Service Record

Page (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

"There was a lot of trouble with the Russians, thousands of German civilians were trying to escape across the Elbe river and we went down there because we didn't trust the Russians. We were helping the German civilians, women and children, cross the river. we weren't allowed to cross the river but we could see the German civilians on the far river bank but they couldn't get across.  They were pleading with us to help get them across away from the Russians who were raping everybody. We weren't allowed to cross the river but one night someone managed to scrounge a rubber boat and three of us went across in this rubber boat, paddled across, and we started taking some of the women and kids across but there was too many and the Russian troops come along and that was that."   

"But later on, a week later, we transferred down to Salzwegen, a town that was half occupied by the Russians and half by us. They were a right old rough crowd, Mongolian troops, and they'd been there raping, pillaging. I found myself a nice billet, I shared it with a German woman and her young son, I treated her respectfully as she'd lost her husband in the war. I came back from the tank park one afternoon after doing some maintenance. I could hear some screaming and when I got to my house these three Russians were dragging her out and the boy was screaming. I went up to them and started saying 'Tovarich, Tovarich' - 'Comrade, Comrade', 'this is my woman', but they didn't seem to understand at first and unslung their Tommy guns. They didn't seem to know a British soldier from adam or they took no damn notice.  But I kept saying 'Tovarich, Tovarich' - 'Comrade, Comrade' - and 'my woman', 'my frau', and anyway, they backed off, I took her back in pacified her and it all calmed down.  Well, that night I went out for a walk with one of my comrades.  We passed one of the houses in the street and we could hear all the Russians singing in there, and one of these Russians came out and he recognized us as we were passing.  'Comrade, Tovarich come in', you know.  We didn't want to go in but we went in and there was a couple of dozen Russian soldiers in there, boozing, they shoved glasses in our hands, toasted one another, but I noticed on the settee there was a girl lying on her back there.  She had a black dress on and she had her hand on her chest, holding a wine glass, and I looked at her and I said to my mate, 'It looks as though she's had enough, she's drunk', but after about half an hour she hadn't moved so I gradually made my way over to her and looking at her I found she was dead. They had killed her, I don't know what they done to her but she was dead, and I went back to me pal and I said, 'Come on, let's get out of this.'  It was getting a bit raucous so we gradually made our way out to the back kitchen and when we got into the kitchen we saw the old man and the old lady, they were huddled in a corner with their throats cut. So we made a quick getaway out there because the party was getting a bit too raucous."

"They were all armed to the teeth, you know, they was Mongolian crowd and they were raping and pillaging.  I suppose you couldn't blame them, for what the Germans had done in Russia. It wasn't our style and we didn't want to know nothing about it. So that was the end of that,  But there was a lot of it going on.  We moved to another village on the demarcation line and there was Russians in there as well. I got a nice little billet in a little house with an elderly couple, and we were there for about two weeks, and the old, boy said to me one day, 'You're leaving tomorrow, Tommy', and I said, 'Are we, nobody's told me'.  He said, 'Yes, I've heard it', and I said, 'Well, I don't know where you got your information from', but next day we got the orders that we were going to leave the town which was going to be taken over by the Russians completely as part of their Russian zone, so I went back in and started packing my kit to load on my Armoured car and the old German couple came up to me and said, 'Would you take our daughter with you?'  I said, 'What daughter? I haven't seen her.'  They said, 'She's down the cellar.'  They'd been keeping her in from the Russians.   So they said 'Can you take her out with you?'  I said, 'Oh, we're not allowed to carry women.'"

"I felt very sorry for the old couple but everywhere you looked there was people in bad circumstances, you had to have a bit of a hard heart to look the other way, but the old lady, she started crying, so I softened a bit. I said 'look, I'll go and have a chat with my officer', so I went out and sorted out this Lieutenant Marsh, and I said, 'Look, would you mind if  I took out the young daughter of the place.  She's frightened of the Russians.'  and he turned round and said, 'Look, I'm not interested, don't ask me.  You haven't asked me just go away'. So I just shrugged me shoulders, he hadn't said 'No', so I went back and I said to the old couple 'Well, all right, I'll take her out.'  She came up out the cellar, she was a girl about eighteen, quite a pretty girl, first time I'd ever seen her and I'd been there a couple of weeks. They packed a bag for her and when she was ready she said goodbye to them, and I took her out in the street and as I went out I looked along at the other vehicles along the road and they was all helping girls into the turrets and I thought, 'Blimey, no wonder the old lieutenant didn't want to know about me.' They was all at it."

"But we got her in and off we went, the Russian troops were standing on the other pavement.  They weren't too pleased with what we were doing but they didn't do anything and we took them out and we traveled all that night and we finished up in this town of Waldendorf, well inside the British zone.  I suppose it was about six o'clock in the morning then and I thought, what the bloody hell am I going to do with her.  But we loaded them up with cigarettes and chocolate.  I took her out and I found a German policeman in this town.  I explained to him about all these women, these young girls, so he gathered them all up - there were about eighteen of them - and he took them away, he said they'd got a rest center in the town, they'd be all right.  So that was the last I saw of her.  I often wonder - well, I expect she's contacted her parents now, now the Wall's come down, but I expect it was some time before she saw her parents again.  Anyway, she seemed a pleasant kid.  She helped us out on our journey down, making our tea and a bit of grub, so she paid her whack, and so we said goodbye to her, and that was that."

"After that we settled down, the war was finished, and the Reconnaissance regiments were disbanded and I was transferred back to the Royal Tank Regiment."

Page (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)