Dotting the "i"s

Discussion in 'Veteran Accounts' started by Ron Goldstein, Oct 7, 2009.

  1. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    I find it interesting to see that although I was transferred to the RAC in December 1944 and subsequently became a War Substantive Corporal in the 4th QOH, when the Army finally signed me off in 1947 they gave me the rank of Bombadier, which was strictly a Royal Artillery rank.
    Ron, as we say in the artillery 'Once a gunner, always a gunner"

    Peter :)
     
  2. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    Ron

    I see that in July 1944 you were on the Empire Pride. In 1948 the Empire Pride was one of the five troopships that regularly sailed to the Far East. I often saw her coming in to Hong Kong.
     

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  3. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Peter

    Ron, as we say in the artillery 'Once a gunner, always a gunner"



    Never thought of that :)

    Ron

    ps

    Interesting that you used to see the Empire Pride whilst in Hong Kong.

    Can't say that I have happy memories of sailing on either the Franconia or the Empire Pride.

    When my kids were young we once took them to see the Cutty Sark at Greenwich.

    We visited below decks and as I walked the rather severe camber of the wooden decks it immediately took me back in memory to confinement below decks on the Franconia and I felt quite seasick !

    Nice to see you posting here.

    Best regards

    Ron
     
  4. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Looking back on some of the stuff I’ve posted, on this and other places, it struck me that it must seem at times that we had a whale of a time during WW2.

    I would trust that forum members are not so naïve to think that this was truly the case, but I do appreciate that we are guilty of creating a false impression by the fact that we inevitably write only of the highlights of our various types of service.

    You will have noticed my use of the word we ?

    I usually find I am sailing in dangerous waters whenever I include in a posting the phrase we when referring to myself and other veterans who post on this forum.

    The fact that there was a world war between 1939 & 1945 and that we, there I go again, were alive at the time and played our part, does not necessarily mean that we miraculously all thought alike and that our memories of those fateful days would prove to be similar or almost identical.

    If you stop and think about it, how indeed could they ?

    Take Brian, AKA Sapper, and myself as just one example.

    Brian fought in France from D-Day in June ’44 onward, saw much action in horrific situations and was finally so grievously wounded that he still suffers the effects to this very day.

    I, by contrast, first saw action in Sicily in August ’43 but was lucky enough never, ever, to be wounded, but was forced to live through three punishing winters in what were sometimes disgusting conditions and which were life threatening simply because of my unit’s vulnerability to enemy action.

    It is true that, to coin a gambling phrase, the ante was raised when I joined the 4th QOH, but when I think about the inordinate amount of time I spent in training and then just sitting in the back of a wireless truck doing a thankless job, highlights were few and far between even though it is of the highlights that I and others write.

    I would now seek to redress the balance.

    I shudder to think of the inordinate amount of time I spent in wet, dirty smelly clothes.

    I shudder to think of how many times when I was hungry, tired, miserable and just plain scared.

    I shudder to think about how many times I had to fight to keep my eyes open to stay awake and still remember the one occasion in Sicily when I just couldn’t.

    Finally, I shudder to think of the number of times when I felt that we would never get out of the situation in which we then currently found ourselves.

    My message, I suppose, is that we, the handful of active veterans who post here, usually tell tales of the high-spots in our memories when all too often it was the low-spots, of which we seldom write, that filled our every day.

    Ron
     
  5. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Just when you think that nothing fresh is going to come up on the internet you get a Private Message on this site that shows you just how wrong you can be !

    As the message was "private" I can't reveal who sent it to me but I can say it was from a member living in Italy who kindly sent me an old postcard of an estate in Tavernelle, just North of Florence.

    The following extract from my diaries tell the story:

    Tuesday 7th. November 1944
    Moved early morning. Through Florence to a small village called Tavernelle.
    Our billet a beautiful estate is about two miles from it. Settled in & guard
    'slept in'
    Wednesday 8th. November 1944
    P.T. first thing in morning. Working on truck all day. The Italian/American
    family here speak perfect English. All the Wireless Ops , with the exception
    of 280 Bty. are here.

    The Amici-Grossi Estate
    The family who owned this estate were like something out of a novel. Husband and wife were both beautiful in looks and dress and the two kids spoke incredibly good English. On one occasion we mentioned that we would like to buy some apples. The young boy, he must have been about twelve years old, took us to a hut on his father’s estate. He ordered, there was no other word for it, one of the men there to get him some apples and when I wanted to pay the man for his produce he said to me “Don’t give him any money, they’re only peasants!”. I still don’t believe what I heard that day but I assure you it was gospel!


    Our Italian member has now sent me the postcard shown below and asks "is this how you remember it ?"

    Remember it ?,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Of course I do ! and am immediately taken back in time to 66 years ago when I first saw this lovely house, this is simply marvelous stuff :)

    Ron
     

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  6. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    One of the lesser delights of reaching an age group that is tactfully described as "senior" is the occasional realisation that if one doesn't "write it down" one's memories will be lost forever.

    I was Googling around this morning and found myself on the BBC Archives re-reading for the umpteenth time about the time I found myself guarding an SS Div.

