With the Jocks E-Book

Peter White

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2002

Beschreibung

'The book is remarkable .... one of the most striking personal records of the period.' - Max HastingsAs a 24-year-old lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, Peter kept an unauthorised journal of his regiment's advance through the Low Countries and into Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe. Forbidden by his commanding officer from doing so for security reasons, Peter's boyhood habit of diary keeping had become an obsession too strong to shake off. In this graphic evocation of a soldier at war, the images he records are not for the faint hearted. There are heroes aplenty within its pages, but there are also disturbing insights into the darker sides of humanity - the men who broke under the strain and who ran away; the binge drinking which occasionally rendered the whole platoon unable to fight; the looting, the rape, and the callous disregard for human life that happens when death is a daily companion. Hidden away for more than 50 years, this is a rare opportunity to read an authentic account of the horrors of war experienced by a British soldier in the greatest conflict of the 20th century.

Leseprobe

Peter White in the uniform of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers at his parents’ home in Sussex.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter White’s text remains as he wrote it, with the exception of minor changes for clarity and consistency. Editor’s additions are indicated by square brackets.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The publication of With the Jocks would not have been possible without the support and kindness of many people, but the greatest thanks must go to Peter White’s widow, Elizabeth, Harry Prince, whose enthusiasm and tireless efforts brought the book to print, and the members of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB). The publishers also wish to thank Jenny Shaw, who helped prepare the manuscript for publication, and Lt Col C.G.O. Hogg, DL, from the KOSB Museum at Regimental Headquarters, Berwick-upon-Tweed, who provided much of the background information included in the introduction and epilogue. Thanks are due also to Sir John Keegan for kindly agreeing to write the foreword.

The illustrations are all either Peter White’s drawings or photographs from his own collection that he pasted into his diary. As far as can be ascertained, no photographs survive of the KOSB in action in north-west Europe during the period covered by the book and White’s pictures are, therefore, a doubly significant record of the Jocks at war.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Sir John Keegan

The Jocks

Publisher’s Introduction

WITH THE JOCKS

Preface

The Attack on Walcheren Island

Defensive Warfare on the River Maas

A Queer Christmas

Holding the Line in Winter: Tripsrath Woods

Operation ‘Blackcock’: The Preparation and First Phase, Operation ‘Bear’

Counter-Attack in Kangaroos

Operation ‘Blackcock’: The Final Phase – ‘Eagle’ – and the attack on Heinsberg

A Short Rest and Turn in Reserve

Operation ‘Veritable’: Between the Maas and the Rhine

Halted in Broederbosch, Typhoon Attacks and Patrols

Contact Lost

On the Run

The Battle for Haus Loo

Spring and the Build-up for the Rhine Crossing

‘Over the Rhine, then, let us go’

‘Swanning’ on the Other Side

Stabbed in the Back on the Dortmund-Ems

‘Cracking about the plains’

The ‘Bottled’ Enemy

Direct Hit

Super-Sonic

B

arrage

Wandering

Ambushed

Hitting Back

Stalags XIB and 357

Into the Blue

Schulern Oasis

Target Switched

Ringside Seat on an 800-Bomber Raid

Up to the Start Line

Uphusen: an Attack with Flame-Throwers

Sitting in a Target

Night Attack on Bremen – First Phase

Night Attack on Bremen – Second Phase

Interlude

No Unnecessary Risks!

Publisher’s Epilogue

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

by SIR JOHN KEEGAN

This awful winter of 2000/2001, alternately sodden and freezing, sometimes both together, has reminded the survivors of the campaign of 1944–5 in the flatlands of north-west Europe of the terrible conditions in which they fought to bring the Second World War to an end.

Peter White, author of this unforgettable memoir of the British Liberation Army’s ordeal, was a platoon commander in the 4th King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a Territorial battalion of that famous regiment which joined the battle soon after the failure of the airborne descent on Arnhem in September 1944. It belonged to 52nd Lowland Division which was tasked to take the island of Walcheren and open the mouth of the Scheldt estuary, so that the port of Antwerp could be cleared to supply the Allied armies in their final offensive against the western defences of the Reich.

By the time Peter White’s platoon became engaged, the fine summer and autumn in which the British and Americans had liberated France and Belgium was over. Temperatures had fallen, rain, succeeded by snow, had set in and the waterlogged ground resisted efforts at digging in. No one who reads Peter White’s account of striking the water table fourteen inches below the surface of a frost-hardened crust of soil, and pressing harder into the mixture of slush and mush at the bottom of his uncompleted slit trench in an effort to shelter from accurate German artillery and small-arms fire, is likely to forget the description.

Whole nights were spent in such conditions, which combined disabling physical hardship with acute danger. Peter White was not hit throughout the eight months his narrative relates. All but two of the Jocks in his platoon of thirty were hit, the number of dead equalling that of the wounded, and together exceeding the platoon’s strength when it began its advance into Germany. His Jocks were shot, burnt, blown up, dismembered. Some of their worst experiences were suffered at the hands of their own side, gunners who dropped shells short, tank crews who mistook their positions for those of the enemy.

The willingness of the Jocks to suppress the horror of yesterday and go forward on the morrow at times beggars belief. It clearly astounded Peter White, who was not only an amateur soldier but a pre-war pacifist whose aversion to killing was founded on deep Christian belief.

It is entirely appropriate that his memoir of these terrible months should be called ‘With the Jocks’, for ultimately the subject of his story is not the bleak winter of 1944/5, nor the miserable terrain of the advance into Germany, nor the battles the 4th KOSB fought in those conditions, but the endurance and bravery of the soldiers he commanded. As his narrative unfolds, with its relentless emphasis on cold, casualties and the impersonal cruelty of war, the reader becomes almost consumed with disbelief that men could endure what they did. To get up each morning, after a day which had been itself an escape from death, to swallow tinned bacon, hard tack and chlorine-flavoured tea, to plod forward across soaked fields in which every footstep might set off a lethal explosive charge, to lie for hours in freezing water while shells raked the landscape, to rise as darkness fell in the hope of finding a dry spot to shelter for the night after a mouthful of bully beef and hard biscuit: what comfortable reader, congratulating himself or herself on belonging to a nation that beat Hitler, cannot be subdued by the thought that Peter White’s Jocks incarnated an exceptional generation?

