Treasure From A Churchyard

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Arthur Benning, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

We sailed on D-Day plus 6 from Gosport at 6pm. There were two lines crossing the Channel with a line of destroyers in the middle, to protect us. There was a U-boat about they thought, and the destroyers kept lobbing depth charges. It was hard as we had to zigzag, and it took 36 hours.

With the Germans going, we had to keep going, past villages with cottages on fire, in one at the side of the road there was a little village Church, the graveyard in front, all the civilians were coming out carrying silver, they weren’t all gravestones there, the villages had buried all their silver, wireless sets were forbidden, and when the Germans had gone, and we were passing that day, they dug it all up.

When we stopped for a break people gave us fruit.

There were 12 of us, a Captain (bloody useless), a staff sergeant and us. We had 4 x 3 tonne lorries, the officers gave you an envelope to tell you where to go, the Captain said “follow me”, he had a jeep, we had these lumbering things, the Captain was in and out with his jeep and we lost him. In the end we pulled up and our despatch rider, Jack, eventually found the Captain and brought him back.

In our wagons there were gun barrels, sometimes faulty. Sometimes people got blown up, and we were the replacements.

At the end of the War, I was in Hamm, in Germany. I had to look after German prisoners of war, there was an old German, an arrogant navel fellow, if they didn’t work for us, they got no ration.

One old boy there had been captured on the Russian front, Otto his name was, he used to burst out crying. I asked the navel man “what’s wrong with him?” and the German said to him “show them Otto”, and Otto dropped his trousers and he was covered in scabs and scales and sores, which was frostbite. We couldn’t do anything to help him.

We had another German, jovial sort of bloke, everyone got on with him, he had an orchard and he used to bring us fruit. One day he blotted his copybook, he had a daughter and he hawked her round, and said “you can have my daughter for a tin of boot polish!” He would be able to sell the boot polish for a good price. After that we hated him.

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