Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22: VICTORY AND AFTER
As we drove north next day, we passed convoys of German soldiers walking south to surrender themselves. We hoped that we might continue our advance across the Kiel Canal and into Denmark. However, the Danes decided that they could disarm their German occupiers without any assistance from the Allied forces, and that they would prefer to have no more foreign troops on their soil. Accordingly we were halted at the attractive market town of Heide, about ninety miles north of Hamburg. We moved into the German barracks, not far from the main square.
A couple of days later, Peter (the Air OP) asked me if I would like to join him in an unauthorised flight across the Danish frontier. I jumped at the opportunity, and sat next to him reading the map as we flew over the countryside at a height of a few hundred feet. The roads below us were thronged with German Army units, some with full equipment of guns and horses, marching with perfect discipline towards a point where they could surrender. When we were sure we had crossed the frontier, we circled low over a nice looking village. The people waved us a welcome, and we landed in a field on the edge of the village.
Although we had our revolvers with us, it was slightly alarming to see quite so many German soldiers walking around. However, some young men from the Danish resistance told us that they had ordered the Germans to hand in all their arms to the village hall, where a couple of resistance fighters stood guard. For an hour or so we exchanged experiences with the locals, who entertained us royally. Before we left, they loaded the plane with eggs and butter. With the extra weight, our light plane barely cleared the hedge at the end of the field. Not discouraged by this narrow escape, Peter waved goodbye to the village by a display of aerobatics around the church tower, which made me feel rather the worse for wear.
The Colonel's disapproval of our joy-ride was moderated by the sight of the eggs and butter which we delivered to the Officers’ Mess.
LIFE IN HEIDE
Until the occupation forces set up a civil administration, regiments were in complete charge of the districts where they happened to be. For a couple of weeks, I was given the job of local Gauleiter. I had finished the war in the post of Intelligence Officer at RHQ, so had no equipment to look after, no intelligence to absorb or propagate, and very little responsibility for the troops of RHQ as they were under the charge of RSM Dusty Millard.
My Gauleiter duties were undefined, apart from the obvious step of posting guards on all factories, food depots, etc. I was given one of the RHQ signallers to assist me, a Londoner called Leo Coppin. Leo was short and plump, with thinning greasy hair. Astonishingly, he had an extraordinary knack of attracting pretty girls, wherever we were. Years after, when I came across him in the Lake District, I found that he had married the most unattractive woman you could imagine. Anyway, he was a useful assistant, and a good source of local intelligence, presumably through one or other of his girl friends.
There was no shortage of interpreters or eager helpers from the civilian population. Strangely enough, it appeared that none of them had been Nazi sympathisers or supporters of the war. There was a particularly friendly policeman, who confided that he had been a secret member of the Communist Party. He presented me with a small Voigtlander camera: I felt it would be ungracious to refuse the gift or to enquire into its provenance. On the whole, the British troops behaved rather well. Gold watches and other valuables were acquired, but usually in exchange for cigarettes rather than by right of conquest.
One unusual acquisition was a trainload of sheepskin coats. It was destined for the eastern front, but ‘captured’ by Lofty Slinn as it lay marooned in a sidings near Hamburg. Lofty issued one per man to the entire regiment. I was to be very glad to have mine to wrap around me in the bitter winter of 1946/7. When eventually it began to disintegrate, the remains served as a hearthrug for many years.
When I toured my district, I found that the prosperous farming families all enjoyed the services of slave labourers who lived in filthy conditions in barns or stables. The employers seemed to think that this was the natural order of things — as indeed it was under the Nazi philosophy. I ordered them to change places with their labourers, and went round later to ensure that my orders were carried out.
More serious crimes of oppression or cruelty were reported to me from various sources. I was sure that the Nazi criminals would crawl away into the woodwork as soon as they could. I managed to round up a couple of dozen and confront them with their accusers. I held a sort of tribunal in front of the Colonel’s tank, which Dusty Millard draped with a large Union Jack as a symbol of authority and justice. When a case was made out, I sent the accused with my written report and an armed escort to Brigade Headquarters. I should like to think that justice was meted out to the offenders. Looking back now, I very much doubt it. Many of the major war criminals were dealt with at Nuremberg or later — or died at their own hands like Himmler — but tens of thousands of lesser criminals must have got away with it, and re-established themselves as worthy citizens with only their own consciences to remind them of their evil-doing.
