session. All of us have stories to tell big ones and small ones. And
if we really think about it, very important ones and we should attempt
to record them so they can become legacies for our grandchildren and
great grand children. So someday they will know who we were.
In 1990 Harry relived his war story. We recorded it on paper and tape.
His memory is not as clear now with facts so he has chosen to read
part of his war experiences up leading up to the time he was captured.
Then we will play the tape … so you can hear about his prison
experience.
Harry was a Canadian soldier in WW11. Just a typical soldier one of
many trained to do the job on hand.
So here we go …
It was Sunday, Sept 3, 1939. The radio in Vancouver BC Canada had
just announced that Britain and France had declared war on Germany.
On his 18th birthday he volunteered and joined the Canadian army. He
took basic and advanced infantry training in the province of Alberta.
In 1944 he trained in motorized transport and mechanics in the
providence of Ontario…. He spent hour's night driving in convoys. He
was then able to draw a little more money called trades pay.
Introducing now Private Harry George Botham K54793.
On June 6, 1944 I was 3 days out of Halifax, Nova Scotia on a troop
ship jammed with Canadian troops we were on our way to Liverpool
England. Over the ships loud speaker General Dwight Eisenhower
announced "This is D-Day … American, English and Canadian troops are
landing on the shores of France." Four days later our Canadian ship
landed at Liverpool. I was nineteen.
I wrote home to my Mother at that time that on crossing I had played
150 games of whist. The food was pretty bad but I could get tinned
peaches, pears and sardines at the canteen cheap. Cigarettes were 25
for 10 cents. But I was too late to get any. But I had 7 packages of
cig. papers, and requested she send some tobacco so I could roll my
own.
Upon landing in Liverpool we were loaded into trucks. The destination
was to the Midlands of England, near the city of Nottingham. This was
Robin Hood country; Sherwood Forest was near by. Within a few days, I
was training to handle Universal Bren Gun Carriers. They were open
topped tanks.
It wasn't long before I was crossing the English Channel landing near
Juno Beach, where 21,400 Canadian Infantry landed on D-Day. On
landing on a floating dock, I could see a kilted uniform of a Scottish
piper. I could hear the shrill of the bagpipes. It was very stirring.
It made me realize I was going into battle very shortly and I said a
prayer for my safety and protection.
The war was raging in Western France. It was now the third week of
August, 1944. Replacements were needed. I had been assigned to the
Calgary Highlander Battalion.
We were loaded into trucks and headed out through the heavily
bombarded city of Caen in France. The Germans fought 4 weeks
furiously to stop the Canadians and English troops from advancing
there. This was my first exposure to the horrors of war. Being the
age I was I admit now I was a little scared. The city was flattened.
My truck convoy moved on through the city of Rouen then in a
northwesterly direction to the city of Dieppe on the French coast. On
Sept 4th we arrived at the outskirts.
The next couple of days, non-commissioned officers gave us orientation
instructions. The guys there had been in the thick of things for 5
weeks. I had to prove I was capable of handling a sten gun and a bren
gun ( both automatic weapons), a piat, which is a projectile infantry
anti tank, and of course the infantry rifle.
Once indoctrinated, we were told we were entitled to a daily ration of
rum. HUM this took some of the seriousness out of the brief
training sessions, and put us all at a little more at ease.
So I got my first shot of rum when we lined up for some "Hot" chow.
I took a swig. Well now … my throat contracted and my eyes watered.
I stared at my feet, holding back the need to gasp for air. I moved
forward, trying my best to act as if I'd done that a dozen times
before. When I thought no one was looking, I dumped the rum ration
into my tea. But then I had to drink that damn strong tea.
I can't recall during the next 40 days and nights that I ever got
another rum ration or a hot meal.
We ate from the rations that we carried with us, as we constantly
advanced forward through France, Belgium and Holland.
A couple days later we were ready to move forward along with 140 new
replacements to the front line at the seaport of Dunkirk.
I was attached to "A" Company of the Calgary Highlanders. The Calgary
Highlanders had 2 sister regiments. The Regiment de Maisoneuve (Maises
for short) and the Black Watch. These 3 regiments often worked
together in actual conflict with the enemy. One would move forward to
engage "Gerry", dig in, and the other 2 would pass through the
established area to re-engage the enemy.
To take the offensive so often as the Calgary Highlanders did, they
suffered more casualties than any other Canadian Infantry Regiment in
Normandy and Northwest Europe.
The last days in early June of 1940 the 1st. Siege of Dunkirk and the
battle of France occurred. Maybe you remember this action from the
movie called Mrs. Miniver staring Greer Garson. The facts behind the
movie were that German tanks had pushed the English and French armies
to the beaches. 300,000 troops were trapped there. The only way out
was by sea. The call went out up and down the English coast for help.
Every boat large and small crossed over and into Dunkirk. For the
next 9 days trapped men were rescued and taken to England, leaving all
their equipment behind.
Now 4 years later on Sept.7, 1944, a second siege was about to begin on Dunkirk.
That dawn came cold and wet. The surrounding countryside of Dunkirk
near Montreuil, StFolquin, Bourgville and Loon Page was flat. Dikes
had been blown and much of the countryside was flooded. Here we met
stiff resistance. The Germans heavy long-range naval guns were
terrifying to say the least. So much for my first exposure to the
game at hand. I talked to God a lot.
We stayed 2 full weeks under miserable conditions; cold wet weather
and flooded dikes with foul-smelling, polluted water. The Germans were
determined to hold on to the outskirts of Dunkirk as long as possible.
They didn't want the allies to use this seaport.
My knowledge of where I was in this front line was very limited. All
I knew was: to stay alert, take orders, drive Germans from whatever
position they were holding. What I didn't know at the time was, that
there were 10,000 Germans defending Dunkirk.
