大象传媒

This story was submitted othe People's War site by a vlunteer from 大象传媒 London on behalf of Edward Bullock and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Bullock fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

"I started in RAF as a trainee Flight Mechanic at Cardington, then did some further training at Bridlington. I was then sent to Teeling, near Dundee. Then off to Wales on RAF Gunnery course. AFter all that, I came back to my unit and was informed I wasn't required in RAF any more. I was transferred to the Durham Light Infantry and went to Northern Ireland for Infantry training. I 'extended' my first leave unofficially, and arrived back at my unit 2 days late. As a result I missed a draft going out East. The next draft was to Sword Beach in Normandy a couple of days after D-Day and after the allies had taken Caen. We advanced south but had to move aside to let the French through(they did b****ger all in our sector) so they could march into Paris in triumph. We were moved into Belgium towards Arnhem, where we were supposed to follow up the great Para landing that was in the film 'A Bridge too Far' That was a lost cause as a huge Panzer Division was grouping there, waiting for the para's so they could shoot them from the sky. We came to a standstill on way to relieve them. Then the German's broke through American lines in the Battle of Budge, a few German units and panzers reached us but they got bogged down in the mud and surrendered. We advanced again and crossed the Rhine and the Elbe. My unit surrounded Hamburg. Fortunately, the Germans surrrended or it would have been a blood bath as they were so well fortified in that city. I was now quite an experienced infantry man. I wasn't frightened of dying. My biggest fear was to be blinded or to lose a limb, I'd sooner be dead than that. My first experience under fire was clearing woods near the Rhine and were being shot at by snipers. I had no fear. My religion as a devout Catholic kept fear away. If it happens it happens, I reckoned. We went on to Hamburge and took the surrender of the U-Boats there. We were kitted out with fresh uniforms and spent 3 days polishing boots and brass for the surrender ceremony. Then we marched over 1000 prisons off into cattle tracks. All they had was one tin of water, 2 tins of corn beef and a few packets of biscuits between about 30 in each cattle truck. We wired them in and they stayed there till they got
to Calais. En route, the French and Belgians threw stones at them and they wanted us British to protect them.

We put them in compounds in Calais, but we were pretty friendly and some of them were allowed to join us in NAAFi. Our officer said 'I'm looking the other way'. We sang 'Lili Marleine' together and I learned the song they sang when they were going to invade us: 'Let me kiss your lily-white hand because tomorrow, we're going to invade England.' We switch it round so it ended 'because tomorrow we're going to invade Germany'. We didn't know about the concentration camps then. I had no idea about it. I respected the ordinary German infantryman. Not so the SS. The only way to stop those fanatics was to kill them. If an SS sniper hit one of our chaps from a building, we'd destroy the whole building, so that stopped that.

One of greatest shows I've ever seen was in Dusseldorf - in their stadium for a surrender ceremony -the gathering of the massed Scots regiments' pipe bands and British regiments' brass bands - the German civilians were so impressed, they applauded for over half an hour. It was the greatest sight that anyone could ever hope to see. It was very emotional. Those bands were later disbanded.

AFter Dusseldorf, the Scots took over and I was moved to northern Germany to Rensburg, where I met my future wife. She had been running from the Russian zone. She was wounded in Dresden bombing raid, but survived. She and family were starving; I'd take rations and wrap them in a blanket around me to take to her and her family. I came back to UK to be demobbed. She joined me later, we were married and had 5 children."

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