    I scrolled down to the comments and re-read Peter G's comments about the nature of the prisoners that I was guarding at Ferndorf.

    It set me wondering how I would have felt at the time if I had the knowledge that is now available on the internet ?

    The original BBC story is here:
    BBC - WW2 People's War - The War Ends in Italy, 2nd May 1945

    This is the German Div in question:

    Axis History Factbook: 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS


    This was Peter's comment:

    Message 4 - Italy 1945

    Posted on: 23 June 2005 by Peter - WW2 Site Helper

    Ron
    There is a good website on Italian Partisans here Answers.com: Wiki Q&A combined with free online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopediasAbout links
    From that site you can also access shocking details of the Marzabotto massacre (or direct here Answers.com: Wiki Q&A combined with free online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopediasAbout links and the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre (or direct from here Answers.com: Wiki Q&A combined with free online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopediasAbout links )
    Both these massacres are relevant to your story because they were carried out by the 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS and there is a very high probability that it was remnants of this SS division that you were guarding.
    The 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS, Himler's personal division, had a long history of war crimes beginning in Poland in 1939. The unit started as Himmler's Kommandostab RF-SS but in May 1941 it was formed into a battalion, the Begleit Battailon RF-SS, to fight Russian partisans. In February 1943 it was upgraded to brigade status, it was renamed 'Assault Brigade -SS', and is believed to have operated alongside troops commanded by the notorious Dirlanger during anti-partisan operations near Minsk in March 1943.
    The brigade was moved to Corsica, about that time, and during the summer Himmler enlarged it to a division which Hitler personally approved on 3 October 1943. Parts of this new division opposed the Anzio landings in January 1944. It then went to Hungary but was reported back in Italy in May.
    Gordon Williamson, an historian of the Waffen-SS, says of this division "Under attacks by Italian partisans the division also reverted to its former standards of behaviour" That behaviour was appalling. Aside from the two massacres mentioned above, they killed a further 370 civilians around Bardene San Terrenzo and about 1,670 around Marzabotto.
    In January 1945 they were rushed to Hungary where they received a severe mauling from the Red Army and were pushed back into southern Austria. There, at the end of hostilities they refused to surrender until some days after VE day when their commander, SS-Gruppenführer Max Simon, wearing a white armband presented himself to the Allies and successfully negotiated surrender terms for his men. It was agreed that a part would surrender to the Americans around Klagenfurt and Radstadt, and the remainder to the British at Graz; none to Italian partisans. It is this group which I now think your unit was unwittingly guarding. Returned to Germany, they simply melted away.
    Peter



    and this was my reply at the time:
    Message 5 - Italy 1945

    Posted on: 23 June 2005 by Ron Goldstein

    Peter
    Mant thanks for, as always, going the extra mile to obtain the truth.
    It is difficult, some sixty odd years later to read and learn the true facts concerning the men who we had in our cage at Ferndorf but I will now go back to the Regimental records to see if some of the data contained in that document now makes more sense.
    Once more in your debt.
    Best wishes
    Ron
     
  7. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

    Ron and Tom might put flesh on these bones. When I became a serviceman my father opened up a lot more, he had been a pre war regular with a trade RAF and now I was an engineer turned infantryman. In a moments thought he said the worst parts of my war? - 'Desert hands' would know what I mean those bloody 'hurry up and stand still times' when time stood still and thoughts of going home seemed that much further away.
     
  8. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Wills

    The longest I can remember "treading water" was the period when my unit changed fronts from the Adriatic coast to The Mediterranean coast, South of Cassino.

    If you look at the map below you will see that from the time I hit Algiers to our eventual arrival in Venice we covered an awful lot of ground and the Gothic Line period was the first time that we really experienced the equivalent of WW1 trench warfare.

    It is those days that I really seem to have wiped from my memory simply because of their mind numbing misery and I am grateful for my friend Lew's personal diaries & also for regimental diaries of the time just to confirm my whereabouts.

    It was not always "get up & go" in wartime. :(

    Ron
     

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  9. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

    Yes long periods like that in Northern Ireland the words written home by a US civil war soldier - 'war is 99% boredom and 1% terror'.
     
  10. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    I ask you to scroll up to my comment on posting #26


    This morning I spent some time on YOUTUBE looking at these, forgive me, bastards at the time of their surrender in Italy and it is a sobering thought to think that I guarded these gentlemen in Ferndorf all those years ago.
    WAFFEN SS SURRENDER IN ITALY - YouTube

    Whilst on the same site I watched, once again, this interview with a German prison guard at Treblinka

    Part 1/7 - Interview with a nazi ss officer - franz suchomel - Discussion of treblinka gas chambers - YouTube

    If you ever had delusions about what went on in these camps I urge you to see this video, you will not enjoy the experience but at least you will know the truth

    Ron
     
  11. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

  12. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Way back on the 29th Sept 2010, Owen and I had a friendly scrap about my use of the phrase “part of the 56th Div ” when, in his opinion, I should have more correctly used the term “attached to the 56th Div”

    At the time I replied as follows:

    Owen

    You say :

    :Ron, weren't your lot just attached to them not part of them?

