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Forum: Chat Room
Thread: On this Day |
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Thread Status: Locked Total posts in this thread: 716
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thursday, 31st May 1945
----------------------------------------The US forces, having advanced too far, were occupying land that the Yalta Conference allocated to the Russians and the Russians were not ready to take over, which is surprising because only a month ago we were led to believe they could be strong enough to reach the Danish border. 15th Scottish Division was under orders to take over immediately, so the drivers had to service the trucks and assemble the contents for repacking. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Sep 2, 2009 10:17:42 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Friday, 1st June 1945
----------------------------------------Scotty and I packed up our offices for the move, presumably eastwards, but we knew not where we were going until we were there - it turned out to be near Wilhelm Gustloff Strass, in Schwerin, the capital city of East Prussia. http://www.feldgrau.com/wilhelmgustloff.html. [Edit 2 times, last edit by Former Member at Sep 2, 2009 10:41:01 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Saturday, 2nd June 1945
15 Scottish Div. was on the move to Mecklenburg. 194 Field Ambulance now moved to Div. HQ, which was in Schwerin. B Coy took over Weinberg Strasse, near the Schloss Garten. The O.C. commandeered the big end house, formerly Gestapo HQ. My office was also in this house, and the cook house was next door. There was other accommodation nearby, available for "A” and HQ Coys. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sunday, 3rd June 1945
It was a nice, quiet Sunday. The sun was shining on a deceptively peaceful town. There was no work for the office. Cpl. Farrier had not collected any bed states and the office equipment had not turned up. The previous occupants of my billet had left behind a book about the town, “Wirtschaftsplan Schwerin”, which I now used for reconnaissance purposes. The book was mainly, as the title suggests, about the future of the town, but the photography was of the existing conurbation. Much of it found its way into my scrapbook. A walk in the Schloss Garten proved to be very pleasant. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Monday, 4th June 1945
----------------------------------------I did a recce in the new company offices. The Company Command Post was on the first floor, where the O.C. and I had our offices, the O.C. in the main room and I in the antechamber. The door between was heavily padded and soundproofed - one could only guess why, but I would discover, years later, that the town had had a Jewish community. One basement room held a pile of wrecked typewriters; two were identical, except that one had a broken platen and the other a broken ribbon drive. All had twisted type hammers, which I had to straighten if I wanted to use them. I could and did make a near perfect machine with a qwertz keyboard one key of which typed the single conventional character, like a double lightning bolt, which was the SS logo. There was a “Y” on the keyboard – where we would expect to find the “Z”! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 5, 2009 8:47:25 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Tuesday, 5th June 1945
----------------------------------------A pile of papers arrived on my desk. These were the bed states of 48 hospitals in Mecklenburg, all under the control of the Schwerin district, as, historically, Schwerin had been the capital of E. Prussia. Some of these hospitals were highly specialised. One was a hospital ship in the Burg Zee, specialising in the isolation of SS members suffering from venereal disease. These figures were going to need a lot of collating, especially as I had to use my meagre German to interpret the headings. I was now in immediate need of a German-speaking secretary! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 5, 2009 8:58:21 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Wednesday, 6th June 1945
I now had a German-speaking secretary, a pleasant, well-spoken, 40-year old ex-member of the NSDAP, with a typical "Adolf Hitler" moustache. When I made my scrapbook, I put this man’s photograph in it. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thursday, 7th June 1945
Did I say B Coy took over Weinberg Strasse? The whole Field Ambulance had taken two streets and a transport zone in the next one, Wilhelm Gustav Strasse, including an officers' mess, a sergeants' mess and a boathouse, renamed 194 Fd. Amb. Boat Club, on the nearby Schweriner See . |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Friday, 8th June 1945
----------------------------------------I worked on those statistics then took a walk to the boathouse and had a row on the Schweriner See. On the way, I noticed that the U.S. Forces Opera House was now the 15th Scottish Div. Opera House. The stalls, I discovered later, were strictly for the troops, who paid nothing for their reserved seats, but the gallery was available to civilians. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 8, 2009 2:00:18 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Saturday, 9th June 1945
I liberated a radio set, an AC/DC mains superhet. Unfortunately, it mainly received German stations, as the Nazi government had not allowed civilians to buy sets suitable for receiving foreign broadcasts. It did, however, receive the B.B.C. Forces Programme sometimes, but weakly. |
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