Edward A. Horrell
Unit : "D" Company, 12th Battalion The Devonshire Regiment.
The following is an account written by Eddie Howell, probably during the 1980's.
After our disastrous experience in the Ardennes, when we lost Charlie Humphries, Freddie Harvey and Dennis Richmond, with four others badly wounded, we spent two hectic weeks reorganizing the platoon. Reinforcements had to be accommodated and new equipment and stores allocated and checked. I didn't have time to breathe, never mind contemplate what lay ahead.
But here we were at Capsfield in Essex, ready to go. We had a most excellent briefing and knew exactly where we were landing - the exact field, the exact corner of the field - provided, of course, everything went right. We had loaded our glider at Great Dunmow airfield the night before. I was flying with D. Company with one (member) of my platoon, Nick Hillier; our job on landing was to throw a ring main charge around the tail of the glider and blow it off, so that the hand trailer loaded with ammunition and explosives could be quickly removed from the aircraft.
The morning of March 24th 1945 was bright and clear and by 0430 we were at breakfast. Then with last minute preparations made we were off to the airfield and in our gliders lined up behind our tug-planes, Short Stirling heavy bombers, ready to go. We were in a Horsa (1) Mark I, an older type of glider - hence the need to blow off the tail (the Horsa Mark II had a swing nose cone, allowing a much easier exit). We were to join up with the 17th. American Airborne Division to make a total of 2,796 aircraft over Belgium; what a sight we must have been from the ground.
On our way to deliver the last heavy blow of the war, we felt great elation and great apprehension. There was no doubt in our minds that Germany would soon be beaten, the war would be over, and we would be able to go home after six long years, but would we all survive this last battle? I never had any doubt that I would, but some were not so confident. Sid Carpenter from Bovey Tracey, with whom I had shared a civilian billet in Exeter in 1940, said to me on the way back from loading the glider, "I wish I could see my wife and baby daughter once more". I told him it was our last 'do' and we were all going to survive and go home for good, but he wouldn't be consoled, and was killed in the landing.
It was a perfect morning and a cloudless blue sky as we formed up and crossed the channel, an unforgettable sight as we passed the coast of Belgium and flew on over Brussels, with tug-planes and gliders as far as the eye could see. The American 17th used Waco gliders, much smaller than our Horsas, so one of their tug-planes towed two Wacos. The Rhine soon came into view and we passed over it and on to our destination, the village of Hamminkeln, which was an important road and rail junction. Our job was to capture and hold it until the land forces crossing the Rhine could join us.
Conversation dropped off and everyone became strangely quiet as we neared our target. The inside of a glider is dark, with a few very small windows, but looking out we could see thick walls of smoke obscuring the view. The smoke-screens the army had been using to hide their movements from the Germans had drifted across our landing zone and it was difficult to see the ground. Then there was complete silence apart from the swish of the wind as our tug cast us off. This was it; no going back or opening up the throttle for another circuit! If things don't look good you just sit there and hope the pilots will do a good job, with a bit of help from the Almighty. I was sitting at the back, right in the tail of the glider, and as we went into a steep dive I remember being fascinated by little patches of white light appearing in the fuselage; it took me several seconds to realize these were made by pieces of shrapnel coming through the fabric. Then we were down with a terrific crash. We hadn't rolled ten yards and the pilots had put us down right on the button. But at what cost? Both were dead, together with the first six soldiers behind them, and there were several injuries. I was slightly hurt as well as Nick, but we scrambled out of the glider to do our job of blowing off its tail. We were coming under heavy fire, with the survivors from the landing trying to give us cover while we fixed our demolition charge. We had just placed it and were getting ready to blow, standing shoulder to shoulder, when Nick gasped and fell. As I caught him I saw he had two bullet holes through the neck, which had killed him instantly. He was another of our original crowd, and we had been together since 1940; it was like losing a brother. Our officer told us all to take cover in a nearby ditch, sort ourselves out and proceed to wipe out that damned machine gun, which we did. The scene was indescribable, with Horsas landing, Waco gilders coming in and paratroopers dodging in between. It seems the dense smoke had confused the pilots and in some cases had blotted out the landing areas. I saw a Hamilcar glider hit in mid air about five hundred feet up, when the nose swung open and a 17-pounder gun with its tractor and crew spilled out in mid-air. I saw the gliders of Beethoven company, whose job it was to knock out an identified anti-aircraft battery, landing smack on top of it, the gun barrels poking through the wings of the aircraft.
