Sword Beach to Bremen., A Veterans tale. Sapper

SAPPER BRIAN IS ON SOUTHEN BBC T-V AT SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 6.30 TO 7 PM. JUST IN CASE ANY ONE CAN GET IT.
BRIAN

 

Shame on you Brian, I've seen what you look like and you're no uglier than my Polish Para mate back in Australia!! You both have to be ugly to scare those damn SS guys

I was battling with my wife for the remote and didn't find any channels BBC 1 or 2 with you on it? Was it today? 5 Dec? What program?

 

wednesday the 10th of December on BBC Southern tv.
between 6.30 and 7 in the evening.
Brian

 

Brian,

Just to prove there are people still reading your post, I've linked your thread to 2 other forums and the feedback has been great, I've also printed out the entire contents of your thread to reread myself (as doing so on the screen was giving me a headache), I've got it bound and, double sided, it's approx 150 pages.

BDS

[ 11. December 2003, 12:31 PM: Message edited by: BratwurstDimSum ]

 

Hello Sapper!

First, let me offer my belated thank you to you for everything you did and experienced during the war, for sharing your tale with us, and for all of the writing you have done to do so.

Regarding photos, they are usually easy to post here if they are already displayed online elsewhere. However, I suspect Otto would like the privilege of hosting your new photos on his website. If you email the photos to Otto, I think Otto will soon arrange to have them posted here.

[ 12. December 2003, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: Crapgame ]

 

A Happy and healthy New Year to all of you.
"BK" a very good friend, has prepared a page for me that will enable the folk on this site to have a look at "Sapper" in "Stings" dining room, and as he is now. A white haired old fellow.
Sapper
http://hometown.aol.com/mybillboard/SapperGuy.html

 

Thank you for posting these Sapper!

 

Hey Sapper, you getting wayed down with all those medals.

 

The medals?
I have another handful of medals, Quite honestly I would not put them on, this photo was taken when I was being filmed for TV. We do occasionally put on all the war time regalia, but only when requested to do that. I for one, feel a bit of a prat wandering about looking rather like a Christmas tree.

Besides that, with the medals all polished and on show, you can become a bit of a spectacle, and the centre of attention, embarrassed!

Oddly enough when we do turn out with medals on show. Often we find people do not know anything about where they came from. The war has been over for 59 years and many know nothing about D Day or anything else, come to that.
Cheers

 

Sapper,

Hi, I've recently found these forums and have begun to read your accounts. I'm only up to the taking of Caen but it's proving to be both a gripping and touching read.

Being more intrigued by the human aspect of conflict, ie what possesses a man to go to war, how he copes with war along with the effects of conflict on society both during and post war, personal accounts are hugely important sources of information. There is no greater source of opinion and feeling than accounts such as yours.

On a more personal note reading you stories kind of fills a gap for me. My grandfather served as a commando but more than that I do not know as he is sadly no longer with us and I was not aware of the stories he could have shared with me had I asked or even if would have been willing to share.

So anyway, late as this 'thank you' post comes, Thank You, and thanks to Mr Harris for his account also.

All the Best
SignalCorp

 

What is war really like?


The Gates of Hell.
This is no place for a Dorset boy!

What followed next can only be described as a living nightmare, a nightmare of sheer agony. Put into an army ambulance with other wounded in racks on each side and in a very confined space, the inside had been blacked out so that we had to lay there on our stretchers in pitch black darkness. The Journey in this square box of an ambulance took us over the uneven and cobbled roads all the way to Eindhoven in the South of Holland. This journey was the nearest thing to hell on earth that it is possible to imagine, with my broken bones grating and the indescribable pain of my back injuries.

In the beginning, I had been determined not to join in the moaning and groaning with pain, but it was not long before I was crying out in pain just like the other wounded, so much pain that it was not possible to talk to the other men. Hell and back is not an exaggeration. Nor is the term Nightmare, I still find it very difficult to convey just how ghastly that journey was. I never knew who the other wounded were, and I do not think it was possible for the others to have survived the journey.

