241698 James Clifton Rowland British Army Royal Irish Fusiliers from:Stockton On Tees My da, James Rowland, was young and enlisted towards the end of the war. I know he served in Africa first but ended his time in the Army mopping up in Europe. He told us, his children, very little about the war - nothing dark or scary, just how happy the people were to see the British and to know they were finally liberated.
As they travelled, people lined the streets smiling and cheering, throwing flowers at the soldiers and the tanks they now travelled with. As I said, very little in the way of dark or scary, just how badly the Germans had treated the people.
Imagine my surprise when, just a few weeks before he died my father, gave me a tiny pair of brass clogs which had been a present from a lady friend he'd met over there and then proceeded to tell me his most distressing memories of his service.
Bergen Belsen... Of course I had heard of it but had no idea my father had been among the British forces that liberated that dreadful camp. He told me about the piles of corpses all over the camp, even stacked like wood in the trees and the difficulty of telling the skeletal living from the dead. About the trenches full of the recently dead and the rotting bodies. About the cruelty and the indifference of the camp guards.
And about how angry he and his mates were - so many were young men who had never seen such disregard for human life. He told me a lot more - but I won't repeat it here.
After he died, I researched the liberation of this camp and all the revolting details were there, just as he'd told me.
I'll never forget what he told me and I think all the time of the young men who had to see and experience this awful truth.
The British soldiers behaved with restraint and humanity God bless them.
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