When things got a bit quieter I made my way to the centre of Hammelkiln to rendezvous with the rest of my platoon and the first man I saw was my old pal Joe Marks. It's difficult to describe my feelings when I saw him safe and all in one piece, as he had also been flying in a company glider, and had experienced a hair-raising landing. After Arnhem we had lost so many trained glider pilots that for the Rhine crossing they had drafted in a number of RAF fighter pilots, one to each experienced man. The RAF man in Joe's glider panicked as the dive began, left the cockpit and ran back through the plane. The glider pilot brought them in alright but it was a nervous moment. The RAF man didn't like the idea of a plane without an engine! By this time the fighting was easing off; Bill Pratt turned up slightly wounded, Wally Briggs and Ron Tarr also. Now we were beginning to find out what had happened to the glider carrying our platoon and all our stores; it turned out that it had been hit in mid-air and caught fire, though they managed to get down and scramble out. Babe Cox, our Canadian officer, emerged only to be knocked down by another glider, Bill Tagg was obviously killed in the aircraft and burned with all our stores, jeeps, trailers and my brand new motor bike - all gone. We had left England that morning with seventeen men and at the end of the day only six answered the roll call, including our officer and me. We settled down in the cellar of a house, hopefully to grab some rations and a little kip, and I remember removing my helmet for the first time since taking off that morning, to find there in the chinstrap two neat holes made by the bullets that hit poor Nick as he stood beside me demolishing the tail of the glider.
I often think now, forty years afterwards, looking back over what has been a wonderful life with a marvellous family, how close I came to missing it all.
We lost that day 110 killed and wounded, with over 50% of our transport. At an 'O(fficers')' group called that evening by our CO, which I attended because of the death of my officer, we were told that our battalion would lead the breakout over the River Issel, which was to become the most remarkable pursuit of the war's last stage. Alan Moorehead in his book writes 'Nobody has yet succeeded in explaining satisfactorily how these men, recovering from their dreadful tragedies on the Rhine, picked themselves up and, without any military transport to speak of, projected themselves for three hundred miles across Germany to arrive on the Baltic ahead of the tanks and armour, indeed ahead of everyone else. Having no vehicles at the outset, they simply seized from the Germans anything they could get hold of, bakers' vans and butchers' van, and post office trucks. They did not bother to repaint them. One man was seen driving a steam roller, anything to get forward.' I commandeered the village fire engine, a beautiful, almost brand new Mercedes, painted white. I was quite pleased with my capture until the CO said, "You can't possibly use that, they'll see you coming from Berlin". So reluctantly I had to let it go, though we used anything else we could get our hands on.
We were eventually joined by troops that had succeeded in crossing the Rhine and soon we were on our way across north Germany, sometimes meeting only light resistance but more often than not having to fight a battle and take many casualties: our RSM, two company commanders, many junior officers and many, many other ranks. This was very distressing as we knew the end of the war was only days away. On over the Dortmund canal and on to Osnabruck, village after village, without rest or respite, including a bitter battle with an SS Coware school, absolute fanatics that had to be wiped out despite our own tragic casualties. Towards the end of April we were moving up towards the Elbe. We had taken a village in the morning and I was helping to blow up some captured German ammunition, when air-bursts began nearby, too close for comfort. I felt a thump in the back, good old me who was always going to be alright! I slipped a hand inside my back pocket, which came out covered in blood and told me otherwise. After rough ride in a jeep to a field dressing station and several shots of morphine, I was taken back to the general hospital in Celle and a fortnight later back to Brussels for a further three weeks in hospital. The flight back to Blighty followed, then a further nine months in a London hospital before a compassionate posting nearer home to the Manor Hospital in Moretonhampstead, and finally to Stover Hospital for more operations before discharge as 'Unfit for military service', just a few days short of six years since joining up. I must have been about the last casualty in my battalion; I hope so, anyway.
We still meet every year at our annual dinner, those who are left, to relive old memories and remember old faces. They were a wonderful lot of comrades and in many ways, in spite of everything, I wouldn't have missed it.