    Don't want to get into a discussion on semantics but when I say "part of 78 div" I actually meant to imply it was ..............well...... "part of", although I'm sure you would prefer the factually correct "attached to".

    Having said that I am indebted to you for the 9th Armoured Brigade order of battle and it would be mealy mouthed of me not to thank Tom Canning for his efforts to clarify the situation.

    What does come across however, is the way the Regiment was shunted around the battlefields of Italy, moving from one Brigade/Division/Corps to another, the only criteria being where it could be used to the best advantage.

    By the time the wheels had all stopped rolling and the war had ended, we were living in the comparitive peace of the Trieste area and if you look again at the photo of me and my Bren Gun Carrier we were certainly, no doubt at all, sporting the 41 tac sign and the 56 Div Black Cat.

    Finally, I did entitle this thread "My Stuart Tank, as I remember it 65 years later" and the operative words are "65 years later"...................

    Ron


    This morning, whilst browsing through the Regimental Diaries I found confirmation that we were also, at one time, under the command of 26th Armd. Brigade, which was, in turn, part of the 6th Armd Div. I show the actual entry below.

    8th July 1945

    Regt moved to area GRAFENSTEIN coming under command 26th Armd Bde in the 6th Armd Div. A and C Sqns were now re-equipped with Staghound ACs and the Recce Tp with Greyhound ACs. B Sqn was re-equipped with five Tps of Shermans, each Tp having 2 with 76mm guns and one 17pdr.

    I have now amended my personal signature to include that piece of info. :)
     
  13. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Ron
    I can vouch for your short stay in 26th AB of 6th AD as you left to go back down to Trieste before the 16/5th went up to Vienna for the Tattoo with us thinking that you were also in the mix as we had to hand over our pukka lances - but in fact it was the Gloucester Hussars who had replaced 4QOH straight from the UK - on our return from Vienna we had
    inherited your Staghounds and Greyhounds which were a joy to tear around the countryside looking for the next dance ....

    Cheers
     
  14. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Giving this thread a bounce to draw your attention to my posting #15

    It's my only connection to HM Queen Elizabeth's coronation, the anniversary of which is today.June 2nd.some 51 years later.

    The young lady in Queen Salote's arms is my eldest daughter and I am still delighted with this connection :)

    Ron
     
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  15. Joe Brown

    Joe Brown WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Ron.

    Dotting the 'i's of 1953, back home in Scotland six years back after the end of War, persuaded without much effort by my C.O. to rejoin my War-time Battalion now in the Order of Battle of the Territorial Army, In the year of the Coronation I was then a major commanding Headquarters Company and usually at my C.O.'s request also the Battalion's Signal Officer. The Queen three weeks after being Crowned at Westminister came North to Edinburgh on the 24th June.

    It was a spectacular procession with all the splendour and panoply fitting the first visit to Scotland of our young Queen. Travelling in open coach, accompanied by the Household Cavalry, Her Majesty drove from Edinburgh Castle down the Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. For the first time in over a century the Honours of Scotland were borne through the streets of the Capital - The Crown dating from 1540, Sceptre from 1494 and the Sword of State dating from 1507 - were carried in open coach immediately in front of The Queen. My battalion was lining part of the route and remember that moment I lowered my Claymore in Salute as The Queen and Scotland's Royal Regalia passed by.

    The 'i' was dotted when in the years that followed I reflected on that significant moment. Having in company with my generation stood together to protect our land and our way of life, the years of danger successfully overcome, we stood in Freedom and Honour to Salute our Sovereign Head and that she was a beautiful young woman seemed so right after all the noble sacrifice shed for our native land. I can never think of that moment without a great flood of faces rushing into my mind and always a tear that is inevitably there as I Remember them in all the 'high moments' in life that I have been spared to experienced.

    The joy of that day became even more special as our General, a bachelor, having received an invitation to the Royal Garden Party being held that day at the Palace of Holyroodhouse felt it right that it should go to a married officer and he had all the names of his officers put in a hat and he was inspired - to the great joy of my wife - to select me!

    Here are Mabel and I ready to set off to represent the General; a babysitter kindly looking after our 30-month-old son and our week-old daughter. The 'i's that day have always been clearly dotted!

    [​IMG]

    Joe Brown
     
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  16. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Joe

    I always say " If you've got a good memory...... Flaunt it ! :). :). :)

    A lovely tale and well worth the telling.

    Ron
     
  17. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    In February 2010 I donated my Army Album to the Imperial War Museum

    I have no way of knowing how many, if any, people have asked to see it since that date and therefore was delighted to get an e-mail today from a university student currently doing research for his thesis that covers certain aspects of WW2

    He explained that after reading about the album on a ww2 site he applied to see the actual artifact at the museum and now wished to clarify some of the data he had seen in the album

    This is one lad that I shall be delighted to assist ;)

    Ron
     
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  18. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Giving this thread a bump in the fond hope that newcomers will add to some of my memories

    Ron
     
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  19. ritsonvaljos

    ritsonvaljos Senior Member

    Having the option to look at original wartime documents and photographs, such as your album Ron, is an excellent way of doing original research about the period, especially for a university thesis when original sources are essential.
     

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