According to statistics of the allied armies, VD put more men into hospital than did combat with figures ranging from 6.1% in Europe to 10.2% in Burma.
The training that I enjoyed most was the handling of arms, and target practice. It was not the fighting connotation that attracted me, but the fact that here was a case where skill, and skill alone, counted. An air-gun owner since the age of ten, I had become a very good shot and had collected prizes and marksman badges during my boarding-school days. Heretofore I had handled only air-guns and .22 rifles, but a heavy army rifle was a different thing altogether and we had to shoot over a distance of more than two hundred metres without telescopic sights. The target was usually a cardboard ringed silhouette of the life-size head and shoulders of a soldier in a steel helmet. We also trained on the army pistol, machine-gun and machine-pistol. Of them all, I found the army pistol to be, by far, the most difficult to master. One of the exercises I liked most was the replacing of machine-gun parts. This was a speed exercise and a stop-watch was used on each of us as we performed the different actions.
Another form of target practice involved throwing dummy hand-grenades and “Mills” grenades onto a target area from three positions; standing, kneeling and lying down. I was surprised that we were never taught bayonet-work, although we did carry bayonets and kept them in spotless condition.
After twelve days in Utrecht, we were moved to Amersfoort, a much smaller town of 40,000 inhabitants and lying about ten miles further east. The garrison there had originally been a Dutch monastery and was not ideally suited for military requirements. The accommodation was adequate, although the grounds were small and we had to use a truck to get to some of our training sessions. The training programme continued along similar lines, except that we now had an additional classroom subject; skills on the Front-line. This dealt with observation-training; recognition of planes, tanks and other armoured vehicles, making out reports, the use of a compass, map-reading and guidelines on survival.
After only two weeks in Amersfoort, we were again transferred. This time our destination was the town of Apeldoorn, about 35 miles to the east with the somewhat larger population of some 70,000 people. This was a very welcome change. We had seen hardly anything of Utrecht or Amersfoort, because we had not been given town passes, but from now on we would be less restricted in our movements. I think it was out of concern for a good relationship between the German army and the Dutch population that young recruits were not allowed to leave barracks until good discipline had been drummed into them.
About fifty of us new recruits out of several hundred had been moved to Apeldoorn; the rest were sent to other parts of Holland. Our accommodation now consisted of a group of detached suburban houses on the outskirts of the town. These were four to five-bedroom houses which had been requisitioned because of their location and suitability. All original furnishing had been removed apart from the bathroom and kitchen equipment, but we still got our meals from a nearby field-kitchen. The same standards for the care of our accommodation were applied as in the barracks and penalties for neglect were enforced just as strictly. We were told that the houses would be returned to their owners after the war and there should be no adverse reflection on us occupants.
In Apeldoorn I got my first taste of a new responsibility given to us. Our accommodation had no perimeter protection, so one man in rotation was put on the tedious chore of round-the-clock guard duty.
Our training continued with undiminished vigour, but there were now few classroom sessions and most of our time was spent on a nearby scrubland area toughening ourselves with increasingly demanding exercises. Marching exercises, arms drill and target practice also took place every day as standards were relentlessly pushed higher. We used to march in formation to and from the scrubland, but the customary singing of marching-songs was always dropped when we passed through the suburbs of Apeldoorn. The intention was to avoid giving anybody unnecessary offence.
How did the Dutch population react to us? Since we were not allowed to fraternise, all social contact with the townspeople was out of the question anyway. We had strict instructions to treat civilians with respect, and this applied especially to females. Anybody who threatened or abused members of the population could expect to be severely punished.
My one regular contact with the local people was a fruit-vendor who visited us daily, his cart piled high with baskets of luscious and inexpensive fruit.
Walking through Apeldoorn I received neither friendly nor unfriendly looks; it was as if the citizens were intentionally ignoring me. It was widely known that the Dutch people very much resented having their country occupied by a foreign power and we were told that lone sentries had been shot or had dogs set on them. Since we were now doing guard duty, we were warned accordingly, but I never had any unpleasant experience during my remaining two months in Holland. I had one encounter with Dutch people that caused me much embarrassment. I wanted to buy something to read and so I went to one of the larger book-shops in the town centre and asked if they had any English books. The frightened look on the assistant’s face, and her vehement denials, made me realise how naive I had been. Trying to correct my mistake, I quickly told her, and an elderly gentleman who had come forward, that I wanted it only for my own use. I told them that I had grown up in England and Ireland and wanted to keep up my English. The gentleman said that he would have a look and disappeared into the back of the shop with his assistant. They were away quite a long time, probably discussing whether to trust me or whether this was just a ruse to catch them out.
They finally came back and offered me an English book about horses. I paid quickly and left, still feeling very sorry for having given them such a fright. After all the trouble the book had caused me, it turned out to be very disappointing. It was incredibly dull, so perhaps the Dutchman had decided to play safe by giving me a book whose contents could never be construed as evidence against him.
D-Day, the landing of the allied armies in Normandy, occurred on 6 June, while I was still in Apeldoorn. Apparently the German High Command had considered it highly unlikely that the Allies would land on that particular stretch of the coastline and had left it unfortified. The strength of the invading forces was enormous: almost 15,000 planes and 7,000 ships took part, including 115 warships. On the German side there were only 350 planes and 3 warships, apart from 34 speed-boats. Even after the Luftwaffe sent reinforcements to Normandy, the ratio of Allied to German planes was still 25 to 1.
We received very little information on the landings, but gathered that they were on a huge scale. There was no indication that we would be rushed to the front and our training continued uninterrupted. However, three days later we were unexpectedly moved away from Apeldoorn.
Our next location was at the town of Alkmaar, about thirty miles north-west of Amsterdam and just a few miles from the Dutch coast. Alkmaar was a beautiful town about the size of Amersfoort, and was known as the flower-town of Holland. The reason was obvious as I could see by the proliferation of window-boxes, flowers and shrubs. We again lived in a housing estate, but this time a much larger area had been taken over by the German army and many more units were accommodated there. The houses were in a lovely wooded district which must have been chosen because it was close to a mixed expanse of sand-dunes, woodlands and open countryside, an ideal training ground on which large-scale army manoeuvres could take place.