War is often narrated as an adventure story. War may be an adventure. Peter White’s war was not so, nothing but a grim passage of duty, dedicated to destroying tyranny in the hope that it would not recur. His account of the courage and imperturbability of his Jocks should inspire all who read it to guard the liberty they won for us as a precious treasure.

THE JOCKS

Alan/Smyg

Maj Alan Innes, officer commanding B Company after Maj Colin Hogg was injured

Andrew

Maj Andrew Stewart, officer commanding

A Company

C/Pte C

Pte Cutter

Charles

Capt Charles Marrow, commander of D Company

the CO/Chris

Lt Col Chris Melville

Cohen

a stretcher bearer

Colin

Maj Colin Hogg, officer commanding B Company

Dickinson

for a long time White’s Platoon sergeant

Frank

Capt Frank Coutts, officer commanding anti-tank platoon, later 2i/c of B Company

Harry

Lt Harry Atkinson

Horace

Maj Horace Davidson, 2i/c and later battalion CO

Huntingford/‘Taffy’

batman and runner

Jimmy

anti-tank platoon commander Jimmy Wannop

John/John Elliot

captain, 2i/c B Company

Jones

a paratrooper and private in White’s platoon

L/Pte L

Pte Laurie

Learmonth

private in White’s platoon

McColl, ‘Wee Mac’    

a platoon commander with A Company

Parry

corporal in White’s platoon

Pip

Pip Powell, a platoon commander B Company

Rae, Maj

officer commanding D Company

Stein

White’s batman and later the Bren gunner

Tammy

Capt Tammy Youngson, officer commanding Headquarters Company

Urquart, Don

Canadian officer with B Company

Walrus Whiskers

a TCV (troop carrying vehicle) driver

PUBLISHER’S INTRODUCTION

For the millions of ordinary men who fought the Second World War on front lines drawn across Europe, Africa and the East, the conflict was a day-to-day, human battle against almost impossible conditions. Fear, uncertainty and doubt were constant companions in a war fought out in small, muddy pockets of attrition that were part of a ‘bigger picture’ known only to those in remote headquarters. Yet in dugouts and trenches they also experienced powerful comradeship, discovered self-belief, and shared moments of exhilaration and triumph. With the Jocks is a personal and vivid first-hand account of these experiences. It is the diary of Peter White, a quiet, intelligent, thoughtful young man with deeply held religious convictions about the sanctity of life, who found himself in charge of a group of robust Scottish soldiers in north-west Europe from October 1944 to VE Day. His talent as writer, together with his artistic flair, combined to produce a moving record of his experiences. This is, in his own words, an honest, ‘warts and all’ account of life in battle conditions.

White was born into an upper-middle-class family in 1921. His father, an engineer, and his mother, an artist, were living in South Africa at the time, but returned to Surrey, England in the early 1930s, partly for the sake of their three boys’ education. Peter attended Ottershaw College where his artistic abilities soon became apparent. He started keeping a diary in 1938, noting down the activities of the day and also items of significance off the ‘wireless’ and from newspapers, illustrating his entries with drawings or sketches.

When the Second World War began in 1939, his father and elder brother, John, went into the Army and received commissions. White was too young at seventeen and was accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in October 1939. The war gave him much cause for thought. The Whites were a religious family and Peter, a pacifist at heart, found the idea of killing any living creature repugnant. However, he could see the need for men to fight in this conflict clearly enough, and in his own words ‘… could see no logical reason why it should not be me’. He joined the Royal Artillery in May 1942 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in May 1943. His long-range, impersonal war did not last for long, however, and in April 1944, as the Luftwaffe’s threat to the skies over London receded, he was among a group of young gunners transferred to the infantry.

Initially White was horrified at what might be expected of him as an infantryman in the days ahead. The thought of killing human beings at close quarters seemed beyond comprehension. However, his faith sustained him. His diary makes it clear that he determined at the outset to do his best and hoped that he had learned enough during his infantry conversion course to be entrusted with men’s lives in action.

As his father was a Border man, White chose a Border Regiment – the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB). He was attracted to the 4th Battalion which was listed as being in a mountain division and seemed therefore to offer the opportunity of winter sports at the Army’s expense. White was posted to 10 Platoon, B Company, and his transformation to an infantryman completed by the tartan flashes he now wore on his shoulders and the silver-badged tam-o’-shanter on his head.

The KOSB (25th Foot) has a fine history. Raised in Edinburgh in 1689, its battle honours include Minden (1759) and South Africa (1900–02). During the First World War, the Regiment comprised two Regular Army Battalions (1st and 2nd), two Territorial Battalions (4th and 5th), three ‘New Army’ Battalions (6th, 7th and 8th), a 9th Battalion, which provided reinforcements for the others, and a 10th (Garrison) Battalion. The 4th and 5th Battalions fought at Gallipoli in the 52nd (Lowland) Division, and with distinction in Palestine and France. The civilian soldiers who fought in the Territorial Battalions returned to their peacetime occupations after 1918 and the Regiment reverted to its peacetime role. Many Border men, however, carried on soldiering in the Territorial Army even when their contribution was unfashionable and poorly paid. When the Territorials launched an appeal for recruits on the eve of the Second World War, men from the Borders (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk), Berwick-upon-Tweed, Dumfries and Galloway flocked to join the KOSB. The 4th (Border) Battalion, the TA Battalion of the Borders, which had been reformed in the inter-war years, received its share of recruits and was soon up to battle strength. Men of the Borders had a particular character, living nearer to nature than their comrades from industrial Clydeside or the more academic Edinburgh, and the TA battalions reflected the society from whence their recruits came. In 1939, the KOSB order of battle was 1st and 2nd Battalions in the Regular Army, with 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Battalions in the Territorial Army. (There was no 3rd Battalion.)

