The advance party returned and they followed them to what turned out to be a centuries old castle. Whilst Eddie marched with his platoon across the drawbridge, through the huge wooden doors and into a courtyard, he had the strangest feeling that he had been there before. Not in his life time as he remembered it, but he certainly had a feeling of deja vu.
The kitchen had a stone flagged floor and was dimly lit, with a huge fireplace that stretched along the far wall with a wooden beam above it. It felt as if he had returned home with everything looking so familiar and he knew where everything was in the place, which was very uncanny.
The old castle stretched its arms around the weary men that night, and the sound of battle didn’t penetrate the centuries old stone walls. The soldiers slept like infants under the thickness of the army blankets. There were no beds to sleep on, but enough blankets for all.
They felt so safe, probably safer than they had ever felt since leaving England.
In the morning the cooks were up bright and early, serving porridge, bacon and eggs and sweet tea to a well rested company of men. After their meal they gathered their kit together, then forming into their own platoons they were on their way again.
Back at home, there wasn’t the fear of nightly bombing anymore, although London had been experiencing the nasty doodle bugs, it seemed that Hitler had his mind elsewhere.
People were tired of the rationing, shortages of food and clothing, with restrictions like the blackout still being enforced, but there was a feeling of hope that it wouldn’t be long before it was all over. Soldiers were given leave, now that the enemy was putting its energies into the Russian campaign, including Eddie, who was able to catch up with the news and family gossip and visited the Club at night.
He liked to listen to the news on the radio, it was a focal point in their home at the time. ITMA was very popular and the gags and sayings were quoted widely. Tony Hancock, Elsie and Doris Waters and others of their time had a great following. Lord Haw Haw was the broadcaster for a German propaganda programme. He had a very British accent and he dealt in half truths, so that people might believe the most outrageous of his statements. Some people took him very seriously and it was said to have smashed their radio sets to pieces in their rage, but most people looked upon him as a big joke. They usually switched him on if they were feeling bored with other programmes and knew it for what it was, propaganda, but it was easy to fall into a depression if your morale wasn’t very high.
During Eddie’s time in Belgium, Irene had written that one of her Australian cousins called Frank had come over with the Australian Air force. She had got to meet him when he had looked his family up and there had been a get together at Isabel’s house in Southport. He had looked very handsome in his navy uniform. They had assisted the British Air force, flying in Wellingtons and Lancasters across to Germany, which had become a nightly occurrence as they bombed the hapless cities to Hell.
He had been there when his best friend’s plane, which was flying ahead, was the target of anti-aircraft fire, being blown to pieces as his horrified mate looked on and although Frank took the Distinguished Flying Cross back to Australia, he also would have taken bad memories back as well.
Returning from his leave in England, happy that his Gina hadn’t forgotten who her daddy was and had been delighted with her pretty cross and chain, Eddie found that there had been another big battle and the company was preparing to move on again.
They marched at dawn along a road that seemed to stretch for miles into the distance. On one side the woods were thick with pine trees, on the other farmers’ fields, with farmhouses and small cottages dotted here and there. Most of the cottages looked abandoned, with gardens thick with weeds, but they found one place with tomatoes growing up the outside wall. The skins were cracked through lack of watering, but some of the men dropped out and picked handfuls of the delicious fruit.
The Irish lads from the Free State, drawn from depleted platoons to make a bigger one, started singing, ‘The wearing of the green’ ‘The sash me Father wore’ and ‘Kevin Barry’.
The officer in charge shouted to them to keep quiet, not because he didn’t enjoy their singing, but further on he warned them of the perils of being heard by the enemy. There was silence from then on and only the sound of marching boots could be heard.
Many miles were covered before they were called to a halt, as the ration wagon had caught up and was about to dispense tea and sandwiches in a small wooded clearing. As there was plenty of shelter the officer decide that they would dig in and spend the night there.
Next morning it was misty and once the camp came to life again, they found it wasn’t very far to their next objective.
In the distance they could see a large body of water. On closer inspection they found it was a canal and there were engineers waiting on the water with boats. The platoon crossed without incident, except for a hail of bullets that had rained upon them as they prepared to land on the other side.
The attack came soon. A fierce attack which gave the gunners they had joined up with and themselves a very bad time, but the enemy was eventually repelled, which allowed another platoon to make the crossing.
Eddie spent the night in a ditch and by dawn, not having had any sleep, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He desperately wanted to close his eyes again, but stiffened when he saw a bicycle passing him by on the road above. It was a lady’s bike, but it wasn’t a woman who was riding it. A German soldier was astride it, peddling away furiously, hoping his luck wouldn’t run out.
A rifle cracked and he fell off, with the bicycle clattering across the road. It had a carrier fixed to the handlebars and the soldier had put a round red Dutch cheese in it that had fallen out and was rolling into the gutter.
On the other side of the road, a door of a cottage had opened and a woman stood transfixed by the scene, petrified with fright. A little child ran from behind her and she automatically bent down and picked him up.
