"About eighty of us were attached to the third U.S. Army, which was under General Patton’s command.  We crossed to Cherbourg, then down to St. Malo and on to Paris.  We suffered months of sleepless nights while the allied forces remained bogged down in Normandy and suffering heavy losses.  On arrival in Paris, the entire convoy was parked all the way up to the arch; it seemed like all of Paris were on the other side of the road.   The French told us that the Germans had left during the night.  Apparently, dispatch riders had warned them that the third army would be in Paris by morning.  However, a few Germans were captured in and around Paris by the French.  We took up residency in a Chateau at St. Germain.  Three days later De Gaulle entered Paris.  The allied units were told that a radio broadcast would be made to the French people stating that Paris had been liberated by the Resistance.  It was felt that this would boost French morale and thereby help to shorten the War.  I always felt that the gesture was made in order that De Gaulle could bask in the glory as the liberator of France.  In Hamburg we heard that Patton had died from a broken neck following a horse-riding accident whilst on leave in Paris.  Later, we heard that he had been the victim of a staged car crash. 

"When I was in St. Germain I was sent out in the truck to find a fuel dump located in a field some sixty miles from Paris that the U.S. Airforce used.  I decided to take secondary roads to get there but I had to change my route twice due to blown bridges.  I soon realised that I had inadvertently strayed in to German held territory as bullets suddenly came whistling out of the trees.  All I could do was put my head down and get out of there as fast as I could.  After some time I came to the top of a hill and there, right in front of the road, was a battalion of Germans walking four abreast.  It was a narrow gravel road and I had to go on the grass to avoid ploughing into them.  Their CO was marching in front of the column and he put his hand up to halt them.  He then beckoned me over with his hand.  I said to myself, ‘If you were ever cool, let it be now.’  I walked over and came to attention in front of him, but I didn't salute as I thought it might lull him into thinking that there were more British soldiers coming behind me.  Unfortunately, there were no allied soldiers within forty miles.  He said that they didn’t  have any food and wished to surrender.  I just told him that I had no food with me and that they had better keep marching.  I walked quickly back to the truck as I didn't want to give him much time to think or ask questions.  He waved his men on and sat in the truck as a thousand pairs of eyes gave me ‘eyes left’ as they might have earlier given to Hitler on a march past.  What a relief when I finally drove off ! 

"I eventually found the fuel dump later that day.  When I told the guard at the entrance to the field that I wanted petrol, he told me that there was none.  When I pointed to the field stacked with  jerry cans, he said, ‘Oh!  If you want gasoline help yourself.’  I loaded the fuel on to the lorry and made sure that I took a different route back to base.  I did not report what happened that day and the C.O. later asked if I had seen the other truck that had left on the same quest for fuel.  The sergeant and driver returned later without finding the dump.

"I was glad the Royal Marines never used helmets as I thought they were more of a liability than an asset as I tried to balance it on my head.  The U.S. and German helmets were far more comfortable.  The military mentality at Caen was similar to that adopted during the First World War, with thousands of lives being  lost in order to gain a few yards.  Arnhem was also an unnecessary gamble and a heavy price to pay for glory.  Maybe  Hitler was not the only one that should have remained a corporal.  It was a strange experience to pass places like Mons, Ypres, Passchendale and the vast burial ground at Arras where the flower of Hebridean youth lie still.

"We were in Antwerp when it was taken.  It must have been the most dangerous place in Europe as the Germans tried to recapture it.  Flying bombs, or V2s, flew overhead every night and all night.  Eight hundred people died when one of the V2s made a direct hit on the Rex Cinema, in Antwerp.  We had been attached to the First U.S. Army for the Rhine crossing at the Koln Remagan bridge.  When we  left Antwerp we spent three days in a German POW camp which had been liberated by the 1st U.S.  As there were no obvious borders, it wasn't easy to be sure what country we were in at times, but that POW camp was somewhere between Antwerp and Koln.  The camp’s name was Stalag Luft III.  It was an officers’ camp and  covered a huge area.  I heard that some allied POWs had been shot whilst trying to escape.  I don't know if Luft III was used as a name for all airforce POW camps but there was certainly another one in Poland.  There was a small town near us which the Germans had managed to recapture a few times.  I spoke to a girl in a hotel there who said that she hoped the Germans would come back again as she had a German soldier boyfriend.  She tried to give me a letter for him in case I came across him somewhere - some hope!

"On the way to Hamburg we came across Belsen camp.  The padlock was still on the gate.  Two living skeletons were clinging to the mesh and the only way you could tell you were looking at living souls was when their eyes moved.  The rest were squatting motionless and in the background we could see a pile of skeletons.  The German guards had fled the scene and those near naked people must have known that they would have been next in line for the ovens which were still roaring - grit and splinters shooting up about twenty feet above the chimney.  As it came down, the ashes from  the fires of Belsen went into my eyes.