s a For John Laming, the task was not so much fighting the war, as picking up the casualties. And they might be of any nationality, British, Canadian, Polish, German or French.
John was an ambulance driver. And a lesson he learned early on, was that you had to be careful who you put in back. “After the French Canadians landed, several were captured by the Germans and shot,” he said. “So, you wouldn’t put a French Canadian in the back with a German or there would be trouble. Neither would you put a Polish soldier in with a German.”
John was aged 18 and living in Chislehurst when he was called up in 1942. When I met him, he and his wife Betty lived at Rough Common near Canterbury. They had been childhood sweethearts.
After a spell with the Royal Artillery, he went into the Service Corps where he learned to drive a range of military vehicles – Bren gun carriers, lorries, utility trucks, tank transporters and so on. This led to his being appointed second driver, ferrying Sherman tanks between Liverpool and Salisbury Plain.
“I was transferred to the Ambulance Company at St Ives near Cambridge,” he said. “In May 1944 we began to waterproof our vehicles by putting a substance like plasticine over all the electrical components. The exhaust was extended with a pipe that went up and over the top. We tested everything by driving into a lake.”
Shortly before D-Day the ambulances were driven to the Thameside port of Tilbury, and loaded onto the Empire General, a Canadian ship. It arrived off Juno Beach three days after D-Day, and anchored, with the battleship Warspite firing salvoes over them, and a couple of rocket ships launching missiles, either side.
“We were just waiting for space on the beach for us to land on,” said John. “That night we were bombed and a boat near us was sunk. Next day we transferred to a landing craft and went ashore at Bernieres.
“A track that had been cleared of mines had been marked by strips of white bandages, and we drove between them. The chap in front of me went into a shell hole full of water, but we couldn’t stop to help him. We had to keep our engines revving. He wasn’t in danger.
“An NCO on a motorcycle led us to a big field a few miles away, where we stopped and took off all the waterproofing. Then we had to dig a foxhole to sleep in. At this stage the fighting was only a few miles away. Eventually there were about 25 ambulances in the field.”
The next day they started work, transferring wounded Canadians to the coast, from where they were transported to a ship offshore by amphibious DUKW craft. Ambulances were officially supposed to carry four casualties, one on each bunk, but a fifth could be carried on the floor. Two walking wounded could travel in the front with the driver.
“Most of the injuries were bullet and shrapnel wounds,” John said. “But there were some terrible burns, and limbs torn off. One chap we carried was very light. He had lost a leg, a foot and an arm after stepping on a mine. Unthinkingly I said: ‘Christ Jack, you’ve had a bad time,’ and he started crying. I could have bitten my tongue off.
“We stayed in this area about ten days, making five trips a day. The action was all around us. During operations such as Goodwood and Epsom you were working your bollocks off. At one time I didn’t sleep for two days. I used to have the windscreen up so the rush of air would keep me awake and sometimes I would sing hymns to stop myself from dropping off. Eventually I drove into an orchard and just fell asleep at the wheel.”
On one occasion John was carrying French casualties, three men and two girls, after the British artillery mistakenly shelled a village. He was travelling in company with a driver he knew from home, Maurice Kravis, whose father owned New Cross Dog Track.
“We got to the hospital at Bayeux, but they would only accept the male casualties,” he said. “We had to take the girls to a convent, arriving about midnight. A nun came to the door, but said they couldn’t accept them because they were full. We threatened to leave the girls there anyway, so they had to take them in.”
On another occasion when John was driving in company with Maurice, they took a wrong turn and ended up in the Bocage country, driving down narrow lanes with high banks and hedges on either side. All they could see was what was ahead and what was behind.
“There was a group of American infantrymen walking along the side of the road,” said John. “Someone called out ‘Tiger Tiger’ and they all lay flat. Up ahead we noticed two Tiger tanks at a crossing. I was dead scared and began reversing, terrified that I was going to run over American soldiers.
“As I was doing this, I could see one of the Tigers had started to swing its turret round. Because of the high banks and the narrowness of the road it couldn’t complete the manoeuvre and drove on. It was a very nasty moment. I nearly reversed into a jeep with a very angry American major on board, threatening to report us for putting his men in danger. Fortunately, we heard no more about it.”
Once the breakout from Caen had been achieved, John’s unit moved north. By now they were attached to the Welsh Guards. By September 3rd they had reached Brussels, where the main hospital had been taken over by Germans. The ambulance unit had to ferry them to a railway station, a quarter of a mile away, so allied forces could take over.
On to the Netherlands, and to Driel, on the banks of the Rhine near Arnhem, where troops who had taken part in the battle were retreating across the river. “They either pulled themselves across on a rope, or else they just swam,” said John. “We couldn’t show any lights, and were guided down a ramp to the river by military police officers with lighted cigarettes.
“We were being shelled all the time. These men were all soaking wet. We took them to a casualty clearing station just south of Nijmegan. I don’t think any of them were injured. They rode on the bonnet as well as inside the vehicle. They were just so glad to have got away.
“One incident I often think about,” said John, “was while I was carrying four Germans from the 12th Panzer, Hitler Youth. These were feared bastards. They often made false surrenders, only to open fire when they got close. They also shot prisoners using dumdum bullets.
“We were held up by a convoy of 50 or 60 Sherman tanks. I decided to read a copy of Stars and Stripes, the American forces newspaper, which my aunt and uncle sent me. There was a story about the Hitler bomb plot. I had two of these Hitler Youth in the cab with me and showed one of them the story, telling him: ‘Hitler kaput’.
“He said it was just American propaganda. Then he asked me what would happen to Hitler if Germany was kaput. So, I huffed on the windscreen and drew a picture of some gallows. He was a big arrogant fellow, but he burst into tears. I had to pass round my cigarettes to calm him. As I drove off, he was quietly humming a German song.”
One night John took his ambulance to the edge of Buchenwald concentration camp. It was about a week after it had been liberated by the Americans. They were supposed to pick up four people who would be flown to England. By the time they got there, one of John’s passengers was dead. Another was seriously ill with dysentery and couldn’t be moved. But they were able to carry the remaining two out.
“We never discovered who they were, and assumed they must be scientists or something,” he said. “We didn’t see much at Buchenwald, but it stunk. There were a few people floating about. They looked like living skeletons.”
Eventually John became a casualty himself. “This was after I went into Germany just outside Bremen,” he said. “I went over a mine. We were told to keep a sandbag for our feet to rest on to protect us, should a mine explode, and fortunately I had kept mine in place. Most drivers threw them out. It was the sandbag which saved my life.
“I didn’t know much about what happened, but I was flown as a stretcher case on a Dakota back to Brussels. From there was taken to a hospital at Louvaine, in an ambulance similar to the one I had been driving. I recovered from my injuries but caught diphtheria. When I recovered, I was sent home, expecting to go to the Far East. But the Americans dropped the atom bomb, so I ended up in Egypt. I remained in the Mediterranean hunting members of the infamous Israeli Stern gang.”
After the War John got a job as a draughtsman with Vickers Armstrong, at Dartford. He later worked for Vidor at Erith designing packaging equipment, and later still for GEC designing steam turbines. He ended up a project manager for Marley, near Maidstone.