Soldiers of the KOSB were engaged in the action from the beginning. 1st Battalion was sent to France in 1939 with the British Expeditionary Force and was among those evacuated from Dunkirk in May 1940. 4th and 5th Battalions, part of 155 Infantry Brigade with 7th/9th Royal Scots Territorial Battalion in 52nd (Lowland) Division, were part of the 2nd British Expeditionary Force. They were evacuated from Cherbourg on 18 June 1940. From October 1944 until May 1945, the period covered by the diary, 52nd (Lowland) Division was part of 21st Army Group, commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, which comprised the British Second Army and the First Canadian Army.

On arrival back in Britain in 1940, the Lowland Division had begun training for mountain warfare, and White joined the 4th Battalion at Banchory on Deeside in 1944 for exercises in the Cairngorms. The Division expected to be deployed to Norway, but in early summer 1944 moved to Stonehaven, where a new role awaited them. They were to take to the air, and be transported in Dakotas to an active battlefield. Complicated tables had to be prepared, setting out the Battalion in plane loads and showing, to the exact pound, the number of troops and amount of equipment each plane could accommodate. The men were fit from mountain training, but as airborne soldiers, each had to be turned into a self-reliant machine. He had to carry more ammunition, food and clothes. Route marches with fully loaded rucksacks were compulsory.

The exercises gave White the opportunity to get to know the Jocks and his fellow officers – he was delighted to realise that he was beginning to understand even the densest Scottish accent! At first, however, he found integration into the Battalion difficult, joining it as a ‘Sassenach outsider’ when the mess members were already a tightly knit group, many of whom had known each other as Territorials for years. For its part, the Battalion initially had doubts about White’s suitability for his new role and two successive Battalion commanders considered him ‘too quiet and reserved for an infantry officer’. This view was to change: White developed his own, highly effective form of leadership and made a conscious effort to make more noise. While at Stonehaven, White was given responsibility for two 20mm Polsten anti-aircraft guns and the training of their crews. As a result, from summer to December 1944, he was attached to the Carrier Platoon in Support (S) Company.

On 3 August 1944 the units mustered to leave Stonehaven for Piper’s Wood, near Amersham, Buckinghamshire. This was a first trip across the border for many of the Jocks and, perhaps, their first brush with the war. Lancaster and Halifax bombers could be seen overhead on their way to operations over Germany on clear evenings.

The Jocks waited at Amersham for several weeks, almost daily expecting the order to fly off to the continent. There were several false alarms followed by a period of anti-climax during which training and preparation continued unabated, adding to the tension. To counter the German habit of rendering the Jocks leaderless by targeting their officers and NCOs first, officers were advised to hide all badges of rank and those with moustaches (a tell-tale sign of a British officer) either trimmed them drastically or shaved them off. All platoon commanders were instructed to draw up a list of the next-of-kin of their men so a note ‘could be sent as a personal touch in the event of a casualty’. Censoring of letters also took up much of their time. Lectures covered security, how to kill someone with bare hands, what to do if a plane crash landed, how to organise a dropping zone, what to do if captured and tortured and how to escape. It was expected that the Battalion would serve in Europe alongside the US 101st Airborne Division, so American paratroopers went to Piper’s Wood to acquaint their allies with the appearance, procedures and weapons of the US forces in the hope of avoiding ‘friendly fire’ incidents. Refresher courses were held to ensure each man was familiar with his own range of weapons, transport, radio, explosives, fieldcraft and tactics.

After about half a dozen ‘flaps’, the Commander of 52nd (Lowland) Division, Major-General Hakewell-Smith, spoke to all the officers. He had just returned from battlegrounds in France and was therefore in a position to explain the current situation and give a good idea of the conditions the Division would meet on the continent. The proposed operations had fallen through as the speed of the Allied advance rendered them unnecessary. The facilities of the ports on the continent available to the allies were now overstretched, with fuel and supplies running low. Therefore, time was needed now to build up supplies, reopen railways and free more ports to allow the advance to continue. The Jocks would have to wait again, scanning news reports for any clue about where and when they would join the war.

On 4 September 1944 the order ‘prepare to move’ finally came. The Division set off for Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire so that they would be near to airfields for immediate take-off when required. Everyone sensed that something was brewing, but the days passed with no call to action and another period of uncertainty began with yet more intensive training. Captured enemy equipment was displayed and handled and the inhabitants of Woodhall Spa were treated to mock street fighting. Men were taken for familiarisation trips in aircraft, White in a Lancaster of the elite 617 ‘Dambusters’ bomber squadron based at Woodhall Spa aerodrome. Practice moves were made to a dummy airfield, where each unit deployed with all its equipment separated into aircraft loads.

Tension mounted in the camp as the pace of activities was stepped up and censorship became stricter. On 17 September, the air armada to Arnhem was announced on the radio and it seemed certain that the Division would take part. Each unit waited expectantly. Polish paratroopers, scheduled for departure before the 4th Battalion, sat in their aircraft waiting to go, took off, were recalled, and took off again only to be badly mauled on arrival at Arnhem. White and his Jocks realised that the operation was not working out as planned. An emergency change of plan was announced: it was far too dangerous to fly the troops over in Dakota aircraft, so as a desperate measure to keep the Arnhem pocket open and to give the armour time to link up (or at least to support the troops already committed to the operation), it was decided to fly rifle companies over in Waco gliders. Consequently, company commanders sat up all night working out new loading tables and learning about gliders. As all the preparations were completed, this operation, too, was cancelled to great relief all round. However, waiting for weeks on end to leave at a few hours’ notice had wracked the Jocks’ nerves; one summed up the company’s sentiments with the thought that even a condemned man would feel more settled with a definite execution date.

During the enforced wait at Woodhall, White’s feelings of being isolated faded as teamwork developed and friendships formed. Battalion pride was bolstered.

