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World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

213371

Arthur Johnstone

British Army 46th Royal Tank Regiment

On the 20th May 1939, I signed up with the Liverpool Welsh Territorials (46th Royal Tank Regiment) declaring a Welsh grandmother and went to Low Hill Barracks. I was based there until September 1939 when the Regiment left. We were all thinking that we were going to Egypt. All the shawl women were crying outside saying goodbye ‘to the boys’.

The coach headed up to Gladstone Dock but passed the dock and went onto Blundellsands where the barracks were in a large house. There were no beds and the food was awful. There were also no tanks, and we had to train using commercial vans. Such was the state of things at the start of the war.

In the winter of 1939/1940 there was very heavy snow and the soldiers were volunteered to help the farmers dig out alongside a group of unemployed folk (who got paid more!). Afterwards we were given a hot pot supper organized by the council.

On the 21st Jan 1940 I was sent on a wireless course in Bovington Camp in Dorset which is the HQ of the Tank Corps.

Summer camp 1940 was at Caernarvon we lived in tents for about a month. On returning to Liverpool we were under canvas at Lord Derby’s estate in Knowsley. I used to hide to avoid early morning PT. At some point we had a mock battle with the home guard and there was an invasion alarm.

During the winter of 40/41, I remember snow and manoeuvres on the moors at Whitby where we were billeted in the Metropole Hotel

Firing range in South Wales – north of Tenby: My ‘war injury’ was sustained here. I fractured my collarbone when a truck backed into me. I was sent to Haverford West Hospital.

At the end of l941 I sailed from Liverpool to Capetown where we stayed for two days. Then we proceeded on to Cairo where we were under canvas. Here a tent was stolen from around the six men asleep in it at the time! Finally we were sent into the desert towards the front line. There was no sight of anything or anyone and then out of nowhere Egyptians arrived selling ‘eggs-a-bread’ from cinema sweet-selling trays.

The Defence Line of El Alamein was not straight and the Tank Corps was sent to straighten it out. We were followed by Indian foot soldiers. The Intelligence said there were no German artillery in that part of the front. However, as the tanks went into the wadi (dried up river bed), the Germans opened fire with 88mm guns. Our tank turret got hit and was immobilized. White fluid starting dripping onto our heads. As lead tank we did not have a Bren gun and so the ammunition box was used for storage of other things, including evaporated milk.

In June/July l942, I was taken prisoner of war and handed to the Italians by the Germans. I was taken with only the clothes I wore and a fine pair of binoculars which I had to trade with the Italian soldiers for water to drink. Then we were taken to Tobruk by truck. Here we came across South Africans who had been captured in a retreat prior to El Alamein. They were in situ, as it were, so their personal possessions were greater than those of the Tank Corps. They were in an adjoining camp and I was given a blanket by one of them.

We were taken to Benghazi until ‘the big push’. We had very meagre rations so we slept all day. The ration of water was one pint a day for everything. Eventually I got dysentry and when I reported sick, I was offered Epsom Salts. I got desert sores on my leg and I was in hospital. There was a Siekh soldier in the next bed who was ‘away with the fairies’, chanting, standing on one leg, and who had his eye fixed on the Italian soldier on guard. Suddenly he attacked the guard.

The German soldiers would visit a brothel opposite the hospital and they would pass cigarettes up in baskets to the patients on the first floor. I met the captain of my own regiment who suggested that the next time the camp moved that an escape could be made by hiding in the open latrines. However the Italian guards were wise to this and shot into the latrines as the camp moved on.

The POWs were put on a ship and packed like sardines, this was in Septemner 1943. There were no toilets except big drums and there were always long queues. Eventually some POWs found another hold lower down. They found uniforms of the Italian soldiers in the hold and wore these until they were spotted. As a result in the Corinth Canal in Greece all the POWs were taken off the ship. Six were chosen, including me, and taken back on board to stand outside the Captain’s room. We were told we were going to be shot as punishment for wearing the uniforms. This did not happen! Everyone was put back on board and taken to Brindisi where we disembarked.

At another camp we must have been issued with sheets because the Italians, in order to count the POWs, would hold a blanket parade where each prisoner had to place his blanket on the ground. Friend Reg had used his to make socks from and put out the remains in the size of a handerchief. The Italians were not impressed. The POWs were lent to a farmer for harvest and had to share sleeping quarters with rats. At this time I also remember being entertained by a group of four POWs hanging up a sheet and acting behind it as if it were a radio programme.

Then I heard from a previous girlfriend who had been transferred with her department to Bermuda and had met and was to be married to an American, it was sad news. She lived happily ever after and had eight children.

After a spell I was taken near to Porto San Giorgio on the Adriatic Coast. Camp No 85DM 3450

When Italy capitulated, my friends and I escaped from camp and went to local town where we were plied with drinks. The women were always welcoming to escaped POWs. However we were soon rounded up by the Germans and put on train in cattle trucks for Germany. The train stopped in Austria and then went on into Germany. At one stop we were issued with food by the Red Cross which was soup and bread (made in l937 said the date stamp!). As the level of soup fell the nurse just added more water.

On the journey we were put in a concentration camp for Russian prisoners where we had bunks – two above and two below. Those below complained of something falling on their faces. It turned out that these bits were bed bugs. There was a lime pit at this camp.

