大象传媒

I am a Beverley man, and apart from when I served in the RAF, I have lived here all my life.
On VE Day I was at an airfield in the countryside on the Dutch-German frontier. We were there getting the airfield back into operational service. We had no special celebration. Two days after VE Day we went into Eindhoven and joined in the party. The locals had been celebrating for two days and on the third day, the day we joined in, they ran out of beer. The Dutch were overjoyed that the war was over.

I was 17 when war began and I enlisted in 1941. I was in Beverley in those early years. I landed in Normandy in June 1944 but my war did not end on VE Day. I was in the first group of British soldiers to enter Berlin. I now want to record my memories of those years.
As regards Beverley between 1939 and 1941 I want to set down my memories of air-raids. Communications were basic in those days. The first we knew an air-raid was expected was that the searchlights lit up and started waving in the sky. Perhaps half an hour later the sirens would go off to give the official warning of the raid.

The first local raid was at RAF Leconfield. Me and my friends went to look at the damage. The bombs, which were anti-personnel bombs, were full of shrapnel. They fell to the North of the airfield and killed several sheep. Later I went to the pictures and what we had seen was shown on the newsreels.

The Germans made three separate attempts to bomb Victoria Barracks, where Morrison鈥檚 is now. On the first two occasions they mistook the Broadgates hospital for the Barracks. They dropped bombs called landmines, which were on parachutes, and these, on both occasions, fell into the field opposite what used to be Walkington garage. On the second of these two raids the blast from the landmines somehow reflected into Beverley town centre and blew out lots of windows. I was in the town centre at the time and I remember the ARP man making us run to the shelter with lots of broken glass under our feet. All the windows in the marketplace were broken.

The third raid on the Barracks was the worst night for Beverley. The sirens went off. There were lots of low flying aircraft noises. The planes were flying unusually low. We knew they were German aircraft because of their engine noise. A series of flares went off over the Barracks and lit up the whole of Beverley. There was lots of anti-aircraft fire and big explosions. There was a huge landmine explosion and they got the main gate. Canadian soldiers were at the Barracks but we were told only the guard at the gate was killed; the soldiers had been warned, dived into slit trenches and had escaped the blast.

I remember a day light raid on Hodgsons tannery. One bomb fell at the back of Hodgsons, and there are still shrapnel marks on some of the houses in Flemingate from that bomb. The other bomb, because it was dropped from low level, did not explode. It bounced and came to rest in the middle of Sparkmill Lane just to the South of the bridge over the stream. The area was cordoned off. I wanted to see the bomb so I got into the stream at England Springs, waded along to Sparkmill lane, climbed out and went to see it. The bomb had hit the hedge, and a thrushes nest, and killed the thrush and her chicks. The bomb was in the middle of the lane and I stood on it.

When this attack happened the gates at Flemingate crossings were shut. There were people waiting at the crossing gate and the Germans machine gunned them. My friend鈥檚 father was killed.

On another occasion a train was stopped at Leconfield station and perhaps half a dozen people were killed when that train was machine gunned.

The Germans also dropped bombs at the back of Cherry Tree Lane near Greenwood Avenue. The blast from that bomb, as I recall, burst upwards and did relatively little damage.

At that time I was working for the Hull builders Robinson and Sawdon. I biked to work each day. Most of our work was in Hull clearing away bomb damage. Conditions in Hull were terrible and most the city centre was more or less flattened. Every building was damaged except one. It was like a miracle, Hull Royal Infirmary was untouched. Over Hull there were anchored many barrage balloons. In a storm these were sometimes struck by lighting and I can remember seeing, on occasions, them fall to the earth in flames. Hull had many raids and night after night there was a huge red glow in the sky. I remember, on one occasion, a bomb damaged a petrol tank behind the bus station. Petrol leaked into the drains. It exploded and the road from the bus station to Beverley Road was lifted up in a ridge.

At that time I lived in Keldgate me and my Dad used to go up onto the Westwood to see what was happening. My Dad thought it was safer being outside than inside but he was not right because the biggest danger in raids was being hit by falling bits of shrapnel from anti-aircraft shells.

I enlisted in 1941 because I wanted to be in the Air Force. Before D-Day I was posted all over Britain. By D-Day I was part of the Second Tactical Air Force. This was made up of ground attack air planes like Mosquito鈥檈s. Our job was to take over captured German airfields and get them operational so that our fighter bombers could use them. I landed in France in a LCA (landing craft assault) about a week after D-Day and at night. The first airfield we were ordered to get back working had been so fought over that it was unserviceable.

We then moved through Northern France and Belgium, close behind the front line, from airfield to airfield getting them back into working order. We would check for mines and booby traps. We would get the electric and water supplies working. We would clear away the damaged German planes and so on.

In late 1944 we were in Belgium and I remember seeing the flame trails of V2 rockets in the distance, heading towards London. The Belgians were still very afraid of the Germans. At the time of the Battle of the Bulge the attitude of the Belgians changed and they became very wary. They were not confident the Germans had been beaten and thought they would return. However we had no doubts that they were beaten.

When we advanced through Holland we went through Nijmegen and Arnhem. There were still parachutes in trees and graves by the road with helmets on the top. The Dutch had put flowers on the British graves, German graves had none.

As I said, on VE Day nothing was laid on for us, but we had our celebrations a few days later.

A couple of weeks after VE Day we received new orders. Our unit was completely mobile and we were ordered to paint on the side of our vehicles the letters BACB. This stood for British Air Command Berlin. We were issued with special identity cards written in English and Russian. Mine is on display in Elvington museum. We then set off to travel to Berlin. The journey took 3 days. The roads were clogged with refugees, and foreign workers who had worked in Germany and were trying to walk home. Many of the people were short of food and although we had been ordered not to fraternize we gave out food, especially to children.

We went into the Russian sector and the Russians were immediately suspicious of us. We got to Gatow airfield and the Russians made us camp in open ground at the far end of the airstrip. I was in the third lorry that went into Berlin that day. As we were the first British soldiers to enter the city I know I was the first person from Beverley to get to Berlin, and I suspect I was the first Yorkshireman. I was in Berlin from June 1945 to around September 1945. The Russians were suspicious of us and not particularly friendly. Most of them had Tommy-Guns. The streets in Berlin were almost completely empty.

We went all over Berlin, the Unter-Den-Linden, everywhere. We went to the public buildings that were left standing and I climbed onto the balcony from which Hitler gave his big speeches.

I had seen in Hull what damage heavy bombing could do to a city but the damage in Berlin was far far greater. Berlin was much bigger than Hull and the damage was huge. For many buildings the walls were still standing but the whole of the insides had been burnt out. Just the walls remained as an empty shell. Fire damage was worse than blast damage. Nothing could be salvaged from a building that had been burnt out. Many building had a black cross of wood outside; this meant there were still thought to be people dead in the cellars. There was no postage system in Berlin, so people trying to trace relatives and friends would stick letters on buildings and walls where people thought there was a connection.

The only way in and out of Berlin was by air. My group kept Gatow open for the British to fly in and out. When they formally announced that the British had arrived in Berlin I was back home on leave after having being there for some weeks. I had been flown out in a Lancaster. I flew back again in a two seater Hurricane which was used to deliver mail.

After my time in Berlin I was posted in Hamburg, which also had terrible bomb damage. Then, in late 1945, I was de-mobbed and returned to Beverley.

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