The order to move finally came on 12 October 1944 and on the 16th, the Jocks departed by train for Southampton. There they were taken by truck to a rain-sodden tented transit camp. Next day, a sense of adventure was in the air: the men were taken to the docks where they waited in company groups to board the ferry-boat Lady of Man bound for Ostend, Belgium. Each boarded armed with blanket and seasickness pills in addition to his kit. White and his men knew that finally ‘this was it’, and thoughts turned inevitably to loved ones at home and to what might lie ahead. Against orders, it was decided to take the full Battalion pipe band kit and drums. The drums would be stored in Belgium until needed.

The Channel crossing was rough and uncomfortable. Lady of Man was packed with men attempting to sleep on every available inch of floor space. Many men suffered sea sickness. Next morning, the Belgian coast was sighted, and with it came the thought that the Germans were not very far inland. The gale and the swell were too violent for the ship to enter the harbour, so Lady of Man headed back to shelter off Dover. Yet again the Jocks had to wait.

On the morning of 19 October Lady of Man sailed back across the Channel, docked without incident at Ostend, and the troops disembarked. Evidence of the recent German occupation was all around – buildings demolished, massive, sinister concrete bunkers, shrapnel scars. The local people were badly clothed, preoccupied and under-nourished, but many of them waved or shouted greetings to the Jocks who responded with enthusiasm. White noted that language barriers never seemed to bother a Jock. The night was spent in a former German barracks and next morning, a nose-to-tail stream of mechanised equipment, tanks, Jeeps with trailers and trucks carrying the troops trundled down roads rutted with shrapnel rips and rubble-filled craters, past houses blown apart to reveal their smashed up interiors.

The Jocks were finally on Belgian soil but still did not know when, where or how they would go into action. They were pleasantly surprised to arrive in Vive St Eloi where they were greeted warmly by the villagers. Battalion headquarters was in a farm owned by the Duhamel family and it was here that the drums were stored for safety. Jan Duhamel, a son of the farmer, had evaded capture by the Germans and was head of the local resistance movement. He spoke fluent German, so the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Melville, appointed him interpreter and gave him the honorary rank of 2nd lieutenant.

Now the Battalion waited for several more days, although some units, including ‘S’ Company and Peter White, moved to the next village of Vive St BaVon. Each man was found an excellent billet and friendships formed at this time which still survive. M Lambrecht, whose home became the officers’ mess, told White he was impressed by the demeanour of the British troops compared to the glum Germans, and he was sure that the quality of British equipment was superior to Germans’. Peter White and the Jocks were about to find out whether this was true.

PREFACE

For seven years prior to these events I had kept a diary day by day, illustrating it whenever possible. The realisation that the current volume would have to be sent home for storage on our unit going into action was a great disappointment. ‘I’m afraid old boy, you will have to knock that off when we go overseas’, said the CO one night as I illustrated my current diary in the mess as he peered over my shoulder. He took quite an interest and was the recipient of several sketches later in Belgium and Germany, one of him writing home as we crossed the Channel in the ferry.

However, the habit I had formed during these years of absorbing the events of each day with a view to writing and illustrating them at nightfall became too much a part of me to be easily put aside. As a result I became aware after a short while that I was amassing this same information, but by other methods. These took the form of copious notes in order books, the orders themselves, sketches and odd details on scraps of paper which I stored with my kit from time to time in ‘B’ Echelon, in letters written home after the appropriate time lapse following various actions and by cross-checking with others of the Battalion when collecting all this material together.

The life in infantry action which fell to my lot and which is recorded here as a continuation of my diary was, I think, fairly typical of the experience of any infantryman in the campaign. It traces but one thread among the many thousands forming the intricate fabric of the Allied armies’ struggles. Many threads must have been put to far fiercer tensions than mine in the skein that wove towards victory. The variety of battle circumstances was infinite.

If the thread of my experience was not typical in one respect of the average Infantry Platoon Commander, it was that by the grace of God it was not snapped short after only a few actions, or interrupted by injury or battle-exhaustion, but ran right through to the end despite continual replacement which sadly renewed the weave about me.

To my increasing gratitude and perhaps amazement, I became aware that to trust God as the only real and wholly good power and cause, despite all appearance to the contrary in the material evidence of battle, gave one a sure path on which to tread even if, as so often, one trod it in fear and trembling.

No words, however set together, can convey even a minute concept of the searing mental and physical impact of the shambles of infantry action unless one has personally experienced it. Nevertheless, I have attempted to do this in its personal impact, day succeeding day, however inadequately; and also to sketch in the ordinary detail of our lives, hopes and fears, between our periods of passing through the furnace.

If no words can convey the ‘action’, it would be an even harder task to express my appreciation, admiration and high regard for the wonderful qualities of humour, compassion and ‘guts’ displayed by those with whom I had the privilege to serve.

THE ATTACKONWALCHEREN ISLAND

A route march or two of intense interest in our new surroundings and various other training filled in our time for a few unexpected days’ respite. On October 27 1944 the whole village turned out to wave a tearful departure, displaying a depth of emotion which touched us deeply. Our convoy bumped and splashed over roads breaking up under excessive war traffic until we pulled up in the village of Kleit, 10 miles due east of Bruges. The Germans had pulled out about three weeks before. It was a poor village and conditions were rough, though happily we still had civilian billets, of a rather squalid type in most cases. As an officer billeting men one made a note of each address, owner’s name, how many men they could take and whether they would have beds of straw. The householder was then eventually compensated by the Burgomeister. Not all householders would take payment however. Some explained that they were making a small return for their liberation.

My billet was a garage run by a rough walrus-whiskered peasant. His small son delighted in playing football about the cobbled street, kicking a clanking German helmet. His usual opponent was a scraggy 13-year-old youth who sported an imposing pair of German officer’s jack-boots. He boasted: ‘I haf shot de schwein ven he leef dis fillage!’ So saying he attempted to borrow my rifle to demonstrate his claimed feat: ‘Here, I will make you see how vos done, yes.’

