Sword Beach to Bremen., A Veterans tale. Sapper

To all the kind folk that wrote to me.
Let me first apologize sincerely for not answering your private messages.... I have just discovered the private messages and am quite horrified that I never saw them, or replied to them. So please accept my apologies for not finding them.
Cheers
Bless Yiou
sapper

 

Wonderful to see you back, Brian. Seeing Juno in person Apr/May 2010 I discovered how little I knew despite the research I've done. I never realized how wide the area was or how utterly flat and wide open..... I'm still thankful you are so willing to share your memories.

 

Wow, sapper your posts are exeptional! I feel as if i was there right in mist's of combat with your exeptional detail in these stories. Sir please keep on talking these are like my grandpa telling me stories.

 

67 Long years since we sallied forth into Normandy, The huge battles now a life time away. And with the passage of time. So the Vets are leaving. Now at an accelerated pace, for the youngest of us is now 86..

For this old Vet; its a mind boggling thought.... But then, I have decided not to die.. Why? Simple really; they dig a bloody great 6 foot deep hole, and sling you in. Then God forbid! they throw bloody great lumps of earth on top of you. That does not appeal!

But then the alternative! Stone me! thats worse.They stuff you in a bloody great hot oven and turn up the heat..... Bugger that for a game of Soldiers.. So I have decided not to take part.... BIG GRIN

 

Works for me!

 

Trouble with writing about war, and the events that take place, can in an odd way glorify conflict.

With that in mind let me bring this thread back to earth,

I was transferred later to a small ward with beds crammed all round the room, several other wounded were there, trying to get to sleep was impossible, the pain being bad enough, some of the other men kept waking up, screaming.
Picture this scene, if you can! A small dark, square shaped ward, with all the curtains drawn, dimly lit from a small red light in the centre of the ceiling, The overpowering, sickly warm stench of human blood pervaded everything, with beds crammed in and almost touching, men with terrible wounds and with limbs missing. Some men, motionless, wide eyed, still, silently staring at the ceiling. God knows! what thoughts held them in this silent manacled iron grip.

Blood stains everywhere, some men had thrown the covers off the beds in their agony, some sitting up leaning on an elbow, silently gazing into space, the low moaning of men in great pain, your own continuous and unremitting pain of back, leg, and knee injuries. Some rocking back and forth in their agony....

Some men talked in their sleep, often in a conversational tone, ending with a scream or a loud shout of pain, or despair. Sleep, because of pain, was only possible for very short periods when exhaustion overtook us, then! To be wakened by the blood curdling screams and shouts of men who had suffered the agony, not only of body, but also of mind. Men, who had seen the worst of the hell of war. Dante’s Inferno had nothing on this. For here, was a glimpse into what lay beyond the ‘Gates of Hell’ For me, there is no escape from that vision, for many years I dreamed about, and relived the memory of that dimly lit ward, that ward that still exists in my mind, still there on the mental pathway that leads to the ’ Gates of Hell’

Even today, some 66 years on, that ward still remains with me, every detail, sharp and clearly defined. It was a place that any sane person would run screaming from, saying “For Gods sake! don’t make me go back in there”

Sapper

 

Mr. Brian i have one small question for you if you dont mind. During the war what was it that kept you going?
I cannot imagine what would have happened to me if i had been in your place. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us sir they have been truly enlightening.

 

Patriotism! and love of all that we stand for. Our way of life. Our Society. Freedom of Speech. And a iron determination that the Horrors of Hitlers Regime would never hold sway in this green and pleasant land. Old fashioned isn't it? I left home at the age of 15 to learn to be an Engineer, to help make what we required to win. I spent my time on Southampton during the blitz, where i served in the Home Guard. Often out at night dragging folk out of bombed homes.