Two women found their way somehow to Heide from one of the concentration camps. They were mother and daughter, probably in their forties and twenties respectively, but as living skeletons they looked the same age. Their pathetic wasted limbs were mere sticks. I used to visit them in hospital. I hope they survived.
ACCIDENT
A couple of weeks later, the first occupation administration was set up, and relieved me of my Gauleiter duties. The Regiment decided, for some reason that escapes me, to send me on a course in Brussels. They sent also another subaltern, John Henderson (who became a Methodist preacher after the war). We travelled in a Jeep driven by my driver/batman, Matthias. He was a 20-year old youth from the Welsh valleys, a nice lad, though he had the utmost difficulty in getting out of bed in the mornings. As one of his duties was to bring me a morning cup of tea, it was necessary for me to wake him up first in order that he could perform this task. As we slept in neighbouring tents at the camp in Brussels, I attached a long piece of string to his bed so that a sharp tug could awaken him to reluctant life. He demurred at my original plan to attach the string to his big toe.
I remember nothing of the course and little of Brussels, except that we had trouble starting the Jeep. I discovered by trial and error that a reliable method was to open the bonnet (which then rested vertically against the windscreen), and to hit one of the battery terminals with the starting handle. On one occasion Matthias had left the vehicle in gear before climbing into the driver's seat. When I applied the treatment, the Jeep leapt into life and careered down the boulevard with Matthias at the wheel able to see absolutely nothing as the bonnet blocked out his view. I managed to leap in alongside him, peer round the vertical bonnet, and help him bring the runaway Jeep to a halt.
On our return journey, I took a turn at the wheel after we had crossed back into Germany. I was driving at about 50 mph on a wet and slippery road, when the Jeep for no apparent reason swerved off the road and overturned into a bush. My two companions looked to be in a bad way, though no bones seemed to be broken. I had a painful ankle, but limped to the road and hailed a passing truck. We were taken to a nearby transit camp, where Henderson and Matthias soon recovered. After a couple of days, my ankle still hurt when I tried to put it to the ground. The camp M.O. sent me to the local hospital for X ray. It was a German civilian hospital, where I was X-rayed by two nuns. They told me I had a fractured ankle, put me in plaster, and sent me to bed in the hospital. It was in a town called Celle, somewhere near Hanover. My broken ankle, sustained in this ignominious fashion, was to be my only war wound.
When I had been there a few days, the authorities decided to evacuate all British troops from the hospital and free it for use by the civilian population. So one night I found myself on a stretcher in an aeroplane bound for a military airport near Swindon. Air evacuation had been much improved since 1942 when I had waited in the desert at Benghazi for a plane whose destination depended on how long the fuel would last. Now there were ambulances awaiting our arrival, ready to transport us to a hospital at Morriston near Swansea. My chief memories of Morriston was of the 1945 General Election campaign. As there was little else to do, we listened to all the election broadcasts. Our unanimous view was that Attlee, though no orator, came off better than Churchill. Winston tried to strike fear into the hearts of the British people by comparing a prospective Labour government to the Gestapo — a ludicrous idea, unworthy of the great man. The electorate overwhelmingly endorsed the view of the orthopaedic ward at Morriston Hospital.
For no very obvious reason, I was transferred to the Royal Northern Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore. The final stage of the journey was by ambulance, driven by an attractive young woman from the ATS. I was the sole occupant of the rear compartment. In Camden Town the engine petered out and the driver was unable to restart it. “Do you want me to get out and push?”, I asked, assuming that she would know that I was attempting a joke. Unfortunately, she took my question seriously. I was in honour bound to limp out of the ambulance, foot in plaster, and put my shoulder to the wheel. Together we got the vehicle started. We were about to drive past my parents’ flat in Haverstock Hill, when at my suggestion we stopped there for a cup of tea. I hadn’t brought a girl home for several years, so Mother and Father were suitably surprised.
At the Royal Northern we were housed in comfortable huts. I felt a bit of a fraud with my minor disability as everyone else in the ward had severe spinal injuries. To a man, they had decided to put their period of enforced rest to good use. Heavy volumes were piled on each bedside table. My neighbour was well advanced with his law studies.
We had a tall, beautiful, nurse called Penny, who seemed to be on intimate terms with all her long-term patients. She would lean over and embrace them with such fervour that I feared for their safety. However, I did not stay long enough to qualify for the full treatment.