As we drove on, the groans had became fainter and fainter and eventually stopped. Yet, still this square steel box of an ambulance, trundled along over the broken, potholed and cobbled war time roads, with its precious load of three dead men and one nearly dead. This is the other side of war, being badly wounded, a side that nobody wants to know about. Arriving at what I think was Eindhoven? I was put into a little cupboard full of cardboard boxes with my stretcher balanced precariously on top of them, with just enough room inside the cupboard, still lying on the same stretcher that I had been on for many hours, during the journey the blood had soaked through everything, even under my back and into the stretcher. So bad, that thick congealed blood stuck me to the stretcher.

By now the pain had become unbearable, given morphine, the pain would still not subside and a nurse told me, "you must not have more, you will become an addict". 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 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 60 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”

Next day, still laying in my own thick, dried, and congealed blood that by now had firmly stuck me to the stretcher I was driven to Eindhoven airport and was flown back immediately to England in a Dakota ambulance plane, arriving at Croydon airport.

Sapper

 

Our dear Sapper, honorary member of WW2forums.

 

Stone me! Who is this handsome old Gentleman I sk myself? Is that me? "By all that is Holy" you wear well my old stick.
Sapper

 

Dear Sapper
I am writing to you to express my thanks for your postings. They hold much significance for me as my Father, George Messenger was also a Sapper in the Royal Engineers. I have never known much about my Fathers experiences, because, as I believe is quite common, he would not talk about them as they held too many painful memories.

Indeed I would probably have never even known anything at all about his war time service except when I was at High School I took part in an exchange with a French Student from the small seaside town of Luc-Sur-Mer in Normandy. When he first heard I was going there (this was in 1969) he said,”I was in the next town to that during the war”, he then told me that he had landed on the day after D-Day, but would say very little more. When I returned from Normandy and mentioned that I had been to Caen, he again said he had been involved in the battle of Caen and again would say little more.

Over subsequent years from passing comments I found he had also been to Brussels & had been involved in the crossing of the Rhine. Unfortunately my father passed away last November (he was buried on Remembrance Day) without ever feeling able to pass his experiences on to me. And so I felt I had lost my last chance of finding out any more. Therefore I am finding your postings compulsive reading, most especially since in one of your early postings you listed you route across France, Belgium and Holland which must have closely matched my Father’s. I am still only part the way through but they have already helped me feel a closer tie to my Father.

It is unlikely you ever knew him, but I am sure he would have been grateful to you for passing along these experiences that he felt unable to do.

Again MANY MANY THANKS

 

How then do I thak you lovely folk? Only by saying thank you lads! That was a really lovely thought and one that cheers an exhausted old buffer up no end!

With giving talks and helping the BBC with a bit of live filming at a deserted old Dorset village. I am now truly knackered.
Bless you good friends
Sapper
Brian

 

Sappers posts are truly amazing. Giving the sort of non glorified insite that can only come from first hand experience.

I have just reached the taking of Caen, I read and re-read the posts on Chateau de la Londe. As I mentioned earlier my fathers route must have closely matched Sapper's as he also landed at Sword, went on to the taking of Caen, to Brussels & the crossing of the Rhine.

I was therefore gob smacked when Richard Harris wrote "To add to the racket, the Middlesex joined in" If he is writing of the Middlesex regiment of the Royal Engineers then this was my fathers regiment. To think that their paths so closely matched is an incredible link to find.

I have been told that no two soldiers experiences in a battle will ever match because they are so focussed on their immediate surrounds and "surviving" And I am sure this is true. But for me this feels like I am reading of my fathers experiences.

 

From the VOA News: Website Offers WWII Veterans Way to Share Experiences

[ 07. June 2004, 03:47 AM: Message edited by: Deep Web Diver ]

 

Brian my old friend, you were remembered in Normandy this weekend.

I read your description of D Day, and the role of your unit, taking from the postings here, to my tour group, which included 25 veterans of Normandy. I read it on Sword Beach, and we later went to Hermanville War Cemetery and I saw someone had laid a wreath on your behalf. They all thought your account was excellent.

If you tell me you were there that day and I missed you... ??

 

Cheers thank you for that.
Brian.
Sapper