Where 'Our Boys' finally breathed a sigh of relief

The Durham Light Infantry

BY April 29, 1945, the last surviving fighters of the Durham Light Infantry must have felt they were being prepared for something big.

They had fought their way from the Atlantic Ocean to within touching distance of the Baltic Sea. Only the German city of Hamburg stood in their way.

As preparations for another decisive battle began, they were visited by the Army's top brass. Ostensibly, all these powerful figures had come to award the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant with an MBE for his dedication to duty - but to everyone else it must have felt like an eve-of-battle visit.

Of course, these were battle-hardened men. The 9th Battalion of the DLI had bobbed around the Continent like a cork on the ocean these last six years.

They had been driven out of Dunkirk in 1940, only to turn from defeat into Desert Rats and march across north Africa. They had invaded Sicily and Italy, and then had been sent on to the Normandy beaches on D-Day - and that was only the start of a 750-mile roll that had taken them to the town of Harburg, to the south of Hamburg.

Now, they were being prepared for action again, enduring another eve-of-battle visit. But even to these battle-hardened men, there must have been a different kind of emotion because this was clearly the eve of the last battle of a war that had raged for six years.

There can never be a good time to lose a life in a war, but to die now, when the end was in sight after so long, must have been the worst. Tragically, during the top brass' visit, two Durhams were killed.

The grenades they were laying across a track exploded.

But Cpl Lawrence Jones, 28, and Pte George Barker, 25, (where these poor fellows came from is not recorded) were the last of the Durhams to die in the war in Europe because the battle for Hamburg never took place.

On May 1, preparations were postponed when a German car approached the Durhams' lines. The major and captain inside said they wanted to discuss ways of protecting Hamburg's hospitals during the forthcoming gunfight.

As negotiations progressed, it became clear that they were talking on behalf of General Woltz, commander of Hamburg, about the surrender of the town.

The pair were told that the surrender must be unconditional, and were sent away. Preparations for battle resumed.

On May 2, General Woltz himself arrived at the Durhams' lines. Battle preparations stopped again. He wanted to speak directly with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, whose headquarters at Luneberg Heath was just to the south of Hamburg, about German surrender in all north-west Germany.

Woltz was told that the surrender must be unconditional, and was sent away. Preparations for battle were recommenced. On May 3, Grand Admiral Hans-Georg Friedeburg arrived at the Durhams' lines. He was representing Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, the new fuhrer who had succeeded Adolf Hitler after his suicide on April 30.

"On that same day, I got word that my leave was due, " remembered Sgt Jack Dobbs, one of the very few DLI survivors. "I hadn't had leave since I'd got married on January 12, 1944, and I asked my company commander if I could be marked 'left out of battle'.

"He said that German officers were on a peace-finding mission and had been sent back to the garrison commander in Hamburg and told they had to lay down their arms and clear the streets - no one on the streets except policemen controlling traffic.

"He said if we hadn't got a reply by two o'clock we'd be going to smash our way in. He said: 'Sgt Dobbs, you will bloody well fight before you go on leave.'" But they did get an official reply by 2pm - indeed, it was there unofficially before their eyes earlier as hundreds of German soldiers streamed down the autobahn towards the DLI waving white flags. Hamburg had surrendered.

So when the order came, it was not about battle, but about smartness of dress and the importance of good behaviour.

"We were ordered to jump on the tracks of tanks and drive through Hamburg, " said Jack, originally from Wales but who settled after the war in Alnwick, Northumberland. "That was very difficult because of so many ruins left by the air raids."

Hamburg had been struck by 187 raids during 1940-45. The raids of early August 1943 sparked a firestorm in which 50,000 people died. Said Jack: "We pulled into a field and the major said to me: 'You lucky beggar, you can go on leave now'."

He journeyed back across northern Europe and had to wait in Calais as a storm ripped up the Channel. Eventually, he found passage home and landed on British soil on May 8 - VE Day. "It was incredible, " he said. "Everybody was celebrating, street parties everywhere, and I was in a khaki uniform, so you can imagine the reception I got."

