The Germans don’t use much artillery. But they have plenty of mortars which are equally effective. We have now collected the water and ammo. And the other lads move off in front. I am usually last at everything. I am last now because the load is heavy and my wrists are weak. I have never done a lot of carrying. I have the box of ammo on my shoulder and the water in my right hand. But have to stop every 50 yards to change over. There is now a fresh wind blowing. I have never been so cold before in my hands and ears. The other lads are now well in front, and I think of a way to warm my hands. I fire my rifle into the ground and warm my hands on the muzzle. I am not so sure that I am on the correct path. But a few minutes later a machine gun opens up. It’s a German. I can tell by the rapid fire and it’s on my left, which would be correct. The bullets are coming towards me and are very close. I can tell by the loud whistle. I try to judge the distance they are away (the Jerries). I make it between four and six hundred yards, but can’t be sure in a forest with a wind blowing. I am trying to calculate the time between the whistle of the bullets over my head and sound of the gun. But now the shelling has started, and something quite new is happening. The shells are hitting the trees and there is the overhead burst. This I have never thought about before. I am unprepared for this. I have never been taught any method of defence or any kind of cover against the overhead burst. I am running with the box on my shoulder. I am confused as I can’t be sure whether it’s mortars or shells. But the firing continues and I am alone. I have never been alone before under heavy fire. As I run along I slip on the path and the sharp edge of the tin which covers the box cuts my face. It’s not painful but I know it’s bleeding. I can feel the warm tickling feeling going down my neck. I am now on the ground. I have managed to get to my knees but am weak. The shelling continues, and one has hit the trees right up over my head. I feel that I want to dig into the frozen ground with my bare hands. Oh if only I had a pick and shovel I could dig myself into the earth. There is such a desire to be in a trench or dug-out that one feels that it is one’s natural abode. I am now crawling on my hands and knees and am pulling the box of ammo and the water along the icy path. I can’t stand up as my legs are too weak. Back at school I learned to keep my balance when my legs were giving way by holding my arms slightly outstretched. I feel that I could do that now if there was nothing to carry. Am I going the correct way? I am not too sure. The firing has stopped. There is not a sound except my own breathing which is irregular. I now stop as I reach a tree and stand up. My hands are like lumps of lead. There are footsteps getting closer. I hide behind the tree and look. My ammo is in the middle of the path. I must hide that in case it’s a German patrol. If they see that it will make them suspicious, and they may look around. They are now about thirty yards off and I get a grenade ready, as it’s too dark to shoot straight. Besides I would give my position away. I ease the pin slightly out and begin to think what if I should lose my nerve and drop the grenade at my feet? So I put the grenade away. I feel such a fool and a coward. I tell myself I will have some grenade practice at the first opportunity. That is what I ought to do. I should tackle all my fears and grapple with them one by one. That is the only solution to my problem. When I first joined the army I was afraid of officers. But when in the Indian army ordnance I would go out of my way to meet officers, and when I went to Malta I was afraid to swim in the sea. It took a lot of courage to tell my pal Bob Birchall about my fear. So the following day we both went to the Hay wharf, and after a lot of persuasion I went past my depth, and was soon able to swim a hundred yards. The joy and pleasure when one beats or overcomes a fear is something which one must experience to really understand.
It’s a patrol and one of our own. I let them come right up to me before I shout, as there have been accidents lately of patrols being fired on coming back to our own lines. It’s Spud Thomson and Hanger and the new N.C.O. from the 51st division. They help me to carry the ammo and we reach our trenches in fifteen minutes. We all have a good drop of rum. There have been a number of lads wounded lately, and we are still getting their rations. We make strong sweet tea and put the remainder of the rum in it. Orders are issued to ‘stand to’, an attack is expected along the whole front. On such an occasion there is no relaxation. An American patrol wanders into our sector and is fired on. This is a common occurrence and luckily there are no casualties. They wear the same type of steel helmet as the Germans. There have been a lot of accidents lately and we lose more men that way than in actual combat. We are relieved by a battalion of the guards.
It’s the first week in December ’44 and we march back about fifteen miles. We go to a disused coal mine where we are given a bath and a change of clothing. We are living with the Dutch people, about six to each house. In our village there is a British nine-inch gun, which breaks windows in the houses as it fires. The natives complain and the gun is moved away another 100 yards. After two days’ rest we are back up at the front again near the Dutch-German border. We are well dug in. During the day we move back to a small village about 200 yards away. It’s fairly quiet during day time. But at night as we move forward to the trenches they open up with machine guns and heavy mortar. We send out a strong fighting patrol which meets opposition. They do not return.
