The Major who was our guardian also censored our letters and he made sure there was as little delay as possible in getting them away. We could not have been in better hands. He cared for his own soldiers equally well. I saw this with my own eyes when I took my second letter to his makeshift office only to find him really upset. He was looking at an English newspaper; they were printed in Brussels and reached the front line only a day old.
‘Just look at this rubbish,’ he said, tossing the paper over to me, indicating the frontpage headlines. They proclaimed, in the largest of print, that the British Liberating Army were ‘walking’ through Germany, insinuating that there was no opposition. He went on, ‘I’ve lost three of my best blokes this morning, just down the road. There is a bit of a wood down there and the SS are hanging on like maniacs. Right, they can stop there until the flamethrowers come up later, they will soon shift them. I am not risking any more of my men.’
I could tell that he was really upset at the loss of his soldiers and that he had taken the newspaper headlines as an insult to them; and I thought he was right.
I don’t know if the press was encouraged to report with a bias towards optimism, but a typical report on a major RAF operation would tell of the damage inflicted on the target in detail, but the extent of our aircraft losses would be dealt with at the very end of the article, in as few words as possible. It may have been helpful to the morale of the nation, but many squadron commanders would have the very unenviable task the next morning of informing next of kin that their loved ones were missing, being as optimistic as possible, but knowing that the chances of them still being alive were slim; a detail never reported in the newspapers.
One afternoon, when we thought that all the surrounding territory was now safe, one of the regiment’s military bands came into the camp and after setting up on the back of their lorry, proceeded to give us a wonderful half an hour or so of stirring music. Unfortunately, there came an enforced interval when machine gunfire broke out from somewhere close by; whether we were the intended target or not, no one waited to find out. It seemed that the band were used to this sort of thing as they dispersed in a much more orderly manner, to shelter under the lorry, than their audience who fled in all directions. In seconds it was all over, no casualties thank goodness, and in no time the band had reassembled, continuing on exactly from where they had left off, while we the audience took rather longer to regain our posture and start listening again.
As the next two or three days passed without further incident we were told that we could venture out in reasonable safety, so two or three of us walked to the local village or town of Fallingbostel. Once there we discovered a military warehouse packed with all sorts of items, mainly German army equipment, and, when I look back, if transport had been available, a fortune could have been made. There were all the kind of things soon to be sought after by collectors◦– Paratrooper boots, uniforms, helmets, badges, parachutes and arms as well as more everyday items such as spades, buckets, brooms and tableware, but all clearly marked with the German military insignia.
In the basement were large stocks of dried food, such as rice, barley, peas and sugar. With my obsession for food, or the fear of becoming short of it again, I had to take a quantity of each, even if the load was difficult to get back to the camp.
As the days went by, the feeling of being in captivity gradually wore off, but the great respect for food was still with me and remains to this day. Each daily ration was gratefully received, and any food not eaten was squirreled away beneath first my own bunk and then a nearby unoccupied one. When the great day of departure for the airfield finally came, I could not carry most of it, so it had to be left with the hope that some of the Russians would find it.
On another visit to Fallingbostel, a day or two later, I witnessed something that made me ashamed of our Russian allies. There was an old German civilian walking along on one side of the street and on the other side, there were two Russians. They crossed the road making towards the old man, gesturing, by one of them lifting the left sleeve of his tunic, that they wanted to know the time. The old German obligingly pulled out his watch to help, but as he did so one of the Russians grabbed the old man by the shoulders while the other snatched the watch and chain. They then walked off leisurely, smiling as they gloated over what they had stolen and, no doubt, looking for their next victim.
A second visit to the warehouse could not be resisted but, although only two days later, by then almost everything stored there had been made useless. The sacks had been slashed and their contents strewn about. The upper floors had been set on fire and the water used to quench the flames had drained down to ruin all the dried food in the basement. I could not add to my already more than adequate store back at the camp, which was just as well, for the next morning I discovered my name was on the list to join the next party to be returned to Great Britain.
Although liberation had brought about a wonderful change in our lives, the majority of us were civilians at heart, and that was what we wanted to return to being. It was the simple things of that life such as going to the pictures (the cinema), playing darts at the local pub, watching the local football team playing in the park on a Saturday afternoon and having a slap-up breakfast on a Sunday morning when you did not have to race off to work, these were the things we had craved to be reunited with. And, of course, there was Adelaide.
At last we were told to make our way into Fallingbostel, from where we were taken to an airfield not too far away to begin the process of repatriation. The transportation was well organised and for once it was nice to be treated like human beings and not cattle. There was no luxury, of course, we travelled in the back of lorries that stood very high above the ground, but to be helped to get up into them, instead of being prodded into them with rifles and bayonets, felt so much better. Being so high up caused a bit of a fright when it came to crossing a river, which was very wide and in flood. It must have been the Elbe and the original bridge across it, which had been destroyed, had been replaced by a pontoon one. This appeared, as we approached, very stable and safe, but as our lorry drove onto the first pontoon it heeled over to an alarming angle under the weight, and, because we were so high up, it seemed that we were going to be thrown straight into the river. As the crossing continued I think we all gained a bit of confidence in the safety of the bridge but were glad when we reached the opposite bank.
As the journey continued there was much more evidence of the bitter battles that had taken place, with burnt-out tanks and all sorts of other military vehicles. We saw buildings completely destroyed, and yet there were some villages showing no obvious signs of damage at all, but there were no signs of life in the streets.
Our destination was a huge airfield at a place called Diepholz, which certainly showed the scars of war. There were hundreds of what would have been either shell or bomb craters that had now been filled in to put the airfield back into service for use by the Allies. On one edge of the airfield tents had been erected and after a good meal this was where we spent the rest of the day and slept the night. There was no activity to watch from where we were, or even the noise of taking-off and landings, but the next day was different. I did not sleep well in the tent, it was quiet enough and lying on the ground was quite comfortable and warm, so it must have been the excitement of being on the way home that caused me to get little sleep that night.