The 9th Battalion stayed in northern Germany, pushing up to the Kiel Canal and then being called into Berlin, until its members were demobbed in early 1946.

The Green Howards

IN a cinema in the Belgian town of Ghent, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery briefed a newly-arrived battalion on how he saw the war developing.

It was April 16, 1945, and Monty told the 1st Battalion of the Green Howards that hostilities would drag on for a couple of months yet and that they would be needed on the frontline.

As it turned out, the war was all but over within a fortnight, and the Green Howards had only 48 hours of warfare to endure – but it was bloody warfare that called for great bravery.

The 1st Battalion had arrived in northwest Europe in railway cattle trucks from Marseilles. It had been badly hit during the liberation of Italy – Captain Hedley Verity, the Yorkshire cricketing legend, being one of its fatalities – and had spent eight months in Palestine regrouping.

The Green Howards themselves had been foremost in the European campaign, with the 6th and 7th Battalions landing on the Normandy beaches on DDay.

Company Sergeant Major Stan Hollis, from Middlesbrough, famously became the only person to win a Victoria Cross that day.

The Battalions had battled their way across Europe but, badly depleted, had been sent home in December 1944.

So, as the war entered its final phase, the 1st Battalion was called for, its men arriving in cattle trucks so crowded that they had to take it in turns to lie down for sleep.

From Ghent, the Green Howards moved towards Hamburg – one of the last German cities to fall. But, as the battalion found to its cost, Hamburg was protected by the River Elbe, which was itself guarded by 200 well-armed SS troops in the town of Buchen.

On April 30 – the day of Hitler’s suicide – the Green Howards launched themselves across the Elbe at Dalldorf and then into Buchen. This was probably the last full-scale battalion attack of the Second World War in Europe.

B Company bore the brunt of casualties, its company commander, Major Albert Blakely, 26, from Dumbartonshire, probably being the last Green Howard to die during action in the war.

With other officers injured, it fell to Company Sergeant Major Clarence “Lofty” Peacock to take command of the men who were still coming under blistering fire.

Lofty, born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, and 6ft 4in tall, was a man of many medals. He had won the Military Medal in Palestine in 1938 – before the war had even started – when he was ambushed by Arabs. In 1940, he won a Norwegian War Cross for gallantry when the Green Howards found themselves stuck in a valley near the town of Otta facing crack Austrian ski troops.

And now, in the last major engagement of the entire war, he led his battered company against the machine gun post that had caused their officers so much damage.

Naturally enough, they captured the post, and then Lofty returned under heavy sniper fire to carry the wounded officers to safety. He picked up one and threw him over his back.

So Lofty finished the war with another medal: he was immediately awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Indeed, when he died in 1958 – of a rare blood disease he picked up in Malaya after the war while serving with the Green Howards – he had medals stretching 17 inches across his chest. Having captured Buchen, the Green Howards marched towards Lubeck – but by now there was no need to fight.

“A whole German division had taken up a position just outside Lubeck,” wrote Major George Hovington, a Scarborough teacher, in his diary. “Montgomery sent their general a message saying that if they did not surrender, he would have the RAF reduce the city to rubble. The next morning, the whole division marched smartly down the road to us and surrendered.”

The war over, 1st Battalion remained stationed in north-west Germany performing “internal security” duties until the middle of 1947.

One of those duties was at the town of Celle in early 1946 which reminded them exactly what the war had been about.

“We called into a bar at Celle for a beer,” wrote Major Hovington in his diary. “I asked the landlord what was the horrible smell in the town. He pretended not to understand, but one of the soldiers said: ‘It’s Belsen down the road. Haven’t you heard of it?’ “Everybody had heard vague rumours, but when I decided to investigate, I could not believe my eyes.

“There were enormous ditches in which naked dead bodies lay 20ft deep, sprawled haphazardly over each other, covered in lime. The stench was so nauseating I was promptly sick and beat a hasty retreat.

“Despite the horror, the place had an eerie calm, almost an aura of eternity, probably because no birds sang.”