ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Two stories my father told me before he died in 1991, but I have never heard of in any book/film/programme.

The first I believe took place in Austria at the end of the war, either 1945/6. His unit recieved orders for the rounding up and returning of white Russians. They recieved instructions/intelligence of every house in a valley that contained these Russians. The operation took place at night with a double ring soldiers around each house in woodland, with another unit to do the arresting. During the operation some Russians slipped past my father, where he shouted to the next soldier, "He hasn't done anything to me. How about you, Joe?" With some sympathy they let many Russians slip through.

The second story took place in Northern Italy at the end of the war. Serbian POWs were being transported home by train with British guards from Italian POW camps. My father was due to leave on the next train as a guard when the whole operation was cancelled. They later heard that this was because, as the trains passed through, the Croats switched the points sending the train into a forest where all the POWs and British guards were murdered.

Acouple of extra stories come from the local Banbury Aluminum factory making aircraft material. It's well known about handing in pots and pans to make Spitfires, but they were the wrong alloy so were not used for aircraft.

The other is hard to believe. As war was being declared German engineers were installing extrusion presses in the Banbury aluminum factory for aircraft production. When they heard the news they were told to walk about 1 mile into town and report to the Police station.

Later a second alumimum factory smelter was build nearby to melt dowm German bombers and use them to build British aircraft. So to recap the process was to shoot down German aircraft and 'recycle' them through German presses to rebuild them as British aircraft. The Germans tried to bomb the factory but the 'dummy' factory proved an excellent decoy and survived.

As I'm writing it reminds me of another of my father's 'happier' stories. In Italy, he was driver on a Sherman based tank destroyer. In one destroyed farm he found a chicken alive, so he built a chicken house for 'Henrietta' and mounted it on the back of his tank over the engines. Like this they even went into battle and stalked Tiger tanks. How many 'pet' stories are there that are not told?

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