I have not changed much. I still have this iron will to conduct my life........ Daft isn't it? But after being wounded twice, the second resulting in exceptionally severe injuries, it is that same determination that enables me to overcome all the difficulties that the injuries present.
Best regards
Brian

 

I have read every page and you have a wonderful way of explaining how it really was. Thank you for sharing so much.
Krystal

 

My pleasure. An old man told me once. "You fellows that took part in those mighty and traumatic times, have a duty ti relate what happened. For when you go, you take it all with you" I do not intend to go, and If I have to? it will be against my will

 

thank you for replying sir
i would have saluted you for the wonderful reply but i dont know how!
instead i added to your reputation.

 

To all those that sent me messages. Rose Etc Just to say Thank you ....appreciated
Sapper

 

I have just read through your wartime experiences and I enjoyed reading it immensely and thank you for your service as well sir.

 

Hey Brian,I was reading your posts and saw that you were an engineer in civvy life,as well as a Sapper.can you tell me what tolerances you worked to as a civvy engineer?.cheers,lee.

 

I worked in the tool room, where we worked on jigs and fixtures. Engineered to very fine limits. Machining and jig boring..
All those are still in use today, some 50 plus years on.
Then joined the Atomic Energy as a research and experimental Mech .Ended up teaching engineering before the war injuries forced me to retire.
All my life in Engineering. The war pensions dept invited me to retire in the 70s I refused, and soldiered on for another two years......Then all the wheels fell off my wagon, and I had yo give in...... Looked after very well by War pensions folk.

Bit daft in not retiring when invited, I paid an expensive price for my stubborn pride later. BIG GRIN

 

Lest We Forget.
Headquarters.
30th Armoured
Brigade.
B.L.A.
1st of May 45
Belson Concentration Camp

The countryside around Belsen is attractive enough at the best of times, and on this perfect April morning particularly so, and there was a strange relaxing sense of peace about the pine woods with the sun pencilling down through the trees to the soft earth. The apple trees bordering the road so far as the eye could see were in full blossom, a perfect match for the blue sky overhead. I saw a farmer walking slowly over his fields with his dog at his heels, and the children playing in the farm yard gay with flowers.

About two miles from the camp a large notice hung from a pine tree by the roadside. It bore two words in large print-DANGER-TYPHUS. I felt a momentary start when I saw it, but still the sense of peace and spring predominated.

On reaching the village of BELSEN I learned that entry into the camp was impossible, so I decided to look in from the outside, and after a few minutes in the car I could see the barbed wire of the compound through the pine trees. I got out, left the car on the road and walked along the soft turf of one of the rides through the trees, feeling the sun comfortably warm on my back. A stench of something filthy began to pervade my nostrils; then suddenly I came to the end of the ride to see facing me a large expanse of treeless ground surrounded by high coils of barbed wire. I looked through the wire.

The uneven ground inside was devoid of grass and was covered with slimy rags, rotting planks of wood, and paper stained with human filth. A Nissen hut stood twenty yards from where I was, and outside it was a pool of urine, some of which staining the earth like a dye had formed a morass of slime, whilst some had run away down the slope under the wire had formed a similar pool at my feet. A woman came out of the hut, squatted down outside and performed her natural functions. She raised her head, wiped away the matted hair from her eyes, and looked at me with a face as expressionless as an animal’s. Then, indifferently she looked away. Inside the hut I could see piles of straw, black with dirt and grease, and here and there a few blankets, rotten with age and stained with decaying filth. Another woman came slowly out of the hut, lay down in the pool of muck and closed her eyes. Her dress consisted of a long garment, after the style of a nightgown, which had once been blue with black stripes — but long months of use and continual wallowing in slime had rendered the colours unrecognisable.

Ten yards away from the hut was a shallow pit. A mound of earth prevented me from seeing what it contained, but a thin wisp of murky smoke rising up and a sour stench told me that something revolting was burning inside.

The sight of all this, taken in one split-second glance, was like a blow in the face. Gone was the sun shining through the pine-trees, momentarily unsensed was the stench. My mind-strained only to take in the scene which my eyes witnessed. It was like being suddenly brought face to face with some fantastic horror film — only instead of being on a screen it was there in reality in front of me, on the other side of the barbed wire.

