Authors: Vivienne Dockerty
Eddie was very penitent and he promised not to go hunting anymore, but secretly he was amused that the cook had been before him on the previous day to collect the eggs.
This was not the first time that he had a lecture from the Major on the subject of finding his own food. This was the Major who had been away from the company, recovering from his wounds that he had received at Caen, and he had rejoined them when the fighting was very intense up the lines and the shelling was very heavy on both sides.
Eddie had found a sheep that had been wounded having been caught by a blast of shrapnel and the merciful thing to do was to shoot it. He didn’t see the sense in burying it when food was in such short supply. With the help of his young friend, Johnny, who had been with Eddie in the same company since they landed at Caen, he managed to hang the sheep in the doorway. He was no butcher, but Eddie never let any job get the better of him and so he skinned and dressed the sheep to the best of his ability. He rewarded himself with two of the best chops and prepared the rest of the meat to send to the cookhouse.
He and Johnny found it too heavy to carry it to the cook, so they looked for transport. Johnny found an old pram in an outhouse and Eddie found a sheet to cover it. The sheep was put in the pram and Johnny started to push it in the direction of the cookhouse, making good progress though the wheels on the pram were a trifle wobbly. He was in the middle of the village when the Major stepped out of his office.
His eyebrows shot up again when he saw the scene before him; one of his best men pushing a pram down the village street. He glanced quickly up and down the street to see if anyone else had seen him. He was a very calm man and he merely walked up to Johnny and mildly inquired, “What have you there, Rifleman?”
Johnny became a bit incoherent, but he managed to convince the Major that he was on his way to the cookhouse. The Major gave him a thoughtful look, then said, “Find Dockerty after you’ve delivered the meat to the cookhouse, then send him to me.”
He found Eddie himself when he was making his rounds. He was standing in a small trench that he had dug and had a small fire going in the bottom of it. He was using the sulphur candles to cook the chops on, but it was a slow business. Unable to attract Eddie’s attention, the Major tapped him on his steel helmet with his stick.
“What have you got there?” he asked in a deceptively mild voice. Eddie launched into the same explanation as Johnny had just given the Major. He listened carefully and then said, “ You don’t seem to realise that these people are our responsibility. If they have no food, then we have to find it for them. We have our rations and we must live on them.”
He walked away and Eddie got on with his cooking. The cook welcomed the fresh meat with open arms and all the men, including the Major, had a good hot meal that night. It made a change from the tinned food that they normally had. Eddie was very careful to obtain permission before he dispatched any more animals after that. Many animals were casualties between the two warring factions. Their bodies were left in the fields until the owner came back to the farm to bury them and dairy herds were left unattended and dripping with milk. Eddie did his share of milking when the occasion arose.
While they were still some miles away from the river Rhine, Eddie and some other men were sent back for a mile or so on an errand. The driver of one of the lorries bringing supplies had been wounded and his vehicle had been left abandoned in a field until a replacement driver could be found. The unit urgently needed blankets, so a lieutenant and two men, including Eddie, were sent to collect some from the lorry.
Eddie saw that it was the same kind of lorry he was used to driving for his father when the building firm had still been operating, so he jumped in the driving seat to see if it would start up. The engine roared into life as he started it first try, so he was allowed to drive it back to the camp. His fellow soldiers were delighted, as they had anticipated a long trudge back laden with blankets.
When they reached the camp the lieutenant had a word with the C.O., after Eddie had put the lorry in a nearby field for the night. In the morning, having been put in the picture by the lieutenant, Eddie’s Major asked him to carry on with driving the lorry, until a new soldier was sent over to pick it up.
Some time elapsed before the new driver was sent up and, for a short time, as Eddie had no regular duties, he was sent on a leave trip to Amsterdam, which had been liberated for a while. Eddie loved the picturesque city with its fine old buildings and busy canals. He joined a tour which included the house where the young Jewish girl, Anne Frank, was hidden from the Germans, then was finally betrayed when the Dutch people were so near to liberation.
