~~ /_

SS En ERT Se

Py Bert Whyte

(0) :
(oer ace is a sometime
ies All across France and
oe and Holland I had
~Pecting the shell or bul-
My number on it to
: aving mentally ac-
liv; a Odds as 10-1 against
Convines anaged to present a
4a Camouflage of brav-
from 'S I was no different
dian uSands of other Cana-
Soldiers.

« Ou. : —

Your pe 18 not to die for

| emy die” but to make the
tolg bef for his,” we had been

‘, Piles °re the Second Front.
| lay ee dead, friends and foes,

1
Way ae Us as we fought our
Normandy to Hitler-

Now
back the nazi beast was forced
1S lair, the war was
ae Our Soviet allies
= ening at the gates of
Or the first time

e e
beaten” 0 believe that, having
Migh ‘8 © Odds thus far, we
OUt of ,S°Mably hope to come

the war alive.

Was au»:
Weeks during those last few
began 19; Vorld War II that I
the yay fear in my bowels
Nevita le nat with Germany’s

ter aye render only a mat-
4 Jena, 28 Or hours, somewhere
shel} jeunner would fire a last
Unlucky «1Y and I would be the
the jae, '@*8et. To be killed by
NOrtay Shot in the war—my
"At + reW often talked about
She }, § all, in any war, some-
lo dig to be the last soldier
h

Ae
: heyer vat Soldier who says
€ all felt fear, but
and ie 8row a callous over
Cur jobs as fighters

e ‘

_the front is
» and in my personal
a 1 could sometimes
eee but couldn’t

» the ideal soldier’s
op ut like this:

Crib
Nam, €
letter Plac

~ Le

Wed Where We were and ar-
an ae We are after a trip
ateg Just about as antici-

aby SD we oe
bees €ather here is quite
tale herent from thee we
*Pecteg , Just about what we
1t would be here. Now

’scism, as killers of

I must close before I give away
any military secrets.”

Looking over my letters of
20 years ago—that long! —I cull
some stories.

Two months before the war
ended we were in Germany, had
breezed through the Reichswald
Forest, taken Cleves, and rolled
on. The fighting grew tougher,
casualties were heavy and re-
inforcements constantly in de-
mand.

We were in the enemy’s coun-
try, and it gave us great satis-
faction.

“These cities and towns we
reduce to shambles are German,
not French or Belgian or Dutch,”
I wrote home.. “Do I sound par-
ticularly bloodthirsty? It isn't
that. I’m still a civilian in uni-
form, and anxious to shed ‘the
obnoxious khaki at the earliest
possible moment.

“But one of the peculiarities
of this war has been that in
order to liberate people, for a
period of time we were forced to
smash and destroy the very
places we liberated. And now,
at last, it is the Germans’ turn
to suffer directly. We are making
them pay for their crimes.

“Yes, for many years the Ger-
mans (not only the nazis) pro-

From D-Day In Normandy to V-Day In German

Soldiering was sometimes “blood and guts” and often “blood and boredom.” Here some Cana-
adians prepared. breakfast near Caen in Normandy.

fited by this war. Their farms
have’ scores of cows and horses
and sheep and pigs, hundreds of
chickens and ducks and geese—
in contrast to the farms in Hol-
land and Belgium and many
parts of France. Most of these
cows, horsés, pigs, geese, etc.,

were stolen, of course—and it

does not matter that in some

cases the meticulous Germans

did it ‘legally’ and paid off in
worthless marks for all they
seized.” . :

In April 1945 we moved back
into Holland to clean up a
pocket of German troops in Gro-
ningen. :

In Germany, and now in Hol-
land, we liberated a number of
Soviet citizens who had been
used as slave labor by the ene-
my. Some were attached to the
German army and used to dig

trenches, Jatrines and so forth;.

others had been “bought” by
German farmers.

“This morning, April 15, the
sniping had eased off and several

France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

y the Canadian troops fought their way through

blocks had been cleared by the
infantry,” I wrote home, “so I
left my No. 2 in charge of the
mortar and went with another
chap to look through a huge
building nearby, which up until
yesterday had been used as a
German barracks. Exploring the
rooms, we came across two
Russians from Kiev. ‘Russe!

’ Russe!’ they told us, and a glance

at their German-stamped docu-
ments confirmed the fact. ‘Hitler
kaput!’ we said. ‘Russe soldat
50 kilometres from Berlin!’

“Whereupon they sang the
Internationale! Then they gave
me some Russian money for a
souvenir and the older chap,
a peasant I believe, gave me a
snapshot of himself. I had a
small bottle of shnapps in my
pocket, so we toasted the Soviet
Union, Canada and victory over
Hitlerism.”

There was a touching scene
in a little Dutch town one morn-
ing. The Jerries put up a token
resistance but our armored

thrust over-ran them and those
who weren’t killed or wounded
fled in disorder, while a few
hundred who couldn’t get out
surrendered.

“A number of civilians from
the Dutch underground resist-
ance movement were freed, and
one of these men, who (I learn-
ed later) had been taken from
his home by Stormtroopers a
fortnight previously, lost no
time in heading up the street at
a run toward his wife and
daughter. The wife let out a
shriek when she saw him. They
embraced and laughed and cried
together. The daughter, over-
come by the event, fainted and
had to be carried into a house
and revived. All the neighbors
were equally hysterical with joy
and crowded around the releas-
ed man, pounding his back and
shaking his hands as though they
couldn’t convince themselves
that he was really alive.”

Our last position before V-Day
was outside the city of Olden-
burg in Germany. Our mortars
were set up in a farmyard and
we were sleeping in slit trenches.

At the end of April my long-
delayed United Kingdom leave
came through. I jumped on the
back of the dispatch rider’s
motorcycle and retreated a few
miles to regimental headquar-
ters; from there a long journey
to Calais in an unheated, win-
dow-shattered coach of a train;
ship to Folkstone, train to Lon-
don and on to Brighton.

I celebrated victory in a
Brighton pub, where a buxom
barmaid slipped me extra shots
of Scotch from under the coun-
ter. I was not feeling boisterous;
my thoughts were back with my
mortar crew. What if someone
had “bought it” during those
last few days of fighting which
I had missed?

Not to worry, Corporal Whyte.
When I returned from leave I
found that Oldenburg had sur-
rendered without our mortar
firing a shot.

May 7, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7 -