I met an Italian brought up in Liverpool who went to Italy on holiday and got caught up into the war and was sent to fight on the Russian front for Italy. He was in the camp on his way back from the Russian front to Italy.

Finally we arrived in Dresden in December 1943 and were put to work in a factory making reinforced concrete for housing. We lived in the factory on the industrial estate. I had found a light blue crepe dress on the train and threw it to a Russian woman in a neighbouring camp. To this day I remember her wearing it. There were many nationalities such as the Dutchman (forced labour) who said ‘B******s’ to a German guard and was put in prison for three weeks. The guard thought he had said ‘Polack’. The Dutchman lost two stone. One POW was getting out at night and was seeing the wife of a German soldier who was on the Russian front. The guards stood waiting for him and shot him. All the POWs had a funeral service for him, dressing up as best as possible to walk through Dresden. This was camp No N95 Arbeits-Kommando near Dresden. Another POW was caught trying to get from Warsaw to England under a train. He had to come out because it was too cold.

In January l944, we were moved to Chemnitz because the cement factory work was considered war work and were put to work maintaining the railway line, Chemnitz being a railway town. We had to get up at 6 am to walk to the area where we had to work. The POWs were issued with clogs but the snow used to build up underneath them and it was like walking on stilts. The job was to loosen rusted railway couplings (and presumably replace them). It was a long walk to start work and I organized a strike against the sixty-hour week. However everyone eventually abandoned me and I was put on a black list for transfer when one was available.

A POW captured in Crete came new to the camp and heard the guard saying ‘Morgan fruh’ and thought it meant ‘morning free’ (rather than a simple greeting of ‘see you tomorrow’) and that he could stay in bed. He was not spotted missing for a while but when he was, he got into trouble.

Unplaced memories:

Church hall with the stage cordoned off. At curfew time the POWs had to take their trousers off (to prevent escape) and hang them up. The rest of the clothes were locked up. The Commandant there was a young Nazi who had an awful temper and tended, when angry, to foam at the mouth.

Stationed in a building attached to a speedway track, I talked to a lady living nearby who felt unable to speak out about what was going on as her son was a Nazi and would have reported her. The Americans bombed the pit in the middle of the track, killing six POWs sheltering there. The Germans organized funerals for the men.

Another escape:

Friends Paul and Trevor and I and up to three more, took off and headed for a Red Cross depot. One of our number calmly walked past the German on guard, saying ‘Guten Morgen’ and collected two parcels for each of us. We stayed in a pub overnight pretending to be French. We offered to work for our keep and were set to chopping wood. German civilians were being bombed out of the area east of where they were. At this time the Russian front was pushing into East Germany and the pub was full of German refugees. We gave the innkeeper the soup from the Red Cross parcels to cook for our meal. Afterwards we bedded down in the hayloft. The next morning we noticed a policeman outside and thought the game was up but found that he had provided breakfast for all in the inn. Our group set out for Floha, walking the contours of the hills to avoid the road. However it was too cold so we came on to the road to go through the town and it was Paul who did the talking to the soldier who stopped us there. We were keeping up the pretence of being French but Paul’s German was so posh that we were taken to the local station for questioning. There the officer in charge decided that they needed to get the French interpreter and at that point we admitted that we were English!

Fortunately (and fortune tended to stay with me) instead of being put on report or being sent to the salt mines, we were sent to the local potato merchant to work and were billeted in a factory that made paper. I was given the job of giving out wood to the local German civilians, replying ‘Heil Churchill’ to their ‘Heil Hitler’.

My Final Escape:

My friends and I heard that the town ten miles west of Floha was under attack so we headed off there. We walked through the town to the west side and encountered no fighting but met a German farmer who informed us that anything that moved after dusk would be shot. We said we were French but he recognized us as British as he employed British POWs. He housed us overnight. He got us up at 4.00 am and showed us the way through the woods towards the front line. We saw a soldier on duty on a bridge. We assumed he was German. However he spoke to us in English. He was an American. We realized we were home and dry. He sent us down to his camp ‘for a feed’.

We were given the task of interpreting when German soldiers were brought in for questioning. There was a small camp of Russian prisoners nearby where the conditions were foul.

Eventually we asked to go to the airport so as to go home. Here we met a high-ranking American who pointed us towards a flight to Paris. It was full of French civilian workers going home and, as we sat along the bench seats inside the plane, they were all very cheerful – until the flight started!

On arrival in Paris we were sent to the equivalent of the ‘Naafi’ for new kit and were kitted out in American uniforms. As we walked up the Rue de la Madeleine we encountered a group of people around a car listening to Churchill’s announcement that ‘for you the war is over’. Everyone went wild and on seeing us cried out ‘Vives les Americans’ which changed to ‘Vives les Anglais’ when we explained.

Having made contact with British HQ we were sent to Le Havre and onto Southampton and home. My brother was living in Prestatyn with his wife and two children and at that time they were getting news of the concentration camps. Much was their relief when, unannounced, I bounced in.

Within weeks I was sent back to Germany, near to Krefeld, to a flame-throwing tank regiment where I worked in an office for six months until my discharge. This was yet another Christmas away from home. Despite a shortage and therefore banned from getting it, I got sent coffee. In Dusseldorf I met Christell, a Red Cross nurse, at a dance. She didn't like ‘Yatz’ (jazz). She told me that the only way to remain sane during the war was to get drunk each night.






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