Later, Eddie confessed that he must have been off his head, as he broke his cover and ran across the road, picking up the cheese as he went. Reaching the woman, he put the cheese into her arms, then pushed her, the child and the cheese back into the cottage and slammed the door on them!
He was lucky enough to be back under cover before the next happening. A horse and cart came racing up the road, it had broken out suddenly from a farm gate further along. The cart was loaded with soldiers, guns and food and the driver was hoping by its speed to get by without hindrance. The men came up from their cover and one of them lobbed a grenade, landing in the rear of the cart as the vehicle passed them by. The horse escaped injury, but the surviving enemy gave themselves up.
In that action the platoon lost one of their best loved lieutenants when a machine gun had gone into action at the end of the road. Some of the men were ordered to silence it and the lieutenant had led them to do this. In the fighting that ensued he lost his life.
It had been strange that Eddie and he had been talking only a couple of nights before; the officer had been rather depressed while they had sat together enjoying a drink of cognac each after they’d dug in.
He had asked Eddie to promise to get in touch with his relatives if he died in one of the next few days’ actions, as Eddie only lived a stone’s throw from where the lieutenant’s mother lived.
Later he carried out his mission with great sorrow, for as he said to Irene, “He was one of the nicest lads I had ever met. People read about these things in books about wars and brave men, but they are just ordinary men who are prepared to do their duty as they see it. They stick their ground because of their high quality of training and the discipline in the months of preparation and no praise can be high enough for them.”
It took all of Eddie’s courage to go and see the lieutenant’s sorrowing mother, and thought about his bravery often in the months to come.
“Golden lads and lasses too, all go down to dust.”
After this action was finished and mopping up operations co
mpleted, they were marched on to Holland. Once across the border they found it to be very flat country with thickets of trees running along each side of the road. They had an ecstatic reception from the Dutch people whom they met as they marched in. There they found another canal that had to be crossed before they came to grips with the enemy; an enemy who had by then become well organised.
It was there that Eddie came nearer to a town named Cuyk, a place that brought him a lifetime of memories.
At a small village on their way, they took over an empty house, checking it over very carefully as they did so, as the Germans were well known for booby traps. Once it was established, Eddie was put on a spell of guard duty and he noticed a young girl moving swiftly around the little farm that was opposite to their billet. She was looking about her as if she was fearful of being watched, making in the direction of what appeared to be a collection of pigsties, then disappearing suddenly behind a haystack. Eddie had noticed that she carried a bowl in her hand and was puzzled, because there didn’t seem to be any livestock on the farm.
When he was off duty he went to the place to investigate. He had to be very alert and careful as there were still pockets of snipers around, who had been taking up positions in the most unexpected places. To his amazement, after he had carefully examined the haystack, he found a boy, who looked to be around the age of eight or nine, hiding in its centre. He had obviously been living inside it and even had an observation hole from which he could see the world around him. Eddie took the frightened boy back to the farmhouse, where the girl was waiting for him by the front door. She looked terrified, but explained in halting English that the boy had been hidden in the haystack for quite a long time. Even now she expected the Germans to come back and find him.
It appeared that both children were Jewish. Their parents were dead and the man who owned the farm had kindly taken them in when they had nowhere else to go. The girl didn’t have any trace of her Jewish origin, but the boy unmistakably had. Eddie looked at his olive skin, dark hair and features and could immediately see the difference between them.
She began to cry and Eddie did his best to comfort her, assuring the sobbing girl that the Germans would not be coming back again and he would take her brother to his superiors, who would undoubtedly want to know what had been going on.
The boy, who had valuable information due to what he had seen from his peephole in the haystack, was escorted back to his sister later on.
It must have been a wonderful feeling for both of them, when they realised the nightmare was over and could resume the happy life they’d had before the coming of the Germans.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The months wore on, leaves were coming up more regularly and Eddie came home to a peaceful England. Any bombing now was being done in reverse, it was the German cities that were getting the hammering and only London had been victim to the last doodle bugs.
To his wife and family, Eddie was full of fun again, miraculous when one contemplates the baptism of fire that he and his fellow soldiers had been through. He had said that he had lost touch with many of the regular soldiers whom he had trained with in Ireland. They had been together in the invasion, but many had been lost in the fighting that followed, or had been transferred to a different company.
However, after one of his leaves as he was marching along with his platoon, he met up with some of them, much to his delight. His company was passing through a heavily shelled town and, as they did so, Eddie saw some familiar faces, as some of the regiment were still quartered there.
Most of the houses and shops were in ruins and the roads were ankle-deep in mud. He dropped out when he noticed some of the men he had come over with, his first inquiry being where was Mick? The soldier, with a big grin on his face, told Eddie the man’s whereabouts, pointing to a still standing warehouse further along the track.
