In September of 1955 we Mortar Platoon drivers, along with our trucks, were told we would be attached, for the purposes of a coming exercise, one to each of the rifle companies. I was assigned to “B” company and duly reported for a company briefing. I was told that I would be required to provide transport into somewhat inaccessible areas and that we were chosen for this task due to our off-road driving expertise and the vehicle’s capabilities. Beside me in the cab would be Sgt. Burton, who turned out to be the older brother of our Sgt. Bill Burton. He turned out to be less friendly and easygoing than Bill, but by no means unpleasant. (Anyone reading the foregoing stories will have detected a somewhat laid back approach among us in Support Company, compared to the “military discipline” of the rifle companies.) In the back of the truck would be carried up to eight men at any one time.

At the briefing we were given the outline of the exercise. It would take place along the river Weser, from Hameln, upstream to Holzminden and in the area on either side. A total of about eight hundred R.A.F. pilots would be put down on one side or the other of the river but several miles away. These were “downed” airmen and their objective was to reach and to cross the river, when they would be deemed to have escaped. To assist them in this aim they would make contact with a shadowy body known as the “R.A.F. Escape Organisation”. Our role, the four rifle companies of The First Battalion, The Royal Sussex Regt. was to act as the “enemy”, patrolling the area to either side of the river and endeavouring to capture these aircrew.

We were warned that they would resist, both capture and detention, and that we were therefore permitted to take away their boots or other items of equipment to prevent their escaping, once caught. However, we were instructed that the radios they were carrying were “top secret” and not to be taken away or interfered with in any way. We were also warned to be on our guard against spies from Iron Curtain countries who might engage us in conversation. This whole exercise would be of considerable interest to the Russians! So much for the theory! During the course of the seven-day exercise I never knowingly caught so much as a glimpse of even one of these eight hundred, though I did hear it said that three of them were caught.

While I was writing the last chapter a thought occurred to me. Quite late one night I was standing by the truck at a small landing-stage beside the river, when a man dressed in a belted rain-coat and trilby-hat came down to the water’s edge and hailed the small rowing boat which served as the ferry at this point. Whilst waiting for the boat to come from the other side he strolled over and struck up a conversation with me. “Are you on manoeuvres?” he asked, in quite good English but with a thick German accent. I nodded in affirmation, immediately on my guard. He seemed innocent enough, but then a spy would, wouldn’t he? “And have you built a bridge over the river here?” he asked. This was far enough from our true purpose so I just agreed with him that this was the pretence. The boat now arrived so he wished me “Goodnight” and was ferried over the river. I have often wondered if this was simply an innocent encounter or was he trying to learn some secret from me. The thought that has occurred to me after forty-six years is that he was probably one of the pilots I was trying to catch! I shall never know.

On another evening, at this same crossing point, a young girl came down to the landing stage and, whilst waiting for the boat, had to endure the whistles and cat-calls of this group of Tommies. She took no notice whatever of our remarks, but just waited patiently to be transported across the river. On reaching the safety of the far bank, and with the width of the Weser to preserve her honour, she turned and shouted “Kommen sie mit mein Haus!”. We saw the joke and laughed uproariously!

The mention of the ferry-boat affords me an opportunity to tell you about the small vehicle ferries which are used on this stretch of the Weser. When I first saw one of these devices in operation its simplicity and effectiveness just astonished me. The Weser is a fairly large river with a fast current and is therefore a significant impediment to the local people who need to go from one side to the other during their normal lives. The obvious solution is a bridge and these are, of course to be found in the larger towns, such as Holzminden, Hameln and Bodenwerder. However, the cost of such structures in the small villages, and over such a wide waterway would be prohibitive. Hence the solution which I will describe.

On either bank is a steel pylon over which a steel cable extends across the river, at a height sufficient to avoid interference with the mast or superstructure of any vessel on the water. This cable is anchored at each bank in massive concrete blocks and is thereby kept taught. The ferry boat is merely a flat pontoon with a small deckhouse amidships on one side of the deck. The pontoon is of such a size as to accommodate about three cars, line astern and has a downward ramp at each end. It is, of course positioned facing across the river. At each end, on the upstream side of the pontoon is a winch with a cable-drum. From these winches the cables reach up to wheeled runners on the overhead, taut cable. The purpose of the winches is to slew the pontoon, in relation the current, which, as I have mentioned is quite rapid and powerful. The ferry is held close in to one bank or the other, depending upon its angle.

