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Finishing the Task

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Maddy Rhodes a volunteer with Radio Suffolk, on behalf of Joan Melville — Jackson who has given permission for it to be added to the site. Mrs. Melville — Jackson fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Paris had not been bombed like London had so it was relatively undamaged but we did see a lot of burnt out cars and signs of fighting when we went in there early in September 1944.
We enjoyed some wonderful meals in France. As retribution for their collaboration with the Germans, hoteliers and restauranteurs were ordered to give allied service personnel meals at cost price.
One evening I had dined out with an American officer and had asked for my boss’s jeep to come and collect us. We emerged to find a driver but no transport. The jeep which he had been issued to him had been stolen, along with the driver’s greatcoat, which he had left on the front seat. The Americans wrote the jeep off - they were always being stolen ! However the British authorities insisted on having a written report and enquiry into the loss of the British driver’s coat.
I once dined at a table near Marlene Dietrich. She was surrounded by young servicemen, but she was in uniform, and was not at all glamourous

It had been decided that we should move to Rheims to be nearer the mobile Front Line. Our HQ in Rheims was a humble little schoolhouse. Getting from my chief’s office to go to see another general involved a crossing the flat roof of the building. One day I had to escort General Gale over this route and I became aware that he had very painful feet. I attributed this to jumping from planes.
We enjoyed Rheims with all those vinyards!
I remember invitations to parties and receptions. My friend Anne Robertson and I were due to go to a party one evening, but during the afternoon Anne came to find me and said that she was afraid something was troubling her boss General Morgan. He was quite unlike his usual affable self, and she was worried about leaving him. She asked me to go back with her to see what I thought.
We found him in a very strange mood, and told him that we had decided against going to the party that evening. He said that we certainly should go, adding that there was so much horror in this horrible world, what harm could an innocent party do? We must go and enjoy ourselves.
We later learnt that he had just been given a report on the conditions in Belsen. This was so awful that women were not allowed to read it. We did eventually, and we learned that in many ways the German women officers were much worse than the men.

Before it was known that the Germans would be at Rheims for the surrender, General Eisenhower had arranged a reception for SHAEF ( Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) officers at his mess that night. Anne Robertson and I got into conversation with a Russian officer, General Suslaparov. We couldn’t speak Russian and he couldn’t speak English but we all had some French, and so we were managing quite well until his furious '‘minder'’ came and broke up the group. The minder was very unhappy that the Russian officer was talking to two British women!
The people who were to sign the surrender, including General Jodl , Hitler’s Chief of Staff, were all in the War Room. Myself and my chiek’s pilot, Squadron Leader Philip Wintle waited in my office for the news of the signing.When it came, he and I joined all the signitaries in General Eisenhower’s office where I was immediately swept up into General Suslaparov’s arms and danced around the room. That is how I came to end the war in the arms of a Russian General.
The Russians immediately discovered that no Russian of sufficiently senior rank, i.e. Marshal Zukhov, had signed the surrender so it was repeated the next day in Berlin, and my general was recalled, I imagine in disgrace!

A few days later my chief’s Personal Staff Officer and I had to go to a meeting in Paris and as we drove down we stopped at a WW1 cemetery. We went to where the names of the fallen were engraved on a great wall and we said to them, ‘We have finished the task you began’.

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