The Jocks were intrigued with the churchyard. ‘Each tombstone has a *** photey of the poor devil inside Surr!’ The sanitation and hygiene in these small Flemish villages was really primitive and still probably as it was centuries before. Perhaps a need to provide fertiliser for the overpopulated land dictated this in part. The village public convenience was initially rather a shock. Its position was blatantly indicated merely by villagers using a particular spot in the village which was entirely devoid of any surrounding structure. The adaptable Jock accepted this and other aspects of Flemish village life with little comment and without batting an eyelid. The church was the most popular building in the village and people shuffled to and from it from dawn till dusk.

That we were much closer to the enemy now we gathered from several indications. Two of these puzzled us a lot until we heard that V2 rockets were falling on London. In the daytime, to our north, the sky sometimes displayed a thin vertical vapour trail which rose from a slow start with unbelievable acceleration until within seconds it had passed straight up out of sight. At night, a star-like light replaced the vapour trail to indicate the rocket’s course.

Tangible evidence of the fact that our first action was soon to come and that it was going to be an unusual one was provided by the arrival of a convoy of fourteen tank transporters in our village carrying strange cargo. These Weasels which they unloaded were small brothers of the amphibious Buffaloes.

Swiftly following this, word went about that we were to attack the port of Flushing on Walcheren Island. The assault was to be carried out from the wrecked shell of a small port called Breskens opposite Flushing and on our side of the Scheldt estuary. It was to be a combined land, sea and air operation. A miniature ‘D’ Day. On this attack rested the clearing of the approaches to the vital supply port of Antwerp, the key to any further effort to break through into the north German plain. For this operation, we were to be under command of the Canadian 1st Army, to the delight of our own attached Canadian officers. Opposing us on the island were 15,000 German troops, a mixture of Wehrmacht, marines, SS and AA men, backed by masses of guns, interconnecting massive fortifications, mines and torpedoes. The island dominated the estuary and even the loading up of our assault craft would be under enemy observation and fire. That the Germans were grimly determined to hold on, we soon realised. If confirmation were needed, a captured proclamation read: ‘The defence of the approaches to Antwerp represents a task which is decisive for the future conduct of the war. After overrunning the Scheldt fortifications the British would finally be in a position to land great masses of material in a large and completely protected harbour. With the material they might deliver a death blow at the north German Plateau and Berlin. For this reason we must hold the Scheldt fortifications to the end. The German people are watching us. In this hour the fortifications along the Scheldt occupy a role which is decisive for the future of our people.’

The Sunday before the attack the Padre held a Battalion church service on the Kleit village green. Because of the circumstances it proved a solemn and moving occasion. I think we were all much more thoughtful than usual and sincere in prayer. Though we were all trained nearly to the pitch of overtraining in all that human ingenuity could devise to condition us to what we were likely to meet in battle, including training with live ammunition to ‘Battle inoculate’ us, and endless schemes to physically and perhaps mentally exhaust us; we all realised thus far that we had met only molehills as compared with a possible Everest. The biggest unknown factor was the mental reaction of the individual, especially of those in responsibility. What part would fear play? How well could it be overcome, or hidden? The tense realisation dawned ever larger that the lives of one’s friends and one’s own life would depend on split-second decisions in an unknown world of utter chaos.

Before in life one had been accustomed to planning and looking ahead in terms of days, weeks or even years of fair certainty. Now, we realised squarely, for the first time perhaps, that one’s future appeared to take a dip out of sight into the unknown only a matter of hours ahead. At this point in thought it became very clear that for any faith in continuity at all, one had to search for something outside of human structure and organisation on which to rely; something which would not change; where the future was not a human responsibility.

The service over, the CO gave a short talk to ‘put us all in the picture’; to give an idea of what was expected of the Battalion, the Brigade and the Division in this formidable task. As he spoke, I glanced round at all the rugged friendly faces and felt reassured. We were all in the same boat, but it was difficult not to wonder a bit, to think of the families of each at home. Where would each be in a couple of days, a week hence?

In view of the difficulties of getting vehicles over to Flushing it was decided to leave the carriers and anti-tank platoon out of the initial attack. This at first seemed to mean that Jimmy and I and our men would not take part, but we found within a few hours that we were assigned to a job on the beach. There we would have to cope with every scrap of food, ammunition and stores needed for the battle. We were pleased to find that Capt Tammy Youngson and Frank Clark were also assigned to this. ‘Uncle Beach’, at which the landings would take place, and the only spot available, was only 85 yards wide! If Jerry was accurate with any guns and mortars, to survive the initial assault it seemed we would be in for a thin time. In case casualties were steep, it was decided to institute a system called LOB – Left out of Battle. One or two officers, a few NCOs and a handful of men would take a turn out of battle from each company, to form a nucleus round which a unit could be more easily rebuilt with replacements. However, after this, our first attack, we were to find ourselves so continually short of men that the idea never could operate properly. A pocket of Germans holding out near Blankenberghe on the coast had to be eliminated before the attack. To this end a large artillery programme was laid on to fire all night at these Boche, before swinging on to Flushing. This barrage was to lift off the beaches and into the town as No. 4 Commando, the first wave, went in to secure a bridgehead before dawn. 4th KOSB were to pass through if possible before first light to secure the northern part of the town, followed by 7th/9th Royal Scots and the 5th KOSB. Some of 4th Commando were free Dutch.

At the same time another force would be landing farther up the coast at Westkapelle. The Canadians with 156 and 157 Brigades were already on the go attacking along the Walcheren causeway to the back door and on 28 October had secured the north by an attack on South Beveland. Once Flushing had fallen we were to work up the banks of the Middleburg canal and the railway track to link with the other two Brigades. Just before the assault the RAF were to breach the Walcheren Dykes, letting the sea through to isolate the blockhouses with which the island was peppered and to isolate the fortifications round the rim of the island. As this took place HMS Warspite would be pumping in 16-inch shells onto the German coastal batteries and other strong points on Walcheren.

The RAF promised a ‘Stonk’ on the town just before the attack. Flares were dropped, but the weather must have been unsuitable for bombing for the raid never came off. The Typhoons, though, gave wonderful close support with their rockets and cannon on obstinate strong points. The operation was to be an intensive small-scale repeat of the Normandy landings.

