01-10-10, 11:11
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MLU Administrator
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 14,826
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Tallest German surrenders to short soldier in Second World War picture
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...r-picture.html
Quote:
A picture capturing the moment that the tallest member of the German army surrendered to a diminutive Allied soldier has emerged 66 years on.
Corporal Bob Roberts was overseeing the surrender of dozens of enemy soldiers during the Battle of Normandy when the 7ft 6ins German loomed into his view.
Cpl Roberts, who stood two feet below him at 5ft 6ins, had the daunting job of frisking the German lance corporal for weapons before taking him prisoner.
Out of shot of the photo, Cpl Robert's comrades and even the captured German soldiers sniggered together at the sight of the little and large encounter.
It was a moment of lightness during the grim duty of war.
For just a few minutes before the picture was taken, Cpl Roberts faced a life-or-death duel with another German soldier who pulled out a pistol as he pretended to surrender.
Luckily, he raised his gun in the nick of time and shot the enemy soldier dead.
The photo has been unearthed by an amateur historian who sent it to Cpl Roberts, now aged 87 and living in Bournemouth, Dorset, in the hope he could identify the Allied serviceman.
But the great-grandfather went one better than that and instantly recognised himself in the photo.
Holding the picture, Cpl Roberts said: "I didn't take a lot of notice of this guy at the time because I was so focused on what the Germans were doing after what had happened to me.
"I just passed the prisoners on one after the other after searching them.
"But my mates who were watching the rest of the men saw this giant of a guy approach me and I was aware they and the Germans were having a good laugh.
"The Germans were saying that he was the tallest man in the German army, he was 7ft 6ins tall.
"My mates took some pictures of me with him with a camera they had taken from the Germans. Luckily he didn't give me any aggravation.
"I couldn't believe it when I received the photo after all these years. It took me back to a moment of light-heartedness so soon after I had been a blink of an eye from death."
Cpl Roberts, who was 21 at the time, was a member of the North Shore New Brunswick Regiment of the Canadian army and stormed Juno Beach on D-Day in June 1944.
After seeing action in the town of St Aubin - he helped take out a Nazi machine gun nest that was wreaking havoc down on the beach - his company moved north towards Calais.
The men took the cliffs above five pillboxes from which the Germans were bombing Dover 22 miles away with huge guns.
After a four day stand off the Germans waved a white flag from one of the bunkers.
Cpl Roberts, a retired painter and decorator, said: "They had been bombing Dover with shells as big as barrels and we had them surrounded; there was no way out for them.
"It wasn't wise for a whole platoon to go down to capture them as they could have been bluffing and shot us all up.
"So I was chosen to take a small section of seven men to take them prisoner.
"Dozens and dozens of them came out and I just shouted out 'does anyone speak English?'
"This officer came forward and I told him to tell his men to lay down their arms before coming to me so I could frisk them.
"I started to search him and suddenly he put his right hand in his pocket and pulled out a .38 pistol. I raised my gun and shot him in the eye and he went down.
"After that there wasn't any trouble from any of them, especially from this tall chap."
Cpl Roberts carried on fighting with his regiment through Belgium and Holland until February 1945 when he was badly injured in his right leg by a piece of shrapnel at Kappeln on the Holland/German border.
After the war he married wife Vera, who he still lives with today at the War Memorial Homes in Bournemouth.
They have four children, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
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Regards,
Hanno
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