50th Anniversary of D-Day article interview with Vic
" I often feel it was a dreadful waste. It had to be done but it didn't put an end to fighting all over the world. In wartime the people who suffer are the ones who shouldn't. Those who organise wars always seem to come out all right." In 1944 at an age when the young of today would be regarded as little more than adolescents, Pte Vic Edwards and thousands like him were pushing the German army back through the European continent which it had overrun with such apparent ease in the years before. Vic, who was born in Barnsley and went to Bibury school, was called up in April 1943 at the age of 18 and a year later was sent to newhaven as part of the invasion force. He did not arrive in France on D-Day but was among those who followed on as the campaign progressed to replace the many soilders killed or wounded in the front line. When they landed, he hardly knew any of his fellow liberators since, having originally joined the 7th Glosters, he found himself with the 2nd Battalion the South Wales Borderers before getting back to the 2nd Glosters who were in the same brigade. By a great co-incidence his platoon commander was Sergeant Fred Trinder , MM , who also came from Bibury. Vic and his fellow soldiers were in the rifle brigade which meant they were in the front line. They advanced as far as Falaise before making there way to Le Harve and then through Belgium and Holland and finally to Berlin. Vic remembers feeling great sympathy for the civilians who lost there lives in the bombing of Le Harve. He never actually spoke to any French civillians but he did find an English woman from Sheffield when heading towards the town. Of the invasion Vic says: " It was a bit scary. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. But we were there and had to make the best of it. The worst thing was digging trenches and then having to move on. Sometimes we'd dig several in the course of a day." "When we were marching through Europe one of our main concerns was self-preservation - and there were a lot of near misses. We felt that we had a job to do and we had to get it done but we had no sense of being heroes. We just wanted to get the war won and to get home and out of the army. You had to be lucky to survive and those of us who did counted ourselves very lucky." Vic remembers how the Dutch civilians, particulary those in the north of the country, suffered dreadfully and many of them died of starvation. The Glosters alone took the Dutch towns of Oud Gastel and Stampersgat and the survivors of that engagement return to Holland for a reunion every four years while the Dutch visit England in between. " We really are treated like heroes when we go over," said Vic " And the people of Stampersgat look after the graves of Corporal Dennis Lee who was killed there and of Colonel Butterworth who also lost his life." Vic and his regiment went into Germany and ended up in Berlin which they didn't leave until near the end of 1946. They returned to Gloucester, and for a short time Vic was sent to Jamaica before being demobbed. " At least i missed the winter of 1947," he said. After the war he joined Gloucestershire County council and drove their lorries for 37 years. He played football for the regiment after the war and played for Bibury for many years. Half a century on he says : " I often feel it was a dreadful waste. It had to be done but it didn't put an end to fighting all over the world. In wartime the people who suffer are the ones who shouldn't. Those who organise wars allways seem to come out all right." The war changed the lives of everybody who took part. We went out to Normandy looking like young lads and we came home as experienced men. We were lucky though, when we were out there because we were winning and we had air superiority, not like in the First World War where they had to make such an effort to advance a few yards. "Although when we first landed and heard the guns i wondered what i'd let myself in for. An even worse was the mosquitoes. Anyone who was in Normandy will remember them." Vic and other members of the of the former Gloster Regiment will be doing their celebrating in Holland on October 28 and 29, the dates when Stampersgat and Oud Gasel were liberated. And they will be treated with as much warmth as when they took their tanks in 50 years ago.
Last edited by maverick; 03-07-08 at 11:30.
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30-06-08, 00:23
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