Soon I felt that I had spent long enough in hospital, especially when I heard that the Seventh Armoured had provided the first British troops of occupation in Berlin. I managed to discharge myself, with a promise (soon forgotten, I’ m afraid) to continue the exercises designed to restore full mobility to my ankle. I reported to the Artillery Depot at Woolwich, now a vast transit camp. My request to rejoin my Regiment fell on deaf ears. After a couple of weeks of boredom, I received orders to escort a contingent of troops to some other destination in Europe. This did not appeal to me at all. I decided to do my own thing, and find my way back to my Regiment in Berlin.
DESERTER!
I walked out of the gates of Woolwich barracks and caught a bus. Two or three buses later, I arrived at Croydon (then London's main airport). Strolling round the planes parked on the tarmac, I found an American pilot about to fly to Berlin. I thumbed a lift on his plane, and three hours later landed at Gatow Airport on the fringe of Berlin. By good fortune, it was no more than a few minutes’ walk to the Headquarters of 5 RHA, where the Adjutant (now Mike Hills) welcomed me with open arms. I felt I had come home at last.
My next encounter with the Adjutant, three weeks later, began less propitiously.
“The C.O. wants to see you”.
“What about?”
“Afraid you’re for it, old boy.”
As I went in to the Colonel's office, he looked up from a letter on his desk.
“I believe you left Woolwich without permission?”
“Yes, Sir. I wanted to rejoin the Regiment.”
“I have a message from the Commandant at Woolwich. I am instructed to charge you with desertion.”
“I’m sorry, Sir.”
“I think the message will be lost in transit.”
The Colonel tore the letter in half and consigned it to the waste paper basket. “
Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
BERLIN
Berlin had been almost entirely flattened by Allied bombing. The Russian advance had virtually completed the process. Some gaunt walls were still standing, but closer inspection showed that they were merely the remains of gutted buildings. There were vast heaps ofrubble in the streets, as there had been in Hamburg. Experts predicted they would take fifty years to clear. This proved to be nonsense. The streets were cleared (mostly by tough looking German women) within months.
In the outer suburbs, however, a few houses survived almost intact. My Regiment was in Charlottenburg, where I was billeted in the house of a prosperous dentist. Our guns were nearby: those of our sister regiment, 3 RE-IA, were in the surviving out-buildings of the stadium constructed for the 1936 Olympics. (To Hitler’s chagrin, the most successful athlete was the American negro Jesse Owen). Soon after I arrived, there was a four-power athletic contest in the Olympic stadium. Competitors were supposed to be chosen from the troops of occupation in Germany. Rumour had it that the USA summoned their team from American forces from the four quarters of the globe. True or false, the US won most of the events. Their high jump champion contemptuously beat the rest of the field before removing his long trousers. He then stripped down to his shorts, and cleared the bar as it was successively raised another three inches.
We spent a lot of time cleaning and polishing ourselves and our equipment for various parades. I had missed the first and biggest of the victory parades, but there was soon another one, in which I took part. Indeed, quite a prominent part, as I was to share the Colonel's tank which led the British armour. The British led the four armoured contingents, with the Russians bringing up the rear. (It was said that the Russian tanks might have been so heavy as to cause the roadway to collapse). The Russians led the infantry, as was only right as they had captured Berlin, with the Americans in the rear. I thus found myself in the leading Allied tank, an honour to which my relatively modest fighting service scarcely entitled me.
As we formed up, the American infantry in front of us were standing at ease. Most of them were smoking. The parade was watched with mild interest and little enthusiasm by the inhabitants of Berlin. However, they sprang to immediate life when the order to march was given, the Americans put out their cigarettes, and the crowd rushed to pick up the butt-ends. Not an elevating sight, but then there was little to elevate the spirit in Berlin with the advance of autumn and the approach of the first bitter post-war winter.
- Sep 7 parade (British parade was in July so this is the one..)
Also
The Division's arrival in Berlin had been greeted by a giant divisional sign, which had been pictured on the front page of the Daily Mirror. I asked the editor for a copy, and he duly obliged.
At that time there was no barrier between any of the four sectors of occupation in Berlin. We had the Americans on one side and the Russians on the other: the French were further to the south. The Russians were careless of their military equipment, especially when they were in celebratory mood. My regiment ‘found’ a Russian jeep one night. We painted out the red star, and added a desert rat or two. It was useful to gain an extra jeep for our regimental transport.
