular call for them - they had got girlfriends there and were just off to see them.

"We're late Butch. Great to see you. Take this and write your Sheffield address on it and put it in the cab."

Butch looked at the screwed up paper. It was typed part one orders, Itzehoe Camp 133 RASC `A' and `C' Platoon, by Lieutenant T.H. Yates and signed T.H.Y., followed in Wheeler's scrawled handwriting, "WILL BE DONE."

Butch wrote his mother's address on the back - she was now back in Sheffield and ran a little grocery shop in Winter Street.

* The `yachtswoman' was in fact Erika of Berlin. (Not to be confused with Erika of Hamburg in the next chapter!)

Pr-BR

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.