Transcript
The big push in Arnhem land when that happened that set our spirits a bit low and then it seemed a long time to us, after that, before we were finally released by the Russians.
The night before we could see the fighting in the distance and the Germans, during the night, of course, disappeared and the Russians then came through.
First of all, the Cossacks on horseback with just a gun, no saddle. They were the first wave. They came through then another lot, with the tanks and armour and so forth but they left us more or less to ourselves so we had to then go out and roam for a month looking for and finding food and we'd come across many times, two Germans holed up in a big shed and the Russians would be surrounding them and the Germans would kill quite a few Russians before they'd be murdered but they hated each other that much it was a pleasure to kill each other.
We didn't know what hate was until we dealed with them but then, towards the end of that, the Russians rounded all of us up and put us in a camp in a place called Riesa and five of us decided something was fishy and cut a hole in the fence, we were pretty expert at that, and cut a hole in the fence and made our way back to the American lines so that was how we were liberated. We were taken to a place called Halle which was the American hospital centre and we couldn't believe the white bread and things like that because we'd never seen anything like that for a long time, so it was, they built us up for a while then we were flown to Brussels and then from Brussels we spent a night there. Then the English flew us back to England.
