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| The Desert Rats. From El Alamein to Berlin |
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| John (right) and Cpl Syd Davis of 2nd Light Field Ambulance, Schleswig Holstein, July 1945 |
23 Dec 45
Dearest Mum
Many thanks
for your Xmas card & letter which were forwarded on from 2LFA. It always such a pleasure to read what you
write as you write with such sincerity that I am able to picture current
circumstances at your end.
This Xmas
should be a happy one for you, dear, with the war over, Tommy & Dick
returned, Walter & Ronnie within measurable distance & Marjorie not so
far away. I hope you will have a very enjoyable time indeed.
I don’t
suppose I shall be doing too badly at the 121 General. I’m not awfully thrilled by anything these
days, & I shall certainly refrain from those excesses of jollification so
recommended by the main body. Last Xmas
day I spent in Obbicht watching skating a hundred yards or so from the Maas,
& I even put on the skates myself and had a “do”. That was fine frun if you please & the
glint of the sun on the ice, the gay colours of the girls & the skill of
the exhibitionists make an attractive memory.
Dear Obbicht! Dear days! Would to God the clock could go back one
year.
You may
look with amazement upon the unusual letter headin at the top of this
page. Geordie & I have come into
Brunswick from the 121 which lies just over 4 kilos outside, & have
installed ourselves in the writing room of the Jewish club, which is,
incidentally, rather richly furnished in line with true Jewish
hospitality. Nothing Utility about this
furniture! Each table of solid natural
oak is fitted with a dinky electric table map, and a sprung-seated armchair to
match. Brunswick looks so dingy compared
with Hamburg – which looks dingy enough – but this club is a minature
Dorchester. As there’s only one other
club, the NAAFI, in Brunswick, & the number of troops around here is colossal,
it’s just as well that 50% of the clubs, at least, is inviting.
All travel
on civilian vehicles, trains, trams, etc is free for Allied soldiers in
Germany. Geordie & I were able to
get a tram for the last 3 kilos here.
Sometimes one finds much of interest in Jerry compartments, the things
people talk about, the way in which they talk to each other, the things they
wear, the things they have managed to buy.
The trains - & underground – in Hamburg were very comfortable,
convenient & frequent. Nowhere would
you have to wait longer than 10 minutes!
Trams always appeared to be chasing each other around, so close were
they.
Brunswick
is real old Germany, steeped in history & love. How I regret that I never saw Germany before
she was destroyed. I think I should have
loved to spend all my holidays here. The
Harz Mountains are quite near here, & some of the 121 G.H. staff have spent
48 hours at a place called Bad Hassbronck or some such name where there’s
skiing, tobogganing & horse-rising.
It’s 35 miles away.
I don’t
suppose there will be similar opportunities for you this Xmas to indulge in
such dissipations of the flesh, as the weather seems to be quite mild compared
with a week ago. I hope that Joan’s face
is more like what God intended it to be & that she will be able to laugh,
at Xmas, without splitting her cheek.
The day
after Geordie & I arrived at the 232 we were told to take down our Rats
& put up the 21 Army Group sign.
We’ve taken down the Rats, but not put up the 21 A G efforts. However, we remain true Rats at heart
whatever our sleeves bear, & the new chaps in the Div who wear the Rat may
know that they haven’t got the soul of a Rat whose outstanding qualification is
the few pounds of sand lying in the stomach.
There’s a
church service at the 121 tonight, but we aren’t going as we have been told
there’s a lot of scraping, bowing, crossing etc. There’s such a chill about Army C of E
services that unless the padre is a man of outstanding charm the service is
like the grave.
My job at
the hospital is that of N.C.O. in charge of Post a purely routine job made
busy by the hundreds of patients of all nationalities (allied) & the Xmas
rush. I don’t mind in the least as I can
knock off between 4.30 & 5pm! And today, Sunday, I have taken a
half-day. Times are certainly looking
up!
It’s just
about time that I went for some tea, so rather regretfully I must down the pen
& seek to satisfy that vile, lower self.
However spiritual we may like to appear, the flesh wins every time!
God bless
you abundantly, & like Santa Claus, may he satisfy you heat’s desires.
Love to
all, especially Dad
Yours
John
xxx
...
I find it frightfully difficult to understand your views on
the Germans. Apart from your unchristian
attitude (Love your enemies: I find it
quite impossible to worry overmuch about the dear Germans) you seem to be
singularly dense in appreciating the food situation out here. This I assess by virtue of your use of the
words “the very meagre amount that we are able to procure”. If your amount in meagre, for high heaven’s
sake how would you describe the amount the Germans have to live on when for a
tin of bully-beef a gold watch will change hands, for 50 marks (25/-) a small,
plain bar of army chocolate, for 400 marks a pound of coffee (£10)? Of course these are Black Market prices, but
how else can the people live? I have at
various times striven to acquaint you with the German ration scale, which is so
much lower than the British as to make the British appear as callous hogs, but
believe me that the official weekly ration scale is never obtained. The ration cards are there all right, but the
goods just aren’t available in the shops.
I’m heartily sick of labouring the subject to people who seem unable to
grasp the situation intelligently, but at the risk of repeating myself I would
say that the sight of unused ration cards in respect of past & current
months is eloquent evidence of the discrepancy between entitlement and
distribution. Compris?
Try, if you
will, to think of the Germans as individuals or as member of family “cells”,
not as a nation whose economic frustrations in the closed markets of the world
led them to find the outlet for their inferiority complex by a policy of
self-justification leading to all the horrors of the Nazi prison camps &
brutal war.
Take the
average German women. Her man is either
dead or a prisoner of war. If the
latter, she isn’t aware of it, unless he were captured before the end of 1944. Few women have their men with them. If they
have, they are either men who were discharged from the German forces during the
war on account of grave disability (chiefly loss of a leg, a very common
practice in German field surgery) or in extreme cases, men of good health who
were farmers or other vital civilian workers.
So you see that the average woman has lost her husband. She has at least two or three children. Her main problems are care of the children,
the procurement of food & fuel. To obtain any hope of getting any food she
must queue all day long & then often has to go away home unsupplied. But how can she queue properly with young
children to look after, & no help available? Getting trees chopped up is utterly beyond
her powers, so the fuel situation settles itself by her having to go
without. All very nice for Christians to
contemplate whilst getting dug in on a fair-sized meal in a fairly warm room.
If you wish
me to elaborate this theme, I shall be only too delighted. But I cannot continue now for fear of boring
you. For unless one has a open,
questing, understanding mind, one is apt to be bored by information calculated
to demand a revision of preconceived – and jealously held – views.
Time for
“lights out”, so must wish you Goodnight, dear.
Fondest
love from John
xxx
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