ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝

My name is Steven Yeoman. I was born in 1922. I lived in Edinburgh up till the time of the war and during the first couple of years of the war, then I joined the army in 1942. And after basic training I was posted to Light Ack-Ack Regiment in 52nd Division up on the north coast of Scotland. We trained on the north coast of Scotland, gradually moving to the east, and then to the south, finishing up in a place called Carnoustie.

From there we moved down to the South Coast and eventually over to Belgium because we didn’t go over on D-Day. We were kept in Scotland to prevent any German to prevent any German invasion from Norway because they had twelve Divisions there, and also to make the Germans think that we might in fact invade Norway from Scotland.

During our time up in Scotland we came down to the South Coast, to Newhaven, twice a year, to let the Light Ack-Ack Regiment here have time off to go to practice camp. So I know Newhaven quite well, though in that time there weren’t many shops open as far as I remember. The place was stuffed with soldiers and sailors and as far as I can see the civilians had been excluded but then that was quite right.

In September 1944 the Division was moved over to Belgium and from there our first operation was to secure the Schelde River estuary and approaches to Antwerp and so we were given an assault landing across the Schelde to Flushing and then fought our way up the Flushing Peninsular, eventually securing the whole of the Schelde and allowing ships to come into Antwerp to unload.

From there we moved further east and eventually further south down to Maastricht to cut off the Ardennes offensive by the Germans. We were there to help plug the gap and eventually stop the Germans getting through. After that I was moved over to 11th Armoured Division, I’m not quite sure where, but further north anyway, and we took part in the battle to clear the Reichwalde Forest on the approaches to the Rhine.

And here I had my biggest shock of the war when, in my jeep, going round a corner one day, I found a Tiger tank, sitting there facing me with its gun pointing straight at the jeep. This gave me a bit of a shock but I shoved the driver out of his side of the jeep, fell out of my side of the jeep into the ditch, and the jeep went on and hit the Tiger tank. There was then a loud guffaw from the Tiger tank because it had already been captured by one of the Guards Regiments. So that was fine.

After that we just cleared up towards the Rhine and they made the Rhine crossing but we couldn’t of course cross the Rhine until the bridges had been built. Eventually we crossed the Rhine and moved up in a north-easterly direction. While we were doing this 6 Airborne Division were on our right and they were going along at the same speed as we were although they didn’t have anything like that.

We came across one incident where we came up to the river Weser and just north-east of us was the river Aller, which ran into the river Weser, and as they approached us the Germans come over with flag of truce and said to our General “Don’t fire into this area. We will retire to the other side of the Aller.” And our General said “Well, why?” and they said “Well, there’s typhus in this area”, and he said “Why typhus?” So he said “It’s just endemic here”, and he said “No it isn’t. What is it? It’s a concentration camp, isn’t it?” and he had to admit that. He said “I can’t let you retire just over the other side of the river, you’ve got to retire twenty miles further back because I don’t want to have to fight my way in a river crossing just to suit you”. So they retired and we went over the river and our reconnaissance regiment came across Belsen and then they put one of our Batteries into Belsen to clear it up and I went there, and it wasn’t a very nice sight at all.

After that we went on, and eventually the war finished when I was somewhere east of Hannover and north of Hamburg, and I can’t remember very much about VE night because we had a hell of a party in the Officers’ Mess.

From there we were sent across the Kiel canal, up the Schleswig Holstein Peninsular to the outlying island of Liszt, which has a railway causeway running to it, and from there we took in all the Germans coming down from Denmark and Norway, and disarmed them, and put them on trains to get them back to mainland Germany.

As the war was now ended I thought there was a very good possibility of my being sent to Burma as an infantryman, which I didn’t particularly want, so I joined the Airborne then and after my training I went to a unit which was the Forward Support Unit which fired the guns coming up behind, and we were duly embarked to go to Burma but before we’d gone very far he war in the east was over as well, so we were sent to Palestine where I was for about two years.

That was quite interesting inasmuch as we were trying to keep two different people apart so they didn’t slit each other’s throats. Both of them hated us; we were spat on by both, by the Arabs and by the Jews. Eventually, of course, the United Nations came in and we had to leave because the United Nations were giving the place to the Jews and so I came back home. But I stayed in the army, but by this time of course, the wars were over and I didn’t get myself involved in another one.

There was one occasion when we were in Belgium and we were stationed in a farmhouse, and the farmer came up to me and said “Would you like a bath?” As I hadn’t had a bath for about three weeks or so, I was delighted, but a bit surprised, and I said to him “Have you got a bath?” and he said “Yes”. He said “Come with me” and he took me over to the barn, which was on stilts, and pulled out, from under the barn, an enamel bath. It was just a bath and nothing else. It wasn’t connected to anything; there was no water coming in or drainage system or anything like that. He pulled it into the middle of the farmyard and said “There you are”. I said “Well, that’s jolly good, what about hot water?” and he said “Oh, that’s all right, my daughters will get the hot water”

He shouted and three girls started coming out with hot water and filled the bath up. And then eventually he said “Well, that’s it, the bath’s ready for you”. I said “Thank you very much” but there were these three grinning girls standing there. I thought they’re just going to wait there until I jump in. I’d better do something about it. So I called my Sergeant Major and said to him “Fall the troop in” which he duly did. Then I said “Form a circle round the bath” and they formed a circle round the bath. Then I said “Face outwards” which they did, so I had my bath in there without anybody seeing me.

1324 words

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