Detailed preparation and planning was rushed ahead. The final Battalion briefing conference took place in a little estaminet in Kleit just as the 284-gun barrage opened up at 10 pm on 31 October, like a thunderstorm to the west, lighting the sky with a fitful pale light and sharply silhouetting the roofs of the village houses from which the Flemish villagers spilled to watch and wonder.

Inside, in the warmth of the estaminet, briefing dragged on until about one in the morning. At the end one or two of the officers slipped sealed envelopes to the 2i/c, who would be ‘left out of battle’, in case they should not survive.

It was a pretty miserable wait for the Battalion up in Breskens. The orchestra of battle noises, still evilly new to our ears, crashed and shrieked in preparation for the performers to appear, the first-night effect on nerves and stomach being felt in proportion to the scale and importance of the performance. All were new actors.

Breskens turned out to be a smashed heap of bricks and matchwood, reeking with a sickly smell of burning and of bodies trapped under the rubble, with which we were to become so familiar. Our objective over the water, Flushing, stood out clearly in the daytime as a row of buildings, crane gantries and chimneys about 2 miles over the estuary. That night the buildings showed only as burning husks shimmering amid a sequin-twinkle of explosions. So far, very few shells had been reported coming in return. At 4.30 am the time to load the assault craft had come. Down at the wrecked Breskens jetty, the first of the five waves of troops to go boarded the twenty-six bobbing camouflaged assault craft which slid rumbling softly to dissolve in the inky waters of the estuary. Inside each frail craft silent tense men crouched, gripping their weapons with pounding hearts; for each the first battle had already started mentally. The moorings with the known were slipped; ahead, in a few minutes they would be tipped from the flimsy eggshell protection of their vessels into the fear-fringed unknown … if they got that far.

The Commandos had crossed in darkness to jump on the beach at high tide while to a large extent the Germans’ heads were pinned down with the gunfire. C Company, led by Capt David Colville sounding his hunting horn, as also did Charles Marrow with D Company later, were able to get ashore without too much opposition. However, as time went on and the tide out, the following companies fell into water and deep mud under heavy sniping, mortaring and bursts of 20mm cannon and 37 and 88mm airburst shells which plumed the sky and the water about the assault craft and the Jocks. In spite of this, the Battalion was far more fortunate than those landing up the coast at Westkappelle who lost two out of every three landing and assault craft before getting as far as the beaches.

Capt Jim Bennet, our Company commander, was the first casualty among the officers. When on a reconnaisance to Commando HQ in the first wave, he was hit in the spine by a sniper. His batman-runner dragged him out of fire into a shop. Later, Malcolm Nisbet was hit (on the 2nd) and died trying to bring in one of his men under fire.

Communication was very difficult initially as sniping and mortaring had smashed several radios. Next night, Jimmy Wannop, Tammy Youngson, Frank Clark and I rumbled over the inky waters with a group of S Company men in Navy-manned assault craft. As we got close in towards Flushing we began to hear above the noise of shells shrieking in and the throb of engines and lap of water on the hull, the pounding of mortars and shell exploding amid the buildings, the desolate crashing of tiles as the fires spread and rattling bursts of small-arms fire. Spilling out onto the cold and wet of the beach we set straight to work like madmen, all night in unloading ammunition from the assault craft. Despite the Battalion being well established, the occasional crack and sing of a sniper’s bullet twanged the darkness. Towards dawn the whole of ‘Uncle Beach’ and for 50 yards inland was a solid stack of ammunition. We had been worried at about midnight by some of our own artillery screaming in to erupt in flame very ‘short’ and dangerously close to the many tons of explosive with which we were surrounded. One shell among this and we realised our hours of frantic labour, all the reserve ammunition on which the attack depended, and ourselves, would all go up in one gigantic explosion. As each landing craft was emptied, the steady trickle of casualties brought through the town wreckage to the beach by Weasels were loaded and sent back over the water to Breskens. Serious cases were flown back to the UK within a few hours. Meanwhile, the Weasels had loaded up with supplies and ammunition and had lurched back to wherever the fighting had by then reached.

Our HQ was established in a large coal cellar beneath a tall building near the beach. We retired there for a short rest and to eat in shifts before returning to supervise operations on the beach towards daylight. Several times more there had been the rip of a machine-gun quite close, but it was not until it grew light that we began to realise that we were visible to stray German snipers and that the Commandos had not been able to winkle out all opposition near the beach. A shower of bullets crackled and whined off the pebbles, spattering the woodwork of a breakwater behind us as a chap I was working with carrying a crate of mortar bombs rolled over grovelling erratically in the sand doubled up beside a second Jock who had been hit. We dropped flat, trying to locate the source of fire while noting with apprehension that the spray of bullets had nicked chips off some of the ammunition crates. Neither Jock turned out to be badly wounded. Meanwhile, to continue unloading seemed out of the question, so we fired back heavily at all points from which we suspected the fire might have come: the control cab in a tall crane and a big warehouse with gaping windows in the dock area. Jimmy and I later painfully stalked this building when fresh fire swept the beach, but after several hundred yards of effort we found nothing. A figure appeared for a few seconds at a window to the centre of a row of houses looking on the beach. At the same instant a crackle of fire from the Jocks passed overhead and twanged brickdust around the window frame and the figure, which I was shocked to realise was that of a woman civilian, fell, striking the frame, hit by one or more shots. Some mountain artillery had now joined us on the beach and set out to eliminate one source of the fire while we continued unloading. This particular sniper, with an MG34 machine-gun, had been located, as we suspected, in a crane control cabin amid the gantries. The cabin had been armoured and our small-arms fire could do nothing with it. However, the mountain gunners scored a direct hit over open sights and knocked this pest out of existence. It was ironical that we should, as a Division trained in mountain warfare, be chosen to attack on land actually situated below sea level! No doubt the Germans thought it was some devilish-cunning British scheme. The Jocks summed it up otherwise as the flood waters started to rise.

