My War Service Part 4

The next day I loaded the jeep with foodstuff and was taken to a Convent which I had located as the source of the procession. I was received by an anxious Mother Superior to whom I explained my quest — not a requisition but an exchange for food. A suitable flag was produced and my goods, including coffee and other items, which they had not seen for years, were gratefully accepted.
I located a sewing establishment which joined the separate pieces together and furnished it into a flag suitable for hoisting. The payment was in cigarettes ( which had become the only acceptable currency.)
I took the completed flag to our colonel who was greatly impressed. He was even more pleased with the German war flag. “ I shall use it as my bed mat and stamp on it every time I get out of bed” was his reaction.
This episode had an ironic ending when a few days later the corps REME officer (CRÈME) arrived unannounced. Although his rank was the same as our colonel he was the superior. He pointed out to our CO that the flag was beyond the regulation size. So I had to take it back to the tailor and had it reduced to regulation size.
I had noticed a sign in a shop window —remarkably, in one piece- in ‘our’ area , selling glass and chinaware, which said ”Jewish Shop” and a large Star of David. My enquiry elicited the tale of survival against the odds. The owner, Herr Menne, was married to a Christian which protected him from immediate deportation to a death camp. When it was clear to them that this no longer protected him - other local Jews like him were rounded up- his wife’s relations hid him in their village — a courageous act which would have resulted in death for all of them.
After our troops had reached Hanover he reclaimed his shop ( which had been confiscated like all Jewish businesses ). The ‘owner’ vacated it at once, displaying the fearful conscience of Germans , especially those who had benefited from the regime.
I visited the couple — and their handsome Irish setter- from time to time, to be confronted after a few weeks with their despairing news that the ‘owner’ is claiming his shop back because, like most Germans, he realized with surprise that we were not acting like their previous regime, taking no revenge and acting lawfully.
I took the matter in hand by asking to see the Town Major (an officer appointed to head the existing local government). I explained to him the realities of their case . Like many senior
officers he was quite ignorant of the campaign against Jews since 1933 i.e. that part of the horrors of the Nazi rule which was a total deprivation of civil rights. The Town Major immediately stopped the proceedings against the Mennes.
At the Mennes I met a number of young Jews who had been liberated from Belsen (located not very far to the north of Hanover). They were mainly, but not exclusively, of Polish origin. I took their names because I was due to go on leave and knew that the Refugee Committee in London (of the Central British Fund) was setting up registers to try and unite families.
One of these was a young German Jew in his 20’s from Hanover, who , with his older brother and parents, had been trapped in Holland.
This had a sad ending. When I gave his name ( amongst those I had collected in Hannover) in an open office of the above mentioned refugees committee in London, somebody came over to me and said he knew him. It turned out that the older brother had acted as a camp disciplinarian. ( a method used by the SS in concentration camps) in Westerborg, the concentration camp which the Germans had set up in the Netherlands from which most were sent to the death camps. He had obviously done his “job” too well in imitation of his masters: on liberation he and the other collaborators were killed by the inmates. I did not tell his younger brother what I had found out.
At that time the horrors of Belsen were discovered. As a result there were a number of men to be seen in the striped ‘pyjamas’ of the concentration camps who had recovered enough to be accommodated in various empty houses in the town.
At intervals I visited a group of young Polish Jews in their requisitioned accommodation who wanted to know what really happened in the war. Unfortunately, like many of their countrymen who had been on forced labour, they had started to drink alcohol,destilled
from wrong materials (wood etc) which was virtual poison, often leading to blindness. My refusal and warnings were not well received and I stopped seeing them.

Map References
I was given some investigating tasks, usually involving just a map reference given by other companies to 30 Corps HQ as being of possible technical interest most of which were quite unimportant. However, 2 were of major interest:
One led us to a large barn in a village. It had obviously been previously “visited” because there were broken packages of lenses and other small items lying in the large gap of the barn gates. We found the barn full of naval gunnery instruments and a large stock of components. We took a few of the binocular bodies and loose lenses for making up into binoculars but the rest just featured in a report to HQ.
The other led us some distance along the Rhine to a large farm: There we found a completely furnished engineering machine shop and a transporter with a ships hull. It turned out that this was one of a number of stations for assembling U-boats, starting in Southern Germany and ending in Emden, the German Naval Port with the completed ship. This avoided a single target for bombers at the U-boat yards.
Non-Fraternisation
During our advance there were strict orders not to befriend any Germans. This was continued after the war ended but became increasingly difficult to enforce. The German girls were very eager to establish relations with the troopes if only to have access to the many “luxuries”, especially cigarettes, and men will be men.
I was asked by the Army Educational Corps to give German lessons to those of our company who wanted to learn. My method of making the lessons interesting was to introduce phrases right at the beginning which were helpful to establish “time, day and place” and thus became quite popular. The prohibition was officially dropped within 2 months after VE day.
Return to England
In July 1945 I was posted back to England in order to join a new company of REME which was to go to the Far East war zone. The company was formed in the mining town of Hucknall near Nottingham. I was due to be promoted to WOII in overall charge of a large workshop and issued with tropical kit .
On the afternoon of departure of the assembled company all those whose names were called mounted the lorries. At the end I was the only one left .On enquiry with the officer in charge the astonishing reply was parade of my rank) : Hasn’t anyone told you, staff (the usual call-designation of my rank) Havn’t you been told that you are not going. You are due to go back to Germany. This left me with my tropical kit to be handed back - and my WOII Crown. The latter was connected only to my forthcoming task. I was nevertheless relieved not having to face the tropics and the Japanese.

