"What compensation?"
Page
(1) (2) (3) (4)
(5)
October
1999
"I’ve
just been looking at the television pictures of the rail crash at Ladbroke Grove
and the chaps going in to recover the bodies from the burnt out carriage. I had
a bit of a tear in my eye when I looked at that, took the old mind back to a
certain day outside Caen. We had a bit of a tank battle out there and we had a
bad day. I got hit in the side of the tank and caught fire. I received splash
damage to me back, it was a splash from the inside of the tank as they
shelled it, metal particles, but I didn’t notice it at the time because there was
pandemonium. I jumped out with two of the crew and all we could see was other
burning tanks around us."
"The noise, high explosives - frightening, and I had officers shouting out orders but it just went over my head. I stumbled into a ditch, a hedgerow. I think my legs gave out then. I couldn’t stand up and I just sat there, and I was putting cigarette after cigarette in my mouth - the old Capstans were going at a terrible rate."
"Another
chap came along and sat beside me. I didn’t know him but he just sat there and
stared into the stream with me, smoking away, the same as myself , I was
utterly exhausted, I was shattered. I don’t know how long we sat there but the
battle died away and it became beautifully quiet, you could hear the birds sing,
But it was great just to sit there, peace and quiet, puffing away, but it didn't
last long. Old Lieutenant Mayes came along and said, ‘Come along, you two, get
up, we’ve got work to do.’ But l didn’t want to mess around with
casualties. I could still see some of the burnt people and it was- if you’ve
never seen burnt people, burnt half their size, just a lump of black jelly. The
stink of it is terrible, going back to this rail crash, they’ll never
forget what they’re seeing in there for a long time."
|
Alf and the boys having a couple of beers - Hamburg 1944 |
"I
remember a certain war reporter who’d dropped with the airborne at Arnhemm -
Stanley Maxted - he said, ‘If you ever meet a man from Arnhem shake his
hand and give him a pint.’ But that’s how I feel about these rescue chaps at
this rail crash, They’l certainly need a bloody pint.
"In
a couple of weeks time it will be another Remembrance Day so I shall be down the
square with me mates attending the service, and I’ll have a few beers
afterwards. People say it’s time to forget about it, don’t talk about,
don’t think about the war, but they don't know, they don’t understand.
You can’t forget - not a chap who’s done three years in Burma as a prisoner-of-war.
It’s no good turning round and telling him, forget it, the horror he went
through and the sights that the average Serviceman saw, leaving out the
concentration camps and thousands of corpses. You had your own men scattered to the
four winds in front of you, the airborne when they was dropped over the Rhine,
they was hanging up in trees and squashed up in aircraft as they crashed all over the
place. Try to scrape a corpse from a tank track that’s been jammed behind
it. No, it’s no good telling the bloke not to think about the war. You lived
about ten lives in one and you’ll never forget it. The average person back
home here, they suffer a tragedy of some sort, car crash, train crash,
they remember it all their lives, but you imagine that tenfold. You just can’t
forget it and the effect it has on you.
"I read about the Hillsborough tragedy, the policemen, half a dozen
policemen, they were so distraught by what they saw, they went to court and got
about £45,000 apiece for their hurt feelings. Typists walking out
with £1,500 because they’ve hurt their fingers typing or something. But what are they -
I mean, I don’t ask for nothing but what did they give to the
poor old prisoner of the Jap? He got 75 quid for three years torture. No, it’s
no good people turning round and saying things like that. You can never forget
it, never forget it.
