Letter from Berlin December 1945

Today is Christmas Sunday. Four years ago I spent the day in hospital in Wales, one year ago I spent it in anxiety as rocket bombs exploded around me in Antwerp, this year I spend it in the same way I did four years ago...in a sickroom bed!
The pace of living during the past two weeks has been of such an intensity that my human form has succumbed to influenza. Now I am forced to relax, i have even some spare time to write some decent letters. I am afraid my writing has been abandoned since leavingWilhelmshaven, but next week I go to Holtzaminden for an educational course.
" Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men".... what a grand time Xmas was indeed. Dickens is superb in the art of explaining that Christmas feeling, his tales of old London with Scrooge, Fagin, Little Dorrit; they all seem to make one so intimate with those " Good Old Times
". No Christmas can seem like Christmas without children! It is this time, a time of make believe when their small minds are filled with happy thoughts and desires. Even at this time of life we are still the chikldren of our parents, and it would indeed be most inappropriate if you happened to choose Christmas day away from home Bubbs.
Two German women have just washed the floor of our room. Like all women workers they were a bit gossipy and were very delighted to know I could speak German.
They wanted to bring a Xmas tree into our room with silver balls on it etc: I could imagine you wishing to do the same little kindness for somebody else's son mum! And was the woman working Xmas day? Yes! It was the only way she could forget her grief, her husband killed a year ago, and her only son missing in Russia.
Of all the people I know in this wretched war who has suffered most it is the women of Germany. No matter where I have travelled: Wilelmshaven, Bremen, Brunswick or Berlin, theirs are the haunting look- a look of hopelessness, degradation and humiliation. They have one hope and consolation-their children! Their men are no more. They have been swallowed up by tose gigantic battles we so often refused to believe took place in Russia.
Last week I was in Brussels, and whilst there it was the first time I have been called a " Limey", the nickname of a Londoner. many peopkle are anti-Leopold, at the same time not thinking highl;y of their present government.Friction is still latent amongst the French speaking " Walloons" and Flemish speaking " Flamands" ( which Hitler tried to stir up). Several times I broke into the German language and the people I were speaking to refused to listen if I continued in German. Brussels is the last means of getting rid of surplus money that I know, it is a city of everything.
Back at camp after travelling for a night and day in a rickety carriage..... next morning due for the Berlin Run! This involves a journey varying in length from 14 hours to 4 days- we go forth with a ration box for seven days, in case we arrive by mistake in Moscow!
Never in the history of Railway journeys has there been such a journey as the one we have to run to Berlin and back. And the Russians? Yes! I've met them.
We slept in our clothes at our hotel in Brunswick by the Railway sidings. At five O'clock in the morning we were awoken to board our train, taking our beddings, washing, tacklle, rations and most essential of all things-our rifles!
The long lines of wagons seem very awe-inspiring a they stand in the huge marshalling yards of the morning. Shadows flit across the lines in the gloom, but one does not look and wonder because you are still in the English zone, but in the Russian zone....it is a different matter!
After our impatient delay of resigned waiting in the darkness our Sergeant returns to say he has found the guard coach, so we go stumbling ( still Half asleep )over the rails and sleepers to where we shall spend the next few days. There are four of us on guard and another engineer guy in charge of the German engine crew.
In our caoach are three double bunks for the English guards and the oppposite end are the bunks for the German train crew, in the middle two stoves are kept going firstly to keep us warm through the bitter cantral European night and secondly for us to make an incessant brew of tea and heat our notorious "duff"

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.