大象传媒

GUNNER FRANK DERBYSHIRE, ARMY N0.1516291

Called up September 1939. Demobbed March 1946.

"I was trained at Kimnel Park near Rhyl and was sent to Northern France in 1940 where I served in a Searchlight Regiment. On my 21st birthday I was given 7 days confined to barracks for answering back to a doddering old corpral.

Shortly after we were transfered to the infantry and so poorly trained that the German forces were able to sweep us away to Calais. Here I was wounded in both wrists with shrapnel. Before I was sent to hospital, whilst sitting against a wall, a young German soldier saw my plight and gave me a drink of whiskey and a rueful smile. I spent a week or so in a hospital at Calais while all my mates were marched away to prison camps in Germany and Poland. No one got away as they did at Dunkirk.

Because I was wounded I didn't have to do the march but was put on a barge with some others and travelled through Holland on the River Scheldt. We were billeted in a broken down hut. We were lucky as we were able to work in the forests and trade with the farmers for bread and eggs, even though there was a chance of a rifle butt in the back. We traded clothing from our parcles from home, which were very few.

Over the years I was sent to different prison camps to avoid the chance of escaping. Whilst in one camp(stables really) we were all lousy and spent our night sitting round the stove with our clothes off, picking out the lice and putting them on the stove to hear them pop!

After about four and a half years the Russian army started their push westward. We started the big march through Poland, Checkoslovakia, Germany and France into Bavaria, a total of 600 miles. This took about six weeks and we were at starvation point. I was so hungry that I took a bone from a dog, cracked it open and ate the marrow. Another time I ate the apple peelings that a young German had thrown away. Once we were approached by some Germans asking us to join a Free British Army to fight the Russians; as far as I know there were no volunteers. During the march we were straffed by American planes twice, once on a road and once on an open cattle truck( friendly fire they call it now).

When the war ended I was sheltering from the bombs but amazingly I had no reaction to them at all. We were liberated by the Americans. Me and my mate found a staff car and kicked the two dead Germans out of it. As my mate could drive we got permission to make our way to Northern France. Before we could go the planes came to take us back to Britain. Six years out of my life. But I am lucky. I am still here. Many of my mates are not!"

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