These mountain guns, being detachable into loads which could be carried by men, were invaluable in winkling the Germans out of the dock area and around the hulk of a 20,000-ton ship under construction there. In one instance, we heard later, an artillery officer spotted twenty Germans rush for cover in a concrete fort and indicated this by radio to one of the gun teams. The gunners took the gun to bits out of sight of the enemy, carried it upstairs into a house overlooking the German bunker where the gun was re-assembled and had within twenty minutes fired the first shot. This brought the ceiling in part down on their heads with the blast, but it also got the Germans on the move. Two appeared at the doorway just in time to coincide with a direct hit from the second shot which completely dissolved them. Six more shots accounted for the rest, by which time the house from which the gun was being fired was in a state of collapse, the recoil having driven the gun-trail through the floor. One of the Weasels driven by a small nervous Jock who looked ‘all in’, arrived from time to time for ammunition, usually with two or three casualties on stretchers aboard. His vehicle had been peppered with shrapnel from a mortar burst and bullets from a sniper who riddled it on his every trip through the town. The last time I saw him he told me with heated feeling that he had finally located and shot the sniper, a woman. She was either a German or a collaborator.

The scream of shells ploughing into the town had nearly ceased by now. A frightening noise we never really got used to, though we were now getting experienced enough to guess more or less where they would land from the sound of their trajectory. The brittle crackling of small-arms and deeper artillery explosions continued unabated in the town. As darkness fell on the second night’s fighting unchecked fires blazed furiously.

Though occasionally during the hours of darkness the noise died down to some semblance of no shooting or explosions, this ‘silence’ was fitful. A lone shot usually triggered off quite an outburst as though in nervous reaction beneath the lurid glow of the flames and the lazily coiling re-tinted smoke canopy. Always there was the distant erratic clatter of falling tiles and smashing woodwork as some roof collapsed into the fire. Once or twice voices could be heard shouting distantly, a dog barked hysterically and somewhere an engine revved intermittently as a vehicle laboured on some task through the rubble and craters. In this atmosphere, Jimmy and I, our assignment just about done and feeling ‘done’ ourselves, joined Frank Clark in entering a small battered house for a sleep on the bare boards, over which the wind played through the broken windows. We dozed fitfully with restless thoughts, getting steadily colder. For a while the artillery opened up, perhaps on a counter-attack somewhere in the early hours. Occasionally a sniper’s bullet cracked outside or some other sound disturbed us. In the cold light of dawn I was disconcerted to find we had not been alone in the house. Through an open door of a back room lay six of our dead, rigid in the frosted air amid the dust and plaster. Recognition of their faces added a haunting chill to the shock and to cheerless daybreak.

From time to time Typhoons circled high over Flushing in response to some radio appeal, suddenly to slip swiftly down at an angle. The harsh engine note became more insistent, then whoosh, the rockets streaked ahead to blast heavily against some strong point while the planes dipped momentarily behind a shattered house and soared away, leaving a leisurely pall of smoke to rise and mix with that of the fires. It was at first difficult to realise that these jagged, unreal sounds of war generally meant death or maiming for someone.

Back on the beach, some of the casualties looked in a very bad way, grey-green in the face and lying still in the cold as though already dead, while waiting for a landing craft. It may have taken several hours for some to be brought thus far from some distant part of Flushing. The sea had grown rougher and landing craft were being driven broadside on to the beach and battered. To get them off it was necessary to wade into the icy sea, knowing that the clothes would then have to dry on one during the rest of the freezing days and nights which lay ahead. Casualties were difficult to get aboard, especially at low tide, when acres of mud were exposed. To help in this the Weasels and Buffaloes were invaluable. If the waves were not too severe a Buffalo could swim right over to Breskens and back under its own power, then churn up out of the water, over the beach and into the town with its load.

We soon had a steadily increasing preoccupation in the form of a trickle, then a flood of German wounded and prisoners. For so much of the war the ‘Germans’ had seemed rather an abstract word from which bad results had sprung as though at second hand or by remote control: by bombs from aircraft, or through the news. Now, here they were. We could properly examine them. There seemed a much greater variety of type than among our chaps. Very old, very young, massive and brutish – the type one expected – or frail, wheezing, cold and frightened parodies, small and almost pitiful in jumbled ill-fitting uniform. Most carried lots of belongings and had discarded their steel helmets, almost invariably wearing instead their peaked-caps which so called to my mind a group of vultures with their beaks twiddling this way and that as their heads swung. Also popular were cooking pots, mess tins, rye black bread, water bottles full of alcoholic drink, and evil looking heavy sausages. Their tin-shaped respirators were always in evidence. This latter point used to cause me thought at times for our gas-masks were nearly always with ‘B’ Echelon some miles to the rear. It seemed to me that the enemy always had theirs handy in case their command should at any time resort to gas in desperation under the Fuehrer’s mad direction.

We learned that the Hotel Britannia, centre of a network of fortifications, was still holding out and that it housed the enemy HQ. The shelling during the night had been the preliminary to a Royal Scots attack, a very fierce engagement in which large numbers of the enemy were killed and captured. By the evening of November 3 the whole town was in our hands. The Royal Scots unfortunately lost their CO in this attack, though they captured the German local garrison commander who, with a swarm of shell-dazed prisoners, created quite a problem for Tammy, Frank, Jimmy and me.