He walked around on his own later and stood for a while on one of the bridges, looking down into the water, lost in thought. He felt a touch on his arm and turned to see a Dutchman smiling at him.
“Have you any money, soldier?” he asked. Eddie just stared at him. “Would you like to spend the evening with my charming daughter?”
He fled when he saw the dangerous look in Eddie’s eyes; he was lucky he wasn’t chucked off the bridge.
The company had moved to some dugouts which the Germans had recently vacated and the nearest building to the riverbank where they were situated was a small cottage occupied by an old lady. With her age and the terrifying sounds from all around her, she must have been totally confused. She sat all day in her neat little front room in a daze.
Eddie’s platoon took over her cellar for cooking meals and brewing tea, otherwise they didn’t trouble her and left her in comparative peace. There was no one who could speak her language amongst them, so they could not ask why she had not been evacuated with her own people.
The Germans had also occupied the cottage and the cellar for cooking purposes. It was a sturdy basement room with a beautiful brick arch. For cooking the meals on, an old army stove had been installed with a pipe passing through the wall.
Eddie was elected cook by the lieutenant. He made the breakfast which consisted of a thick porridge known to the men as ‘Burgoo’ and cups of hot sweet tea. He did not reign for long as the cook. In the long journey up to the front line, the tea had got mixed up with the sugar. If Eddie had left the men to sweeten their own, it would have been all right, but he added some to the porridge from the new sack and the porridge went a funny colour. Eddie asked the lieutenant to taste it first of all before it was served to the men. He tasted it thoughtfully then he said, “It tastes all right, but I don’t think the men will like it.”
He was right of course and there was a near riot by the men, so that Eddie lost his job as the platoon cook. He didn't mind as there had been a dangerous aspect to the job anyway, as on two mornings some German “comedian” had awoken him by hitting the wall where he had been sleeping with a six pounder shell! Eddie thought it was probably the last fellow who stood in as cook when the Jerries occupied the cottage and he was making sure that Eddie wasn’t late with the breakfast.
When Eddie came out of the cottage one morning, there had been a fall of snow. It lay thick on the branches of the pine trees, which stood around the area where they camped. The air smelled so good, but as he looked around appreciatively he noticed some marks in the snow. There must have been some activity in the night which had gone unchallenged, for there were big paw marks, followed by big boot marks behind.
Eddie concluded that it had been a single soldier with a dog patrolling the area and they must have come very quietly over the river in a boat during the night. How it was managed without the soldier and his companion being noticed by the men who were on guard duty, Eddie would never know. He was just thankful that the soldier hadn’t lobbed a grenade into the cottage. He must just have been out on a reconnaissance patrol and not wanted to draw attention to himself; he also could have been one of the previous occupants of the cottage. He would have known that the old lady would be in there as well as the soldiers.
She had got used to them being there after a while, it was just a change in the colour of their uniforms after all. She started moving around the cottage and to the wood shed and Eddie noticed her one day walking out carrying a band saw. He watched her in surprise as she upended the saw, slipping her foot into the end part and gripping it between her knees. This way she was able to roll the slim tree trunks up and down the saw blade. Eddie watched in fascination, he was really impressed by the method she was using and impressed that she was able to keep her fire going in the cottage. She had a sizable amount of logs by the time she had finished.
He took the idea home with him, purchased a band saw and, by the time he had returned after his next leave, he had Irene sawing wood up like a professional. One of the many skills she’d had to learn, besides poultry and pig keeping, and how to dress fowl and fillet fish while Eddie was away.
He went on another trip to Brussels the next time he had a forty-eight hour leave. He went with a group of soldiers who were all bent on enjoying themselves. Eddie enjoyed the rest and the comfort of a real bed in the private billet to which they were sent. He didn’t want to visit any of the places where the other men went and got into disfavour when he wouldn’t hand out his money after they had run short of their own. He didn’t realise how unpopular this had made him until they left him sleeping in the billet while they boarded the lorry that was taking them back to camp.
