livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
Born in battle, Peter White's journal is one of the most extraordinary stories to come out of the World War II. As a 24-year-old lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, Peter kept an unauthorized journal of his regiment's advance through the Low Countries and into Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe. Forbidden by his commanding officer from doing so for security reasons, Peter's boyhood habit of diary keeping had become an obsession too strong to shake off. In this graphic evocation of a soldier at war, the images he records are not for the faint hearted. There are heroes aplenty within its pages, but there are also disturbing insights into the darker sides of humanity - the men who broke under the strain and who ran away; the binge drinking which occasionally rendered the whole platoon unable to fight; the looting, the rape, and the callous disregard for human life that happens when death is a daily companion. Hidden away for more than 50 years, this is a rare opportunity to read an authentic account of the horrors of war experienced by a British soldier in the greatest conflict of the 20th century.
Amazon.com: With the Jocks (9780750930574): Peter White: Books
The period this covers is not one you hear a lot about in America, particularly as regards the British. There's a tendency these days to think that after D-Day, we pretty much ran the show on the Western front, but in actuality the British were as involved as we were.
What I found most interesting was his description of Northern Germany as the German army was forced back and the British army moved in.
The Germans put up a very good fight. But they had the Russians coming in from the Eastern Front in vast numbers, and that's where most of their assets were deployed.
As the German army retreated, the German civilians were left unprotected. It wasn't the British they needed protection from. Germany had imported thousands of civilians from defeated countries to work in the industrial plants. Thousands more were employed on farms. Then there were tens of thousands of prisoners from the Eastern Front in camps. Suddenly, as the Germans withdrew, these vast numbers of people found themselves loose and on their own.
As the German army retreated, they abandoned vast quantities of weapons, from tanks to small arms. So the people living on isolated farms, rural farms , were able to obtain small arms to protect themselves from the legions of the walking dead roaming the countryside. Some of these former prisoners were interested only in getting home, but others were happy with the anarchy and became extremely dangerous to everybody concerned.
When the British moved in, they gave civilians a short time to turn in all weapons, after which anyone found with a weapon would be shot and their homes burned down. Most German civilians duly turned in firearms. But when the British moved forward, that left only specialist troops like truck drivers in the area, and few of them. Over and over again, Peter White mentions that the "DP's", or displaced persons, would attack isolated homesteads and farms, murder the occupants without discrimination regarding sex or age, and loot the place. Then they'd disappear to do it again.
In some urban places, the British fired on mobs of DP's who were basically sacking the town and killing everyone they could find.
Self Sufficient Mountain Living.: Survival Situations in the past. Once more into the breach. Frangible bullets.
Amazon.com: With the Jocks (9780750930574): Peter White: Books
The period this covers is not one you hear a lot about in America, particularly as regards the British. There's a tendency these days to think that after D-Day, we pretty much ran the show on the Western front, but in actuality the British were as involved as we were.
What I found most interesting was his description of Northern Germany as the German army was forced back and the British army moved in.
The Germans put up a very good fight. But they had the Russians coming in from the Eastern Front in vast numbers, and that's where most of their assets were deployed.
As the German army retreated, the German civilians were left unprotected. It wasn't the British they needed protection from. Germany had imported thousands of civilians from defeated countries to work in the industrial plants. Thousands more were employed on farms. Then there were tens of thousands of prisoners from the Eastern Front in camps. Suddenly, as the Germans withdrew, these vast numbers of people found themselves loose and on their own.
As the German army retreated, they abandoned vast quantities of weapons, from tanks to small arms. So the people living on isolated farms, rural farms , were able to obtain small arms to protect themselves from the legions of the walking dead roaming the countryside. Some of these former prisoners were interested only in getting home, but others were happy with the anarchy and became extremely dangerous to everybody concerned.
When the British moved in, they gave civilians a short time to turn in all weapons, after which anyone found with a weapon would be shot and their homes burned down. Most German civilians duly turned in firearms. But when the British moved forward, that left only specialist troops like truck drivers in the area, and few of them. Over and over again, Peter White mentions that the "DP's", or displaced persons, would attack isolated homesteads and farms, murder the occupants without discrimination regarding sex or age, and loot the place. Then they'd disappear to do it again.
In some urban places, the British fired on mobs of DP's who were basically sacking the town and killing everyone they could find.
Self Sufficient Mountain Living.: Survival Situations in the past. Once more into the breach. Frangible bullets.