Bob Jubb - Interrogation and return
Transcript
The first thing they did they put me with some officers, the major and the captain, they went down into Aachen which had just been liberated, and it was an absolute wreck. Aachen was just, there didn't seem to be one building standing. It was just all walls and ruins.
They had these American officers were in a kubelwagen, which, I'd never seen one before, and it went down into the river and the propeller, it had a shaft propeller out the back, and they just progressed across the river, and then he pulls it out of gear, pulls it into four wheel drive, and it just climbed up the bank and away we went. Marvellous bit of gear. An amphibious jeep.
Anyway, then they transferred me. They gave me an ordinary America jeep and a big black driver, and he drove me westward through Laissey to ?, and delivered me to the British.
The British officer said "My name is Colonel Bonham Carter". He said "What we'll do", he said "I want to interrogate you and see what information you've got". Then he said "We'll get you to Brussels, which has just been liberated". This they did. They drove me to Brussels, and I went into an intelligence office there, and also in that office was a Belgian paratrooper, and I said to him "Where have you come from?" He said "I've come from Arnhem". I said "I was in operation Market Garden", where General Montgomery, it was one of his failed operations, he dropped 15,000 paratroopers to take the Rhine bridges.
Of course he didn't inform the paratroopers that waitng for them was a panzer division of tanks who had just come back and were resting after being on the Russian front. So they were there to greet these paratroopers. No wonder the Arnhem bridge operation was a complete shamozzle. This paratrooper was one of them. He'd escaped westward. Obviously he had a bit of help from the locals.
Anyway, from Brussels they said "We liberated Antwerp yesterday. We'll take you to Antwerp and we'll get an aircraft to fly you back to Britain". They dumped me at Antwerp, and I got on a Dakota, and flew back to Northam in Britain, and was claimed by the British intelligence, that's in St. Johns Wood. I ended up there.
