10.04.09
Human interest
I’ve recently had a semi-distant elderly relative die. I didn’t really know the lady too well but I’ve currently visiting my parents and they have a bunch of her belongings at home so I’ve been having a bit of a troll through and finding out some more.
One of the wotsits is a long letter from someone to her. This someone was in the army with her husband and the second part of the letter is his description of an action they both took part in (her husband is the “Tony Plumb” mentioned). I believe the letter was received after his death in 1986.
It does give quite a human face to having to do something risky and it being something that just had to be done.
Anyway if you’re interested I’ve copied it, word for word beyond the clicky. Action takes place in the Reichswald battle.
One of the most frightening German weapons was the Spandau machine gun which could fire up to 1000 rounds per minute. These were used against us many times and were always dreaded by our soldiers. However my worst experience of this weapon occurred one very dark night when we were held up alongside a large house, which was being used by German machine-gunners to ‘rake’ the road along which our troops had to advance. The first section, including the company commander had got through to the destination, a building at a crossroads perhaps 3-4 hundred metres distant; the remaining troops were unable to pass this building but to add to the problem the battalion commander, who needed to direct operations had no idea of the situation, nor any way of talking to his company commander. It was clear that either a signaller was not with this company or perhaps he had been put out of action.
Because of this, five signallers, of whom I was one, were sent to try and get a telephone line through. It is significant to the whole theory of war that they should send five signallers when two would have been plenty. The simple fact was that they wanted to make sure, and life was cheap. As in all things ‘army’ there had to be someone in charge and it happened to be Corporal Topp, quite an elderly chap given the usual age of soldires at that time.
We were in contact with Battalion HQ because we had a telephone and the corporal was given strict instructions to get the phone line through. The fact that we were pinned down by machine gunners seemed not to be appreciated by the person giving the order! Also the corporal had no choice but to carry out the order. That was how it was.
As this conversation was taking place we were in a ditch just a few yards from the house.
Suddenly a Bren Carrier came into view pulling a large oil-tank and its driver projected a jet of flaming liquid into the house. This was my first experience of a flame thrower and we were close enough to feel the heat. The Germans in the building must have been terrified because it all happened so quickly and within minutes of sending the burning liqiud into the house it was blazing fiercely. The machine gunners quickly left but they took up position in a field at the rear of the building. We knew this because it wasn’t long before they started firing again although this time they were not able to fire down the road so they fired across it. Of course it was no longer dark in the immediate vicinity due to the burning house!
Their policy now seemed to be that they would fire at knee height, across the road. They seemed to do this intermittently so of course only they knew when they were going to fire. We knew that whoever was chosen to lay the cable would just have to hope they would get through without being hit. At the rate of fire mentioned a person would not survive as he would be hit by so many rounds.
My friend Tony Plumb and I (I had been with Tony since day one) were chosen to lay out the cable which was on a steel drum. There were a thousand yards of cable and the drum was very heavy but we had an earthing rod, which we would need when, or rather, given the circumstances if, we reached the crossroads. The rod was placed through the centre of the drum to act as an axle so that we could carry it.
Tony issued a strict instruction, (he was the same rank as me but a few years older) but in any case I was not going to disagree; he said, “When I say run…run”.
An interesting aspect was that by using a metal rod through a metal drum with a square hole we made quite a noise as we ran. I think the redeeming feature of that was that at least we knew what the noise was; the German gunners, who were literally just a few hundred metres away had no idea what it was and at night such noises can be quite frightening. In war there is no monopoly on fear!
To return to the task, we ran; to say I was scared stiff would be a massive understatement but we knew what we had to do and we did it. We were lucky with the bullets; as far as I was aware there were none fired as ew were running though it is doubtful if we would have heard them given the noise we were making.
We installed the field telephone and all was well. Communication is so vital in situations such as those. For a group of men to be isolated in the midst of hostile troops is not a pleasant experience and they were certainly glad to see us, and even more pleased when we connected the telephone. In fact it turned out to be even better because a considerable number of Germans were hiding in the building’s basement and they realised they had no choice but to surrender.
There was an interesting sequel to this event.
Those troops who had made our lives such a misery during that night turned out to be from the Waffen SS who were recognised as the most viscious and fanatical of the entire German army indeed it is a well known fact that almost all of the atrocities carried out by the German army during the war were the work of the SS. Therefore it was quite a surprise to us to see a group of them walking toward us with their hands on their heads. They were readily recognisable because of the SS runes on their collars. I don’t recall how many there were, perhaps up to twelve but my memory is hazy on that point. They had continued firing until first light at which point they must have realised they were now vulnerable because there were many more of us. Interestingly we were wandering around the area, oblivious to the fact that they were in trenches not more than 100 metres away but they probably realised, given the number of our troops that their involvement in the war was at an end. Even today I realise how lucky we were and I hate to think how I would have felt had I known beforehand who we were up against.