….and back to Hanover and some German Industry
After some delay I left for Germany with some others who had been on leave to end up in Ahlem, just outside Hanover with a small unit - 30 Workshop Control Unit with a Major in charge, accommodated in a large villa. We were billeted in surrounding houses.
The reason for my sudden change of destination became quickly apparent. This unit -and a similar one in Cologne — were set up to obtain all spare part requirements for the fleet of 30 Corps vehicles from German sources after the sudden end by the United States of the lend-lease act. It involved parts mainly, but not exclusively, for JEEPs.
My task was to obtain small size spare parts from local industry. (The unit was also the directing unit for the Volkswagen factory )— not very far from Hanover. As a result I was allotted a car on my arrival with a fine Glaswegian driver. He was a real character , full of Glaswegian working folk humour. He drove me all over north east Germany in search of suitable factories. These varied from metal fabricators to rubber moulders, felt makers, specialist manufacturers etc.
My system was to ask for the ‘top dog’, produce the sample to be copied, and give a reasonable time limit. I started with the Continental Tire works near us for the moulding of rubber grommets. The managing director called the appropriate manager and started the ball rolling. The system of payment was by my signing a form , prepared by a clerk at the unit, which the factory then submitted to the local burgomaster who arranged for payment out of local funds. For ferrous parts I had access to so called “ Eisenscheine” because iron was rationed. They were issued by the Control Commission for the British Zone of Occupation, also situated in Hanover.
Non-ferrous metal proved very difficult; there were insufficient stocks for a rationing system. One of the factory owners informed me of the only source in that part of the country with stocks of brass was in Hildesheim. With permission of the Control Commission I reserved a complete store of brass rods. I arranged with the owner my own method of requisitioning by preparing my own form, which was signed and stamped by me, for the required quantities . The appropriate manufacturer then simply presented the form, paid for the material and incorporated the cost in his price to us (i.e.the city of Hanover).
I knew only too well from my experience as i.c.workshops that you cannot command good and efficient work. The right atmosphere has to be created for willing and satisfactory effort. I applied this to the firms I dealt with by not playing the conqueror. I ensured that they had some benefit other than a devalued currency for their efforts by being generous with allowances for scrap (and cut-offs for turned items) and behaving in a courteous manner.

I soon needed help to establish a card index and follow-up system for which I recruited two local men. In addition, my OC, who was a keen gameshooter asked me to
accommodate a young man he had met in a shoot near Luneburg who turned out to be a great-grandson of the Kaiser. He had returned from Tanzania (German East Africa until the first World War) where they had a farm. The same source provided a young women, a countess, so I had quite a ‘noble ‘office. In those days the availability of reasonable food and cigarettes from us was a great attraction.
My area of activities ranged from Hamburg down to the US sector south of Hanover and covered many different engineering and allied trades. One particularly difficult type of spare part was ball-bearings. There was a firm who made sewing machines and bicycles called Dürrkopp who could provide what I needed but were unable to do so because the Allies (including USSR) had forbidden their production. My OC succeeded in getting this through the political side of the Rhine Army and a meeting took place in Bad Oeynhausen of numerous brass hats at which I, a ‘humble’ Staff Sgt., made a case for allowing the firm to make small quantities for us. It had to go to Berlin for a 4-power meeting but after about 2 months the permission came through. It was helped by the fact that large roller bearings were also badly needed in the Ruhr coalfields, who were trying to revive the mining operations under our occupation administration.
My services were also used on less important matters, like acting as a translator for various colonels at a tailor of apparent renown to make suits for them from material which they had acquired somehow.
Life for the population was hard. There was a lack of everything; cigarettes or barter were the currency. Money had to be used by commerce and industry but its lack of value was a cause for great commercial diffilcuties because no one wanted to use materials in exchange for money.

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