At lunch one day in the officers’ mess, we heard a commotion outside. German civilians told us they were being threatened by a Russian officer making menacing gestures. I confronted him, to find that he was making turning motions with his wrist. In fact he was trying to borrow a corkscrew in order to open a bottle of unidentified hooch. I gave him a corkscrew, but declined his offer to take a drink from the bottle, which probably contained a noxious form of wood alcohol. The anxiety of the Germans might have been understandable: by all accounts, the behaviour of the Russian occupying forces was often brutal. Knowing something of how Russians had been treated by occupying German troops, we were not inclined to be censorious of our allies.
Naturally we enjoyed rather more leisure now than when we were fighting. One hot afternoon I went for a long walk in the country beyond the city outskirts. I found a pond, surrounded by willows and skimmed by giant translucent dragonflies. I sat there for an hour, feeling a sense of great peace that the war was over, that we had been victorious, and that I had survived.
The evenings were livelier. I went occasionally to an officers’ club, frequented mainly for drinking. I spent one evening there with Brian Falvey, a new Signals Officer whose good looks had been marred by extensive skin transplants after his truck had been brewed up by a Panther. When we left the bar after a long session, Brian could scarcely stand. I helped him into the driving seat of the Signals Jeep, and he drove back to our billets with perfect control at about sixty miles an hour. I helped out of the jeep and into his billet before he collapsed. It had never occurred to me to be worried about our hazardous drive.
RETURN TO HEIDE
Some time in November 1945, we were relieved in Berlin and drove back to our old billets in Heide, far to the north. The process of demobilisation was starting, and we had a lot of new officers. Each of the old stagers was given a ‘demob number’, calculated on the basis of age and length of service. I had a lot of the latter but not too much of the former. I was Group 32, which looked like keeping me in the Army until well into 1946. But for the Japanese surrender following the atomic bombs, I could have been destined for a third — and certainly the most bitterly opposed — invasion to end (probably fatally) my military career.
While most of our new officers were youngsters straight out of OCTU, the senior officers were mostly hardened regulars. The taciturn Colonel Farquhar still commanded the regiment, with Peter Gillett as second in command. Peter wanted to try out one of the new Cromwell tanks that we were now given to replace the old Shermans. The steering was completely different. The Cromwell had a steering wheel, and when put into neutral would turn around its own centre: the Sherman simply steered by braking one or other of the tracks. As a result, Peter span the Cromwell into a tree. Unluckily, one of the tracks hit the trunk with such force that the tank was a write-off. It couldn’t have done his career any good. I was surprised therefore when, years later, I was receiving some civilian honour at Buckingham Palace, there was Peter Gillett in immaculate uniform ushering the C.B.'s, C.B.E.'s, etc. into their separate pens before propelling them to the Royal presence. Maybe the authorities thought that as an ADC within the safe perimeter of the Palace he wouldn’t wreck any more tanks.
We had two women officers attached to RHQ as drivers (not of tanks). It was because of their presence in the Mess that the Colonel resisted my suggestion for adorning the Christmas tree. In the absence of balloons, I thought we could blow up articles distributed by the MO for quite other purposes. The senior of the women was middle aged (as I then saw it — probably in her late thirties). The junior, about twenty, Anne Penn Symons, was very attractive, but closely chaperoned by her older colleague. Anne was the daughter of a General who had won a V.C. and had a fair share of courage herself One day, her truck skidded and overturned on an icy road. She climbed out calmly and sat cheerfully on the upturned truck until rescued.
FRIENDS IN HAMBURG AND COPENHAGEN
IBefore the war, in 1937, I had stayed with a family in Hamburg, friends of my father. Arthur was ofJewish origin but had had himself baptised in the hope that this would make things easier for his family. His wife was Swedish, and Christian, and the two children were brought up as Christians. Hans Werner was my age, tail and very blond, archetypal Nordic in appearance. Lotte, two years younger, was smaller, dark, and pretty.
Arthur had come to England in 1938, believing correctly that in his absence his family would not be subject to persecution. He never rejoined his family, having formed a lasting liaison in London with a woman who worked in the Post Office at Belsize Park. ("What am I to do?" he asked me sadly " I am not a eunuch: - pronouncing the last word with the accent on the second syllable, ending with a German gutteral). He sent me the address of his family. I found them living in one room in the outskirts of Hamburg: Frau Fraenkel, a couple of cousins, and Lotte who was now a nurse. Hans Werner was a prisoner in Italy.
I took Lotte out for a ride in my Jeep. She emigrated to England some years later, and kept in touch with my Mother after Arthur and my Father had died. She became a rather tiresome character, constantly telling us how much better everything was done in Germany after the war than in England.
