1944: Charles Danson, a Berlin-born British Army tank gunner & wireless operator, sees action in the Battle of Arnhem:

The gunner & wireless operator used to change over. I'd been the wireless operator for quite some time, so I said to my comrade ‘Let’s change over now’.

He said ‘It’s getting late, don’t let’s bother now, it will soon get dark anyway, then we go back’.

I said ‘I’m happy & willing to change with you’.

‘No’, he said, ‘Let’s leave it as it is’.

The lieutenant gave the orders to advance. An anti-tank gun had been firing all day. But it stopped firing. So they told us to advance, & no sooner did we advance, that anti-tank gun opened fire.

The tank was hit, there were huge flames. I jumped out. The gunner, who hadn’t wanted to change with me was killed outright. If we had changed it would have been me.

The commander was killed outright, the driver was also injured. We jumped out. As soon as we jumped out the tank went up in flames, & I felt something sort of streaming down here, & could see a bit of blood, but you are of course in shock so I didn’t pay much attention to it.

We sat somewhere for half an hour, the firing died down, I thought I could recall where the other tanks were. I said to my comrade in arms—he hadn't died, was either asleep or fainted or something—I said to him ‘I will see if I can find our tanks, so that we can rejoin.

So I started crawling forward because I was also injured in my leg & finger & eye. I started crawling forward. Suddenly, the little bush in front of me opened, & two German officers emerged holding their pistol at me.

There’s no use being a hero in situations like that. I put my hands up & was taken prisoner.

One officer said ‘What’s the matter with his eye?’

The other said ‘Das Aug’is pfutsch’, that eye is gone.

I had a terrible headache & said to one of the officers, in English of course, ‘I’ve got a terrible headache, I’d like an aspirin’.

He said to his fellow officer: ‘Have you got an aspirin?’

The other one said: ‘No, I’ve got a peppermint’, in German ‘Give him that, he won’t know the difference’. Of course I understood every word.

They put me in the sidecar & started driving away. I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I remember: sitting in a train between the two officers. We pulled up at the station, I looked out. The sign said: ‘Hameln. Willkommen in der Rattenfängerstadt’. Hamelin, welcome to the city of ratcatchers. I was very scared they'd find out I was a German Jew.

We got to Düsseldorf, they took me to an army hospital. I was the only English prisoner of war.

An eye surgeon came in to examine me. He told me that that eye had gone, that he had to do something to remove what was left & that the next morning I had to have an operation.

The next morning, the eye surgeon, I will never forget his name, Dr Hoffmann, came in & said in German ‘Good morning, let me look at you’. I answered in English. He said ‘No, no, no, Mr Danson, you can speak German perfectly well: you spoke German in your anaesthetic. With an English accent, of course’.

It flashed through my mind immediately: this man cannot be a Nazi, nobody speaks his mother tongue with a foreign accent. So by that he gave me to understand, that if I spoke German, ever, I should continue to do so with an English accent.

I was in that hospital for several days. They very kindly arranged for me to have an artificial eye fitted. If it hadn’t been done the socket would have shrunk, I would have never been able to get one in.

Then I was sent to a German prisoner of war camp. It was called Fallingbostel, Stalag 11B, in the Lüneburg Heath, very lovely surroundings, actually. I stayed there until we were liberated by the Desert Rats in April 45.

Lüneburg Heath

Memories

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