Ron Levett's memories of his time in the British Liberation Army during World War II.

Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943 and joined the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing his training as a Driver Operator he was sent to Belgium to join the British Liberation Army, where he was posted to the Royal Scots Grays and then to the Regimental Headquarters (RHQ) signals troop. After the liberation of Germany he was based in Rotenburg. This is his story.

When I returned home to Alfriston on leave I found myself at a bit of a loss. No one had experienced the things that I had or seen the dreadful sights. I was very bomb-happy and the family could not understand why I dived under the table at the slightest sound.

Granddad was the only one who really understood. Everything seemed very quiet after the excitement of battle. Rationing in England was tougher than it had been during the war, even bread and potatoes were rationed.

In spite of this, my mother, who had always been good cook, still managed to provide very tasty meals. All too soon the time was up and it was time to return to Germany.

The idyllic time at Rotenburg had to come an end and the regiment moved to the town of Husum, in Schleswig-Holstein. This is a port on the West coast of the peninsula and the barracks we moved into had been a Kriegsmarine (German Navy) installation.

The weather was by now beginning to turn colder and we were very glad of the double-glazing and central heating. The whole barracks complex was heated from a boiler room that had been built exactly like the boiler room of a warship so that the German Navy could train their stokers.

I spent most of my time in barracks and never saw the town at all. The telephone exchange had been installed in cellars of the barrack block, which the signal troop occupied and was a double exchange, also serving the offices of the local labour exchange.

There was a civilian operator on the German exchange and to break the monotony I sometimes answered calls on the civilian board. This worked fine provided the caller just asked for a number but if any other phrase was used I had to hand over to the German operator. I did, however manage to pick up some German words.

The Naval switchboard had a secrecy device fitted so that if the operator attempted to listen in to a conversation, a clicking noise was heard on the line. There was a telephone dial fitted in order for the operator to dial outside lined for a caller.

We found that if we dialled Venlo Repeaters, (A main telephone exchange in Holland,) and asked for London Trunks, we could call anywhere in England. This was very useful and we were very popular making calls for friends to their families in England. I never did find out who paid for these calls.

Our next move was to a small mining town in the Ruhr called Lintfort. Our barracks were not the usual type of barrack building at all. Enclosing a residential estate with a barbed wire fence had transformed it.

The field next to the estate had been made into a tank park for we now had tanks again. We had become a flame-thrower regiment and were equipped with Churchill Crocodiles. These vehicles had been 'moth-balled,' by covering all the parts which were likely to rust with a thick layer of grease.

Before they could be used we had to take it in turn to spend some time in the turret cleaning off the grease. Because we had to use petrol to clean off the grease after removing the bulk of it with a scraper, we were limited in the time we could remain in a confined space. People were climbing out of the tank after their session inside looking and acting as if they were drunk.

RHQ Troop was supplied with three new M24 Chaffee light tanks. These were fitted with twin V8 Cadillac engines and automatic gearboxes. When we wanted to leave camp we needed a works ticket signed by an officer to take a wheeled vehicle out, but tracked vehicles needed no works ticket so we used to take out a Chaffee. These were so fast that I have known one overtake a three-ton truck on a straight road.

We tried it in an aerodrome to see how fast the tank would go in reverse. Because of the automatic gear box the tank had as many gears in reverse as it had forward and we managed to reach forty-five miles an hour. It would not have been safe to do this on a road, but on an open field, steering backwards was no problem,

The regiment had been transferred to 22nd Armd. Brigade, so we lost our cherished Black Rat shoulder flash and had to sew in two little pieces of green felt to form a diabolo. Our vehicles, of course, had to have the same sign painted on. I don't know what happened to the remainder of 4th Armd Bde. As far as I know, they remained in Schleswig Holstein.

Our billet had been a private house. We slept in the upstairs rooms, while one of the downstairs rooms was converted into a telephone exchange. The road past our billet ran through the camp, past the main gate, which had a lifting barrier and on down into the town.

The road then crossed the main road through the town, which still had trams running along it. Further along, two houses had been requisitioned for use as the Officers and Sergeants Messes. We ran telephone lines to both of these buildings, the telephone lines having to be passed over the tramlines. Lines were also run to all squadron offices plus the Orderly Room and senior officer's offices.

A very hard winter had by now set in and although we were in a coal-mining area we had no fuel issue at all. In the cellar of our house we found a little coal but it was mostly dust. We found a way of making briquettes from the dust by pressing the dust into cakes by adding a little water.

These had to be placed very carefully onto the stove. If the cake broke it put the fire out. Food was also rather short but we found that if we went round to the cookhouse in the evening we could scrounge a supper from the cooks.

By this time the demobilisation programme was under way, based on age and length of service. Mine was a very high group and I didn't ever contemplate the length of time I still had to serve. A party of old sweats were on their way past the Orderly Room carrying their kit on the way to demob, when the RSM saw them and told them to 'smarten themselves up.'

They gave him a bit of lip, thinking that they were already civilians. He put them all under close arrest and locked them up in the Guardroom. They were released the following day. This gave a warning to all future parties.

Ron Levett, 2001