A vehicle comes down the approach road and drives up onto the pontoon. The ferryman goes to the first winch and pays out cable. He then goes to the other end and winds in cable. The pontoon is now slewed in the opposite direction and the current pushes the ferry across the river, the wheeled runners rolling along the overhead retaining cable. When the ferry reaches the far side, the vehicle drives off. The current will now keep the ferry against this bank until the ferryman slews it the other way by winding in and paying out on the deck winches. It is, to my mind a masterpiece of design and the running costs are almost nil. We revisited the area in 1998 and I was delighted to find them still operating.

To return to the R.A.F. exercise. We were patrolling on a very dark night up a very steep and rocky track. On this occasion, I had only a Lieutenant and two other men in the truck with me. Eventually I had to give up the struggle because the way ahead was strewn with large rocky outcrops, with no track wide enough to get the vehicle through. The Officer told us to stay put and he would carry out a recce on foot. After some time he came back and told us to follow him because he was sure he had found a camp. He led us up the rocky track and across a ploughed field, to the edge of a wood. We went on in the nearest we could manage to total silence until he motioned us to stop. Pointing into the wood, he whispered “They are about thirty yards away. When I give the order, run in there as fast as you can and grab anything, whether it is a man, clothing, equipment or anything else! Ready-Go!” We did as we were bidden, but came up empty-handed. He said he was sure they had been there and I still think he was right, and that they were not far away.

We searched the area but found no indication of their presence until we extended our search out into the field. About fifty yards out we came across an excavated area in the shape of a cross. This was about three feet square by one foot deep. The bottom of this shape was covered in white phosphorous and was clearly only visible from above and not from ground level. It must have been a signal to an aircraft or to a rescue helicopter or some such. I am sure that if we had not surprised them, this would have been filled in before they left.

Even the services recognise that people have to sleep, so, as far as I remember, on this exercise each of the four companies had a full night’s sleep on one night in four. The other three companies maintained patrols throughout the night, getting sleep as and when they could. As the enemy were more likely to be carrying out their escaping activities in the dark, there were also periods of “compulsory rest” in the daytime.

The night which is the subject of this tale was a rest night for “B” Company, so we all returned for the night to the bivouac area. The “other ranks” slept on the ground, in two-man tents, while the Officers had a larger tent, with a camp bed. It was quite normal to sleep in one’s clothes, removing boots and maybe battledress blouse. In the morning the Officers were provided with a canvas washbowl, on a folding stand and a mirror, for shaving. The rest of the chaps would crawl out of their bivvies, feeling a bloody sight more tired than before their night’s “sleep”! They would then collect cold water in their “mess tins”, fish out any small scrap of mirror they had managed to procure, find a suitable spot in which to lodge it, and proceed to shave! (For the benefit of the uninitiated, “Mess tins” took the form of one rectangular, aluminium container of about 8″x 6″ and about 21/2″ high and another, just sufficiently smaller that it fitted inside the first. Each had a folding handle. The primary purpose of these containers was to eat from! After washing and shaving in them it was in your own interest to clean them thoroughly, the recommended scouring agent being sand!)

To return to the sleeping and ablution situation, it will probably not surprise you to learn that I had my own arrangements. Beneath the bench seats, along each side in the back of the Humber, were capacious storage lockers. Before leaving Minden to embark on this “adventure” I had filled these lockers with my essential equipment.

On our first night in the bivouac area the Officer-in-Charge, a Lieutenant, made his rounds of the area before turning-in. He looked in at a few of the bivvies before remembering they had a stranger in their midst, a Driver from Support Company. He came over and lifted the canvas curtain at the the back of the canopy, which I had rolled down for the night. “Are you alright, driver?” he began. Then “Bloody hell! Charles,come and look at this!” he spluttered. “This chap’s got a bloody sight more comfort than we have”. I don’t remember whether or not “Charles” came to see, but they didn’t bother about my welfare after that. I have to admit that I was pretty snug, and for that matter, smug!