To find some immediate solution to guarding these hosts of prisoners with our handful of men, we marched them all into a wired-up orchard. The Jocks took a delight in solving the luggage problem of the prisoners, who had enough odds and ends, a lot probably looted, to fill a landing craft. I was interested to notice that nearly all of them had their waterbottles filled with cognac, wine or some other spirits to form a ‘Dutch courage’ reservoir in an emergency. One or two had obviously partaken of it too. Some were genuinely shell-shocked, but others’ unsteady condition, as given away by alcoholic-fumed breath, was due to mental escapism in drink. They stood among the autumn stark apple trees, or sat with exhaustion and dejection, a grey-green silent mass from which a peculiar sour ‘German’ reeking odour issued reminiscent of a Kaffir kraal. I suppose some of this came from their evil-looking sausages. We fed them on our rations and handed their surplus bread and meat over the wire to a collection of delighted though poorly dressed and ill-fed Dutch civilians who lined the wire, gloating in silence and sometimes verbally, immensely enjoying the spectacle of the ‘Master Race’ who had so recently lorded it over them and were now stripped of their power. Many of the Germans were really blast shocked and some miserably and rather surprisingly fearful. All looked dejected, grey in the face with dirt and tiredness and many if spoken to could only utter ‘Allus Kaput … Hitler no good.’ The officers were quite different to the sheep-like other ranks who came in long crocodiles under the escort of some casual Jock. We locked up these arrogant blighters in a concrete shed. They were eternally complaining about something or other, talking about ‘their rights’ and quoting the Geneva Convention. What riled them most was that as our Jocks and officers were dressed alike, often carrying the same weapons and with no visible badges of rank, they were never sure whether they were being dealt with by an officer or a private. The garrison commander gave every appearance of being a particularly nasty type and the last word in arrogance. Tammy’s batman took him down a peg or two when to his white rage he told him in rich language just what he thought of him as a fellow human creature, then calmly relieved him of his fur-lined gloves before he was made to wade out over the mud with other prisoners to board assault craft for evacuation to Breskens. About 3,000 of the 5,000 prisoners taken by the Brigade eventually passed through our hands. One German had been captured, sitting dazed in his slit trench beside his Dutch girlfriend who had been killed the night before.

Rubber ankle boots had been issued early on during the attack and these, together with the amphibious vehicles, became more and more invaluable as the flood water caused by the breached sea walls steadily rose in the lower parts of the town. There were very few civilians in Flushing as these had mostly evacuated to Middleburg in the centre of the island in anticipation of the shelling and fighting. Those still there did great work dashing here and there under fire, wearing white arm bands and carrying a satchel, tending the wounded – surprisingly the Germans too with equal care and gentleness; making a note of the dead and their identity discs for records. This amazed me.

All this while the German commander of Walcheren in the crowded historic town of Middleburg steadfastly refused to surrender. The forward companies had very heavy, difficult fighting through the dock area and the strongly fortified northern rim of the town where flood water driven by the wind and tide swirled fiercely round the wading Jocks who were brought to a standstill by running into Schu minefields and fire. Both took steady toll. These wooden mines foiled detectors. The presence of so many civilians in Middleburg made it very difficult for the artillery and the RAF, who had to try to confine their fire to strong points and leave doubtful targets.

Eventually resistance was overcome with Buffaloes loaded with Jocks paddling cross-country in the floods and up the canal past the strong point in the darkness. Some of these vehicles carried mountain guns ready to fire as they paddled. These big clanging vehicles unloaded the Jocks right in Middleburg. The garrison commander insisted on an officer of suitable rank not to offend his dignity to surrender to in the town square. There was not one available, so one of our officers with borrowed insignia promoted himself on the spot to the required exalted rank. Honour codes thus being met, Lt Gen Daser formally capitulated on the fifth day of the fight. For three more days the Battalion stopped on in Middleburg amid the wildly grateful civilians, sorting out prisoners, collaborators and guarding food dumps.

The Divisional Commander in a letter to the Colonel of our Regiment summed up: ‘You will be pleased to know that both your Battalions in the Division did very well indeed. The 4th Battalion successfully carried out a most difficult assault landing right on the front door-step of what I believe to be the world’s most strongly defended place. The 5th Bn completed that operation by mopping up a large area riddled with enormous pillboxes inter-connected by underground passages. According to all the rules of war, neither task should have been successful, but both Bns went in with such determination and sheer guts that nothing could have stopped them. I am glad to be able to tell you that their losses were extremely light in relation to the strength of their objectives.’ (137 men, of whom 19 were killed or died of wounds.)

Flushing was in an awful mess, nearly every house shattered, streets and drains cratered, flooded and scattered with dead, including quite a few emaciated horses. There was almost no food and drinking water. The spirit of the few people who remained in their smashed homes was wonderful. One old lady dressed in peasant costume with a white Dutch cap twirled with gold wire ornaments said to me: ‘What does it matter! We are free.’

As swiftly as possible the prisoners were sent off the island, 300 German forces women being in one batch and some AA troops who had been firing the V2s on London. They were very interested in our equipment, especially the amphibious vehicles. We found the prisoners of equal interest, being so new an experience.

One evening Jimmy and I took back an English-speaking Jerry medical officer to supper in our cosy HQ house. The top floor was smashed and water lapped against a flood barrier of wood sealed with grease which I had built in the front doorway. Two naval officers from a landing craft joined us, and together we ate an interesting mixture of chips and German and British rations cooked by Jimmy on the Dutch stove; our first proper meal for some days. The German MO, a slight, dark-haired, pale fellow seemed a decent enough chap. He was responsive, professed to dislike the Gestapo and was really obsessed with a fear of the Russians. ‘In a year from now you will be asking us Germans to help you drive the Russians back. I tell you they are devils, evil. You cannot know what they are like or you would be fighting them, not us.’ He was puzzled as to how the British Empire held together as well as it did and said, out of the blue: ‘England is the only nation on Earth capable of handling the Indian problem.’ Talk on the war and politics soon revealed that Nazi propaganda had done a thorough job on him. His ideas of right and wrong were set lopsided in a rigid mould and he could not or would not let his thoughts free to reach a conclusion independent of those laid down for him. We had been interested in glimpsing the German attitude to varied topics, but soon tired of this fanaticism which flowed from him with surprising and unexpected fervour, and so locked him up again with the other officers. Among the other-rank prisoners we met a wider range of feelings which ranged from a young Nazi thug – who boasted with pompous arrogance: ‘In a year from now, the boot, as you say, will be on the other foot. We will be top dog’ – to an old wizened cook who had served in the first war, and who said: ‘Hitler is a devil, he has taken both my sons, but what can one do?’ Then he continued, ‘In three months Germany is Kaput.’ Others hated the Japs: ‘But they have their uses now.’