After my stay in Hamburg in 1937, I had moved on to visit other family friends in Copenhagen. Now I was able to re-establish contact with them. Brian Falvey and I borrowed, with permission, the Colonel's staff car, and drove up to Denmark for a weekend in Copenhagen. On the way we spent a night at a Danish inn, where I succeeded in reversing the car (never my strong point) over a bicycle owned by one of the staff. Fortunately we carried with us a stock of cigarettes to smooth over any local difficulties. In this case, 140 cigarettes were accepted as the equivalent of a new bicycle. My friends in Copenhagen were a delightful couple, Eugenie being one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She bore a remarkable resemblance to Nefertiti, the wife of the Pharoh Ikhnaton, as we know her from the famous lifelike head. We carried on a romantic correspondence for some years after the war, through the intermediary of a homosexual frind of Eugenie, so not as to worry her husband.
EDUCATION AND DEMOBILISATION
I arranged German lessons for myself with the Headmaster of the Heide school, Dr. Rasmussen (Danish names were common in Schieswig-Hoistein). After Christmas, I became occupant of a new post, Regimental Education Officer, and was promoted to Temporary Captain on that account. I always regarded it as a rather phoney position, and to this day never think of myself as a Captain, always a Lieutenant.
As Education Officer, I was responsible for passing on information about post-war careers. Among the leaflets and brochures available was one about joining the Civil Service. There was to be some ‘Reconstruction exam’, in which ex-servicemen could compete. I idly filled in a form myself, in due course took the exam as a bit of a lark, and found myself— to my surprise — a Civil Servant for the next thirty-three years.
At the end of 1945, the Government announced a scheme for ‘Class B release’ on the grounds of interrupted studies. As I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I thought that a return to Cambridge might offer a congenial opportunity to think about it. Army service was getting boring without a war on. So I applied — successfully — for Class B release. I was demobilised in February 1946, five and a half years after I had joined the Essex Regiment as a Private at Warley Barracks.
EPILOGUE
After the first Victory Parade in Berlin, Winston Churchill paid a moving tribute to the Seventh Armoured Division:
badge, formation, 7th Armoured Division.© IWM (INS 5112)
“Dear Desert Rats!
May your glory ever shine! May your laurels never fade! May the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war which you have made from Alamein, via the Baltic, to Berlin, never die! It is a march unsurpassed through all the story of war. May the fathers long tell the children about this tale. May you all feel that in following your great ancestors you have accomplished something that has done good to the whole world; which has raised the honour of your own country: and which every man has a right to be proud of.”
While Winston’s language may have been a bit over the top, we who served in the Division did indeed cherish the memory of our war service. 5RHA all ranks reunions were held annually in London for many years, latterly at the Albert public house in Victoria Street. We would sit down for dinner, and the recollections and the drink flowed freely throughout the proceedings. The old distinctions of rank had long ceased to have any meaning. Late one evening, four of us bundled into a taxi to start our homeward journeys. Our first port of call was to drop off Alex (sergeant-major) Weddle, who had returned to his peace-time job in charge of the Royal Mews. We had an uphill struggle convincing the cab driver to take us to Buckingham Palace — even to the side entrance.
REUNION 1973: Bob Walker, Paddy Victory, John Liverman, Lofty Slinn, Ron Carpenter (my batman, later a publican), Fred Aspin (sergeant-clerk, later a headmaster).
There were other encounters. I remained friendly with Paddy Victory for many years till we drifted apart. He stayed in the Regular Army, fought in Korea, was promoted to command a Parachute Battalion but never took up the appointment as he fractured a thigh on his first jump. Bombardier ‘Smudger' Smith from RHQ kept a well-disciplined pub on Eccieston Bridge near Victoria Station, where I used to drop in occasionally. I brought the traffic in Trafalgar Square to a standstill once when I noticed that the number 77 bus in which I was travelling was being driven by (Sergeant) Eric Pridham from K Battery, and we stopped for a chat.
In November 1999, I decided to attend the Armistice parade in Whitehall. I arranged this individually through the British Legion, so I was not with former comrades. In fact I found myself formed up with a group from the First Army, whose belated arrival in North Africa always condemned them as novices to those of us in the Eighth Army. They couldn’t even keep decently in step as we marched past the Cenotaph. But the reception by the crowd, ten deep behind the police barriers, was overwhelming and intensely moving. It felt very strange indeed to be applauded so warmly for what we had done over half a century ago.