The enemy are a thousand yards north in a place called Gilenkerchen.9 We are relieved a few days before Christmas. We return to the coal mine to get washed and changed and are just beginning to settle down in a native house when we are ordered back to the front. We have not had more than a few hours’ sleep in weeks. The Germans have broken through the American lines on a wide front. They have advanced to a depth of twenty kilometres, and ten thousand prisoners are taken. Enormous quantities of materiel are also taken. The enemy have been short of petrol for their tanks. They claim that they have captured enough supplies to reach the coast and split our armies. They are still advancing. A number of British divisions are rushed forward and after bitter fighting, have managed to close the gaps.
It’s Christmas Eve ’44 and my battalion is back in the old position near Gilenkerchen on the border. I was L.O.B. ‘left out of battle’. I am twenty miles behind the line. My landlady is preparing for Christmas dinner. Next day there are three young children, two girls, eight and six, and a boy, three. I have given them plenty of chocolate and sweets, and cigarettes and soap to their parents. There is a girl from next door aged 20. She talks about her boyfriend. They are to be married when he comes home. I asked her where he is, and she answered, he was taken prisoner by the Japs in the Dutch East Indies. On hearing this I shouted, ‘O God’. I’m glad she didn’t understand what I meant. Just at that moment a truck stopped at the front door and two military police came in, and asked me to show my papers. On looking at my pay book they told me to go quickly and warn all men available to report to them immediately. I managed to find four men. We were then told that our unit was under heavy fire and there were a number of casualties. We would be driven to the front. We were left four hundred yards from the front as it was too dangerous to drive further. We ran two hundred yards, which wasn’t too bad. There was still another two hundred yards across open country. The French mortars were as usual accurate, and there were two machine guns firing at us from three hundred yards. The ground was like glass, and was very slippy. The lad in front of me fell right on his face and as I stopped to help him a bullet went through the small pack of my back. He was not injured. The firing died down after about four hours. We were in the trenches all during Xmas. But it was rather quiet. Several nights later the Germans were busy with patrol dogs. This went on for three nights and then they opened fire with everything they had for about eight hours. They attacked in company strength of about 120. We killed fifteen and 90 prisoners were taken. When we went out next morning to collect the dead it was discovered that several of them were in their bare feet. The local inhabitants must have taken their boots.
There was better news from the Ardennes Sector. The Germans were being driven back. Reports have reached us th
at twenty thousand American prisoners were taken, but no official news has yet been received. Our fourth battalion have lost a large number of men. They are holding a position about a mile and a half away on our left front. An evening shell hit a dump of ‘Y5’ grenades. This is a flat grenade which is very powerful and is used to blow down a tree or a wall. There were 2,500 in the dump. More than 50 bodies have already been picked up.
A tank driver told me of how there was a serious accident recently. A 75 mm gun was fired accidentally from a tank which had another parked in front, blowing up the tank and killing an officer. I am now on the Bren gun and have seen something moving about 60 yards in front of me, which I report to my platoon sergeant. I suggest to him that I ought to go forward and investigate. This is the chance I have been waiting for. I told him I may throw a grenade which he agrees to. He has already warned all our men on each side what is about to happen and they must not fire. There had previously been good light from the moon but a cloud had covered it, and it was much darker. I crawled forward about 30 yards, and waited and listened. But couldn’t see nor hear anything. But I must throw the grenade. I now stood up and withdrew the pin, and threw the grenade about twenty-five yards to almost the exact position where I thought I had seen a moving object, and immediately flinging myself down flat on my stomach. After a few seconds there was a great explosion, greater than is normally made by a grenade. Several officers came up to see what was wrong and now an amazing discovery was made. I had thrown my grenade into a minefield (German). At least one mine was exploded, possibly more. We are relieved after two weeks and after a clean-up and a rest we are allowed forty-eight hours leave in Brussels. This city is not very much the worse for the war, except that there are few men to be seen. We spend our time either in a cinema or wandering about the cafés where a very mild beer is sold. A few places sell a German spirit called Schnapps. There is also a drink called cognac,10 or some similar name. We stay at a private house and dine at the St Michael’s café. I find the people here very friendly and they often stop us in the street to have a chat, and we are often invited to their homes. The cafés are very homely and music is always provided.
There is a lot of money-changing going on which I know nothing about. A man stopped us in the street yesterday and asked my pal Jack and I to change a lot of Dutch guilders into Belgian francs. We said we didn’t have so much money but he informed us that we could go to the bank the following morning and change a certain amount. We did go and met him after and were surprised when he paid us well for our trouble.