I began to walk around the outer perimeter of the camp, and the scenes I describe multiplied themselves tenfold as I went on. The creatures inside moved silently about like some macabre figures against a background of infinite squalor, and here and there I saw huddled objects, covered with the now familiar striped garments, lying in an unnatural twisted mass in the dirt, I could only think that they were dead. The ones that were still alive could no longer be called human beings — they were animals, strange revolting animals that one looks at with an involuntary shudder through the bars of a zoo cage, and never — never again will they rise to the level of human beings. All human instinct, all human feeling has been lost, extinguished for ever in this clearing in a pine wood in Northern Germany.

So devoid of all that is essentially man are most of them, they do not know that they are free. I saw a British soldier, anned with rifle and fixed bayonet, supervising the work of the SS guards who were still there when the camp was overrun. These guards are now being made to work almost night and day clearing up and digging graves for the dead, and, after five days they were almost dropping from fatigue. One of them stopped digging for a moment to straighten his back; he was immediately prodded forcibly with a bayonet and told to get on with the job. Several of the inmates stood by watching, but they showed no sign of elation or relief in seeing their former tormentors treated thus — they were beyond that.

A shape, whose head had been shaved revealing a bald scalp streaked and coated with grey dirt, and who might have been male or female, was lying propped up on one elbow near a stinking pit., He, or she, was looking down at a plate of what looked like army stew and potatoes, picking up pieces of meat in a spoon and examining it only. Food had for so long been raw turnips and water, with a bread ration so infinitesimal that it could not be called a ration as such, that the sight of what was on the plate produced no excitement, no arousing of the appetite whatsoever.

I learned that KRAMER, the German Commandant, who was captured, had been thrown in a cell in a barracks nearby. I was told a story - How true it is, I cannot say — that on his capture he was asked by a curious interpreter why he had remained in the camp rather than escape. His reputed answer was that he had nothing to fear concerning the condition of his camp And, indeed, it would seem that he and his guards had somehow grown used to this horror of a place, that their minds had become twisted and warped to conform to their surroundings; despite his confinement he is still the arrogant Nazi.

60,000 prisoners had been found in the camp when we arrived, and an average of 800 were dying daily. Some, who had been there a matter of months, had been taken out, but nearly 20,000 are so riddled with filthy diseases and so devoid of any spark of hope and life that they had been left there, in spite of everything that medicine can do.

Nearly all were political prisoners, Belgians, French, Dutch, Russians, Poles and Germans who had in this terrible way paid the penalty for listening to the BBC news and partaking in anti-Nazi propaganda. People of all ages from children to elderly men and women had been transformed into objects of sickening revulsion, and , through months and years spent on this patch of ground amid the pines, days when you and I were talking and laughing and working, had slipped gradually down the scale of life towards what was merely a rotting bestial existence.

I walked back down the drive to the car and we drove off down the same straight road. The horizon was still hazy in the spring sunlight, and the apple blossom still massed its colour above my head. My driver was still the same, the children playing in the farmyard were still the same. But now over everything hung a pall, creeping insidiously into the mind like a maggot. Tainted and stained with the memory that was BELSEN.

This account of BELSEN was given to me by an old friend “Alan Westerman” who was there at the time, again the typing is absolutely as the original document.
Brian Guy. November 6th 1998.
Saspper

 

Thank you for sharing this with us, Brian. The account of your friend, brings vividly to my mind the horrors that occured and which must never be allowed to happen again.

 

A fantastic read Brian. My father landed on Sword, and I will dig out his notes to compare the route you took. He was wounded at Caen, and later joined a liaison team, liberating British POW's. I have a press cutting stating that he was in the first truck into Belsen. No wonder he was a hard man.

He went across Europe to the Baltic in search of POW's

Cheers
Dave

 

Hi Dave So tell us a little about what regiment he was in
Sapper