The Germans and the 9th Division behaved pretty well to each other. I mean, great severity but that’s war. And I have found the same sort of thing in Normandy. Last time I was wounded with the Royal Scots I got carried out and put in an ambulance and taken to a casualty clearing station. And there was a fellow next to me with no clothes on at all and a number of wounds. And he turned out to have been the sergeant major – German sergeant major – who was manning the platoon we were attacking, you see. And I said to him, ‘Are you a Royal Scot?’ And he said in German, which I can speak, he said, ‘No, I’m German. And I don’t know why I’m here.’ But he said, ‘And all my clothes were blown off and I suppose I was carried in like that.’
And then – I would never part with my tunic, you see, because I had my Australias on it and my ribbons and one thing and another, and having no identity in the British Army I thought you’ve got to have something of your own. He said, ‘Oh, you were commanding a company that attacked us.’ I said, ‘That’s right.’ He said, ‘I tried very hard for you Herr Major.’ He said, ‘I thought if I could knock down the man with the ribbons the others might stop too.’
I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ And then I said, ‘Aren’t you a bit old for this sort of thing?’ He said, ‘Yes, I have an Iron Cross from the first war’ which he produced. And he said, ‘Look, I’ve got 3 sons at war and I understand it.’ He said, ‘What can I do? Only fight for the fatherland, and,’ he said, ‘particularly now.’ He said. ‘God knows what’s going to happen because we can’t have a war on two fronts.’ I said, ‘Well, perhaps you should have thought of that a little bit earlier in the day.’ At any rate we parted on good terms and I told the sisters he was all right and I’ve often wondered what happened to him. But, you see, that was a human contact immediately. He was a cabinet maker by trade.