We are now back in the line again near the village of...?11 about 5 miles south of Waldefeucht. We have dug ourselves in near a wood. There is a lot of straw in a field and we get bundles of it, which we make beds from as it’s very cold. I get the job of bringing back a dozen prisoners to our battalion H.Q. and later have to bury several dead. The ground is so hard it’s like concrete and I have already broken one pick. I have only managed to get down two feet. So the sergeant tells me to cover the bodies with snow and we can bury them properly tomorrow. So after marking the graves with a rifle and bayonet stuck into the ground and a steel helmet on top, I lie down to rest in the straw. After half an hour we get orders to move forward. We fall in and march along the road for three miles. We now advance in line. Our orders are to attack the village of Waldefeucht, and during the next two days we shall move forward to our next objective which is the River Ruhr.
We are now about a mile from the village as the German machine guns open up. A percentage of the bullets are tracer and each one appears to be coming straight for us. There is a nerve-breaking scream as a man on my left is hit. He is wounded in the stomach and is rolling about in the snow. Our orders are to keep on moving. There are two men in the rear to look after the wounded. The guns are still firing but not in my direction. We have reached the village and I climb over a number of dead, mostly German. There is now confusion. Most Germans have withdrawn but a few stay behind and they are shouting in English ‘over here A company’, ‘over here B’ and so on and as the company reaches the position directed, hand grenades are thrown amongst them.
My section of a corporal and four men take up the most forward position. We are in a very big house over an arch. The corporal then said in a low voice as if to himself, ‘If only I had a torch I could go through this house and search every room.’ Like a fool I said there is one in my pack. As he went to my pack I realized I had made a mistake. We went through every room, but found nothing. What we were looking for was booby-traps, which the Jerries were clever at making. You pick a rifle up, or open a door, or lift a dead body to bury it and a bomb goes off.
An hour afterwards the firing started with shell fire and mortars. The firing lasted three hours. The building in which we were in was hit several times but it was strongly built of stone. On one occasion I was thrown across the room on to a pile of broken glass, and the smell of cordite from the bursting shell made me sick.
The Germans counter-attacked the following morning, with Tiger tanks. Most of our troops withdrew a mile. We left the building, but remained in the village. We lost heavily in tanks. The two Tigers knocked out nineteen out of our twenty in little over an hour. My section kept the German infantry busy, so busy that one of their tanks had to withdraw to give them a hand. It was Sunday 21st January 1945. I was wounded in both legs and the right arm and taken prisoner. My wounds were superficial and I was therefore able to walk. I was taken by two Germans to the main road and made to face the wall. One soldier went back into the yard where we had been fighting. He called back to the one who was guarding me. I was touched lightly on the right shoulder with a bayonet which was fixed on to the end of a rifle. As I looked over my shoulder the soldier signalled for me to go back into the yard. As I walked along slowly I could hear the cries of Private Hanger. As I entered the shed where he was lying, it was obvious that he was badly wounded. He had a very deep wound in the side of his head, which he was holding with both hands. The blood was streaming down his hands. His legs appeared to be broken and twisted. He was now half sitting, one of his shoulders was rested against the wall. The Germans signalled for me to carry him but I pointed to my right arm, which was just dead. I was then taken back about 400 yards to a house on the right side of the main road where there were about 50 other prisoners. There was an interrogation officer there who was talking quite freely to a British officer about the progress of the battle, and was commenting on the conduct of our troops and our tanks and weapons in general, just as though he was discussing a ball game. The lads dressed my arm which was now rather painful. We remained there about two hours. Those who were well enough were marched away north, the wounded were assisted on to tanks and taken back to a hospital in Hindsburg. In this hospital was a very long passage and we sat on forms and awaited our turn for the operating table, which was at the end of the passage. As I sat on the form there was a German soldier each side of me. They were also wounded. What struck me immediately about this hospital was that each man took his turn as he entered. The Germans lined up as we did, they were not given preference. I watched about fifteen operations before it came my turn. The surgeon was a fine big fellow about 6 foot 4 inches. His blond hair was cut short, too short to comb. He was about thirty-eight. Each patient was undressed completely by a male nurse.
As the table was high and difficult to climb the surgeon lifted the patient by placing his hands under the arms, and lifting them up to a sitting position on the table. The male orderly then assisted the surgeon in examining the patient and locating the wounds. A nursing sister then appeared and administered the anaesthetic by placing a swab of lint or other material over the mouth and nose and asked the patient to count twenty. I did not count more than six because I did not like the smell of the stuff, and hoped the swab would be removed when I stopped counting. The surgeon worked with great speed and efficiency.
It was about 2.30 p.m. when I got on the operating table and about 3.30 a.m. when I awoke next morning. I was lyi
ng in a clean bed with snow white sheets. I had not seen sheets for more than six months. There was an orderly standing by my bed with a plate of stew, which I could not even look at. So he laughed and walked away. He returned with a cigarette and a box of matches which I accepted. Some time later the Sister came to apologise, saying ‘Your friend, I am sorry, he die.’ I did not know who she meant.
Founded on Fear Page 23