My first time in real action here, I was assigned as the number 2 man
on the Bren Gun. My job was to carry and supply cartridges of
ammunition, as the number 1 man did the firing. Late in the
afternoon, a German sniper wounded number one.
At the sight of him, I had trouble trying to stop my entire body from
shaking. I was so scared.
The rationalization of kill, or be killed, settled in fast. I got
hold of myself in a damn hurry as I called to Jesus for help.
I picked up the gun and fired repeatedly into the windows of all the
buildings. To this day, when I think about it, I can still hear the
glass shattering.
During the day, patrols made up of 4 men and a Corporal where sent out
into no-man's land to locate the enemy's position. One man carried the
telephone equipment. One of my trips out on these reconnaissance
patrols, we came across a trip wire stretched across the road. We
carefully stepped over it. Sometime later, as we back-tracked about
150 yards past this spot, we turned around to see 2 men running
towards us, waving at us to stop. They ran into the wire. There were
2 flashes and 2 explosions. They were killed.
I lost my best friend the same way. Only he stepped on a land mine … 6
weeks later.
Day after day, the Germans constantly shelled our positions with very
little let up.
We were very slowly moving ahead towards the railway station at
Bourbougville. Our destination was Loon Plage. After 10 days of
constant insanity, there was a brief let up. And our regiment moved
back through the night to a concentrated area. An advanced party of
English troops moved in to take over.
We were loaded into trucks and our convoy moved out to the Belgium
border to Antwerp, were we rested for 2 days at Wommelgem outside of
Antwerp.
Back in action again, we crossed the Albert Canal and were on the move
to a position at the Turnout Canal where Gerry was dug in and fighting
furiously to defend their positions. These were important water
highways across the northern part of Belgium. Once taken over by us,
we pushed ahead north to the town of Hoogerheide and Woesendrecht,
close to the Holland border.
Here we again ran into very stiff resistance from seasoned Germans who
were using heavy self-propelled guns, as well as 88mm tank guns.
Horrible noise things. For several days, I was acting as a runner
for the "A" company headquarters.
On Oct. 9th I was carrying a message to a small group of men at the
forward crossroad, telling them to pull back. As I reached the area,
Gerry started shelling. I could see about 20 Gerries moving in my
direction. So I ducked into the yard of a corner house, where I found
the 5 men from my platoon dug in. But it was now too late to pull
back so we all headed into the house, and down into the root cellar.
Gerry proceeded to shell the house, setting it on fire.
In a short time we could hear their voices close by calling out to
each other. It didn't take long before the cellar door was hot and we
could hear the fire roaring over our heads. We decided we had to get
out through a small window at ground level. We drew lots to see who
would go out first. One by one we crawled through the window past the
garden to the dark side of the hedge. The decision was made to circle
around to where we now estimated our own lines would be. It was dark,
thanks to God there was no moon.
We moved single file across maybe 3 miles of farmland, most of the
night, looking for a place to hide before the morning light. Finally,
we came across a deserted shell of a barn.
By now, the 6 of us were deadbeat, and we fell asleep in the loft.
Oct 10th. dawned, with a helmeted uniformed soldier pointing a gun at
us and yelling "COME – MITT - COME -MITT".
He didn't sound the least bit friendly. We became his prisoners.
Once we were interrogated we were taken from this location in Holland
in an open touring car, and brought back across the border into
Belgium to Oud'Gastel. There we were loaded into a boxcar, for a 2-day
ride up to northern Holland.
We were kept in a POW building in Amersfort, where other prisoners
were. There was little food, we were all hungry and on edge.
On Oct. 21st, all the collected prisoners were ordered into boxcars,
and the train headed east towards Germany. I don't know how many men
were in each boxcar, but we were crowded. There was little room to
stretch. The train would stop somewhere and we were allowed out once a
day to do our toilet. We ate black bread and little of anything else.
I can remember that clearly because I was hungry.
The train ride took 5 days. We moved by day and by night. We talked
about the strong possibility of being attacked by our own air forces,
as the train moved through the daylight hours.
It was such a relief to be out of our cramped quarters, because a
boxcar had no windows, only louvers. There were several on each side,
approximately 7 feet above the floor. These openings let in some
light and air. There were problems for the men, when they needed to
urinate between train stops.
A can was passed around. Then someone would reach up and try, in a
moving train, to tip the contents out the louvered opening. It was
humiliating.
We finally reached the end of the journey.
It was a prisoner-of-war camp called Stalag 11B, at Fallingbostel,
about 40 miles north of Hanover.
The rest of my story Ill play for you on tape.
Put on the TAPE I was liberated on May 11, 1945. I stayed in a
hospital in England to be treated for malnutrition. I was 6ft.1" and
weighed 120 pounds.
When Red Cross parcels arrived and divided in the POW camp, what we
got would be so rich to eat. From lack of food, we got hives and were
sick.
Fleas and lice were constantly with us. Someone told me once that if
you have lice,which was common, you wouldn't have fleas. I didn't
find this to be an accurate statement.
After I war I learned that the black bread we ate was made up of
bruised rye grain, Ground sugar beets, tree flour which was saw dust,
and minced leaves & straw.
Also, after the war, I learned that the odd smell we smelled when we
were at ground level at the salt mine came from the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp about 10 to 12 killomometers away. That was where
many thousands of Jewish people were put to death.
I've come to the conclusion, after reading several books about my
battalion. That maybe, I was one of the lucky ones, having been taken
prisoner. Because many of the men in my battalion were killed on the
day that I was captured.
I thanked God back then for my life just like I thank God every day of
my life now.
AND THAT'S MY STORY THANKYOU