In the back of my truck was a flat, plywood “bomb-rack”. The two camouflage nets, one for the vehicle and the other for the mortar position, spread out on here made an excellent mattress. I had brought along my sheets and blankets and two pillows and was wearing my pyjamas. Above me, hanging from the canopy-rail was the 24-volt inspection lamp supplied with the vehicle. This was plugged into a socket in the cab and passed through the communication hatch behind the drivers seat. It made a far better reading-light than inspection-lamp!

In the morning I awoke and started the engine and allowed it to idle until it was hot. I had obtained from somewhere, an old steel-helmet. Fortunately it was unusual in that it lacked the usual bolt-hole in the crown which facilitated the attachment of the internal padding. It made a first-class washing bowl. I would crawl under the truck and open the radiator drain-tap to obtain my hot water. I then topped up the radiator with cold water. I would now sit in the passenger-seat in the cab, with my bowl on my lap and proceed to wash and shave, with the help of the convenient rear-view mirror! When all this was completed, and we had eaten our breakfast, provided by the cookhouse truck, it was time to go off on another patrol. First though, I would clamber under the lorry and lodge a tin of steak and kidney pudding between the chassis and the exhaust pipe. This was my lunch when all the others were eating their “haversack rations” of sandwiches and hardtack biscuits. Well, you have to look after yourself.

At one point during this exercise, the Platoon Commander, who was being driven in a Jeep by an R.A.S.C. driver, led us up into the hills to the north-east of Bodenwerder. Our convoy consisted of three Humbers and the aforesaid Jeep. I was second in traffic as we drove along a rutted track, with the cultivated fields on our right sloping down towards the the floor of the Weser valley.

Immediately on our left was a steep, grassy bank, about six feet high, with fairly dense, mixed woodland clothing the increasingly steep hillside above, topping out at 600 feet a.s.l. Some way along this track the woodland receded, leaving a small, sloping, rectangular meadow of about a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide. A grassy access track led from the main track, up onto this somewhat unkempt pasture. The lead vehicle, the Jeep, stormed up this byway and straight away began to slither and slide on the tussocky grassland, before losing forward motion and beginning instead an inexorable sideways descent of the slippery hillside!

The driver, realising he was going nowhere, abandoned the attempt and I took over the lead, heading diagonally for the far, upper corner of the meadow. I was having something of a fight to keep the Humber heading in the right direction, when the lieutenant, having leapt from the stationary Jeep, appeared suddenly on the running board beside my open driver’s window. “Keep going! Keep going!” he was shouting, “Drive into the wood and go straight up the hillside!” I just kept my foot down and weaved my way onwards and upwards, ploughing through and over the mainly hazel thickets and avoiding the larger trees. The passenger on the running-board was shouting encouragement and trying to protect his face from the whipping hazel branches as we stormed up the steepening hillside. Eventually the woodland began to thin out and I, quite suddenly, realised that I had achieved my goal and we were at the top of the hill.

We found ourselves in a thinly wooded area and were confronted by a tall, square stonebuilt tower, about 40 feet high. We dismounted from the truck and went to investigate this imposing structure. Entering the doorway, we saw a flight of stone steps, spiralling upwards around the inside of the building and emerging through an opening in the stone ceiling. Each of these steps was a slab of rock built into the wall and protruding inwards by about two and a half feet. An iron handrail was provided, supported by uprights fitted to each of the steps. Climbing these stairs and out through the opening brought us out onto a stone platform with parapets on all four sides. The view from this eyrie was utterly stupendous, especially as it was sited at the end of the range of hills and therefore gave a wide arc of view. The town of Bodenwerder lay spread out below, and the beautiful Weser wound away in each direction, looking for all the world, like a carelessly discarded blue ribbon.

From this distance I could not see how we were going to apprehend any of the R.A.F. personnel, who were our quarry on this exercise, even if we had seen them attempting to cross the river. Nonetheless, this was not my concern and I was quite content to stand there in the sunshine and drink in this glorious vista!

In view of the difficulty of getting the vehicles up to the top of the hill it was decided that a “base-camp” would be established on the meadow below. The rifle company men that we were transporting walked up and down the hill to take their turn on watch from the tower.

Forty years later, I went back with the family to this area and we walked up a metalled track through the woodland and found the Eckberg tower again. We all climbed the spiral staircase up to the platform and took photographs of the surrounding countryside, some of which are reproduced here.

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