There was a big department store that Eddie had marched past, its windows all smashed and the doors hanging off their hinges, but he had noticed some beautiful models lying in disarray in various stages of undress. He selected a model clothed in the scantiest underwear, tucked it under his arm and went to find Mick.
He snuck into the billet where Mick, who liked to catch up with his rest when he was able to, was lying fast asleep. He placed the pretty model into the bed beside him and tiptoed out again, sorely regretting that he couldn’t be there to check out his friend’s reaction.
In months to come he met up with a soldier who had been in the billet when Mick awoke. His first question had been, “Has that Eddie Dockerty’s company been through?”
The billet had been in an uproar, as Mick had put the model in another sleeper’s bed, who happened to be a sergeant, then the sergeant awoke and put it into another sleeper’s bed. In this way the model travelled around the billet, until a grumpy man put his boot under her and she was tossed into the bushes.
Deep into the Dutch countryside, Mick and the town were left far behind as the company marched on. Although still very flat, the area was thickly wooded. Many areas could only be described as thickets, where vast stretches of un-penetrable slender saplings all reached up to the sky for a place to live.
They were nearing a river, where the woods were giving way to farmer’s fields and a big black mill stood sentinel at the side of the road. In the distance there was the outline of a small town. At this point the company was halted and a reconnaissance party sent out. Eddie was one of them.
An earlier recce had reported that there were snipers in the area and another factor was the sandy soil around there. Vehicles couldn’t operate on the sandy tracks, so everything had to be brought along by hand.
Slipping through the streets of the quiet town of Cuyk, situated as it was on the West bank of the Dutch Meuse, Eddie came upon a convent. A nun was outside getting water from a copper boiler and looked up in alarm when Eddie spoke to her. She backed away, spilling the water from her flowing bucket in her haste. He spoke gently and, although she was afraid, she pointed to the convent and motioned him to stay. She returned a little later with a priest.
Eddie was not much better placed with a priest as he didn’t speak English either and kept talking away in French. When he made no headway, he too went away. He came back accompanied by a tall, thin girl in her early twenties. She looked sternly at Eddie through her steel-rimmed spectacles before she spoke to him in perfect English.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Her voice sounded quite chilly.
“I want some information,” Eddie answered simply.
He explained to the girl that he was an English soldier who had been sent to find out the enemy’s position. Where they still in the town or had they evacuated? The girl looked at him with a blank expression on her face.
“Where are the Germans?” he asked urgently. “Are there snipers in the town? If so where are they placed? Please tell me if you know, the information is vital to us!”
The girl turned to the priest and spoke to him quickly in Dutch, translating what the soldier had said to her. She waited for his reply, then turned again to Eddie.
“The priest said that if we give you the information and the Germans come back, then they will take reprisals. They have already shot two Americans who came here asking questions.”
“I am here with a regiment which has never been pushed back since we invaded the Normandy beaches,” said Eddie proudly. The priest listened carefully as the girl translated. He looked at Eddie standing there. He saw a thin, dark, weary man, but he sensed the determination that would brook no refusal. He heaved a great sigh and spoke in Dutch to the girl again.
“Give him the information he wants… but first we must tell him about our refugees.”
They took Eddie down to a dimly lit cellar. He saw about a dozen people, mostly the elderly and small children lying around on rough bedding.
“These people are here for sanctuary. We are putting them as well as ourselves at risk in telling you what you want to know. Tell me again what it
is you want.”
They started to talk. The girl gave him all the information he needed. “There are snipers in the church steeple, in houses all around the town. Some have already gone across the river and they shoot at the people if they walk down the lane to buy food from the farms.”
She spoke rapidly, telling him everything he needed to know.
Eddie thanked her and the priest, smiled gently at the nervous-looking onlookers, then left the convent, hoping that he wouldn’t be seen by the enemy. He used great caution and what cover he could find, bearing in mind what the girl had said about the Germans being in the town.
Back at camp, he found his sergeant who listened attentively, then the man sent a runner with a message for the C.O. The message came back that they should all take cover as they were going to shell.
The platoon fled to the nearest shelter and as he ran Eddie’s thoughts were on the church steeple, glad he wasn’t up there when the guns started up.
The enemy retreated over the Meuse and at last the town was clear again. There were more troops moving in before Eddie saw the Dutch girl again. He found that her name was Anny and she had learned to speak her excellent English when she had been at college.
He went back to the convent as often as he could and on his first visit there he had found a young novice lying unconscious by a heap of fuel at the rear of the building. He summoned help, then carried her into her cell. She was very frail and Eddie thought that she may well be suffering from malnutrition, so he went back to the billet and collected all the chocolate rations from the men who would part with them. He went back and inquired how the young novice was doing and took the chocolate with him as a present for her. From then on he was made very welcome, even allowed to work in the kitchen where he found it was a hive of industry. The sisters were quiet as they worked on their various tasks of cooking and cleaning for the convent residents.
It was actually quite a large community and Anny, only too happy to practice her English, was often there.
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