When the landlady roused him to let him know that they had gone and left him behind, he dressed, had a hasty meal and before leaving the lodgings asked where the nearest Military Police office was. After Eddie had told them his tale of woe, they stamped his pass and then he had to find a way to get back to camp.
He stood by the main highway later and watched out for an ammunition lorry to go past in the right direction. The first vehicle to come up the road though was a staff car, the officer sitting in the back was obviously of a high rank because of his uniform. He had a fur-lined coat draped over his shoulders. Eddie saluted and then he signalled to the driver to stop the car and then explained why he needed a lift so urgently. The officer leant forward and asked to see his identification and, after this had been examined, Eddie was allowed to sit by the driver and the journey continued.
The officer decided that as the camp was still rather far away by evening and Eddie still had a little leave left according to his pass that he would take him to H.Q., as that was where he was going himself and then the driver would take him back up the line in the morning.
He was given a meal, a beer and a bed for the night and woke refreshed the next morning, feeling truly grateful to his benefactor, who was in fact a Brigadier.
He got on well with the driver and didn’t want him to take any unnecessary risks, so when they heard the sound of gunfire as they came nearer to the battle front and the car was now driving through three feet of water as a dyke had burst and flooded the road, Eddie told him to go no further or he could be driving along the enemy lines.
“My lot are over there in those trees,” said Eddie, getting out of the car after thanking the driver for getting him out of his predicament. “At least they were two days ago. Anyway, thanks again, Mate.”
“Oh you can thank the Brigadier for this, Eddie. I just had my orders to get you right back to camp.” And so with a friendly wave he turned the car around and was gone.
“You’re back early,” said his sergeant when Eddie reported back to him, “the rest of your party haven’t got back yet.”
Eddie was mystified by their non-arrival, until he heard that the leave lorry had broken down and the men had spent the night in very uncomfortable quarters. He had really come out the best from that little disagreement.
They had moved on to Blitterwijk and a small Dutch farmer came to the door of the billet one morning. He couldn’t speak any English, but he got the soldiers to understand that he had children and he needed milk for them. The lieutenant asked Eddie to go with the man and find out all he could while he was with him, as there was not supposed to be any civilians in the area.
The Dutchman led Eddie to a dug out shelter in the corner of a field, where his family, a woman and two small children, were living. A rough canvas sheet roofed it over and there were some food supplies, which included a flitch of bacon hanging from a hook.
The man turned to Eddie and pointed to the children, then he went through the motions of milking a cow. Eddie nodded and they both went back to some farm outbuildings, where the cows lived in comparative safety. Eddie helped the farmer to get the milk he needed, then escorted him back to his family.
Whether the enemy had been watching, Eddie would never know, but as soon as they had started on their way back, then the shelling started up. He took a flying leap into the nearest shelter, then when he looked up, he found he was in the pit of a small sawmill with the cutting wheel dangerously near the top of his head. He waited there until the shelling had ceased before he made his way back to the billet.
They moved into a big Catholic church that night and guards were posted in the village at strategic points. The next morning Eddie and others were ordered out on a reconnaissance patrol. They were to meet up with another platoon, but somehow they missed them.
They came to a grassy meadow stretched out to a concrete road beyond, where a small farmhouse stood. The lieutenant ordered them to cross the meadow, but as they did so, guns opened up and after lying flat they wriggled for the nearest cover. Shells hit the road as they lay there, sending lumps of concrete into the air above.
Eddie lay flat whilst the shelling was going on and, when he could, he made his way to a pile of brushwood which he dived under. It provided temporary shelter, but when he surfaced again, he couldn’t see any members of the patrol anywhere.
He made his way back very cautiously, taking any cover he could find and eventually he came to a small stream. Looking around to see if there was any land that looked as if it could be mined, he decided it might be better if he waded down the stream, rather than take the chance of being blown up by a land mine. Eventually the stream ran under a bridge in a village, but as there was no sign of his platoon there, he carried on. At last he came across the company headquarters where the Captain directed him to wait until his platoon turned up. There he learnt that the meadow they had crossed was mined and it had been a miracle that any of them had survived.