War horrors remembered (From Stroud News and Journal)

War horrors remembered

WITH rooftop chases, prison breaks and numerous brushes with death, Walter Pearce's wartime experiences sound like a Hollywood producer's dream.

But in a frank interview with SNJ reporter Will Saunders the Leonard Stanley veteran revealed why he fervently hopes there will never be another war

Walter Pearce, known to his friends as Peter, is the first to admit he is a lucky man. He is a born survivor, who came through some of the bloodiest battles of the second world war, the most destructive conflict the world has ever known, with barely a scratch.

Now living in Leonard Stanley with his wife Irene, the 89-year-old war veteran has two grown up children and five grandchildren and still enjoys an active life. Looking back on his experiences, he is still mystified as to how he survived when so many of his friends and comrades did not.

"Bullets missed me, bombs didn't hurt me, grenades didn't touch me," he said. "I was very, very lucky."

Growing up in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham, Walter Pearce was "pitchforked" into the army in 1932 at the tender age of 16. While the storm clouds gathered over Europe he served in the East Yorkshire regiment as a bandsman, playing the flute, piccolo and saxophone and getting his first taste of overseas soldiering in India.

With the advent of war in 1939 the regiment was brought back to Britain and he was retrained as a stretcher bearer, charged with bringing back the wounded from the battlefield. When war broke out, he said, the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force sent to Northern France had no idea of what was in store as the German blitzkreig engulfed Europe.

"I was expecting it to be just like the First World War," he said. "They had all the armour and we had nothing. They had tanks, we had horses. We were starved of ammunition and all sorts of things. We were unprepared."

Overwhelmed by the unstoppable German advance, Mr Pearce and his comrades fought their way to the coast, with men being killed every step of the way. "Most of the people I knew were killed, a lot of people," he said. "I was lucky."

The unit was soon cut off from the retreating British forces at Dunkirk and any hope of escape lay in going underground. Hunted by the victorious German army, Mr Pearce was helped by the French resistance and spent several incredibly dangerous months in France, joining the resistance in raids and ambushes designed to harry the Germans and their allies. On one occasion he even helped blow up a train.

But this was a long way from being an adventure. Mr Pearce would have been shot as a spy if he had been caught and each new day brought the risk of capture. He had one close shave after scrambling over rooftops to escape a German ambush. "We misjudged them," he said. "They were waiting for us but they didn't get us."

Smuggled to the coast of Brittany by the French, Walter Pearce arrived back in Plymouth in late 1940. He still has the greatest respect for the French people who risked their own lives to help him.

After six weeks leave in the UK, the last he would have for nearly four years, Walter Pearce was sent to North Africa to join the successful offensive against the Italian army.

But after the arrival of the German Afrika Korps and the legendary German commander Erwin Rommel, the Axis counterattacked, pushing the British back and capturing Walter Pearce in the process. With the help of fellow prisoners he escaped, although he is still reluctant to say how.

"They captured us and were going to send us to Italy," he said. "Some Australians said 'well, I do not think we want to go' and got us out and that is it."

Local tribesmen guided the soldiers on a gruelling two-day march through the desert back to Tobruk. But the escape to Tobruk proved to be from the frying pan into the fire as the British forces endured 14 months of savage fighting around the besieged town. Mr Pearce recalled this as a hellish experience.

"That 14 months was the hardest time of my life," he said. "Supplies were coming in bits and pieces. The perimeter was 25 miles around and 4 miles deep and we had to fight constantly. We had three thousand air raids on us in the time we were there. It was bloody hard going."

The supply situation was so bad that Allied soldiers often had to raid the German lines. On Christmas day Walter and some fellow soldiers raided an enemy supply dump for " sheer devilment" and came back with tubes of cheese and dry crackers.

By the time the troops were relieved they were ready for a rest. But when they arrived in Cairo and took their first bath in more than a year, they were dismayed to hear the allied garrison in Tobruk, where they had held out for so long, had given it up. "We were gutted," said Mr Pearce.

By the time he got to Taranto, Italy in 1943 it is no surprise that Mr Pearce, then a Sergeant, had earned the nickname 'Lucky'. In the bloody allied landings at Anzio his landing craft was sunk and a dud artillery shell landed just six feet away from him.

In all his brushes with death, Mr Pearce says he came closest in Italy, when he was sent to flush out a German sniper who had already killed several members of his unit.

"I went crawling away to where I thought he was and I could not find him anywhere," he said. "I came to a house and something seemed to tell me he was there.

"I was so nervous the sweat was pouring off me. I crept up the stairs and came to a door, which was closed. I couldn't decide whether to open it or not.

"I burst in and at the same time blasted with my sten gun and blew him out of the window."

It would be hard to imagine, for most young people today, what it must be like to shoot another human being. But for Mr Pearce and thousands like him, fighting was the only way to stay alive.

"I did not regret it. I was taught in the army 'For King and Country' and I fought for King and country all the time. I have not regretted what I did and I have done an awful lot of things I shouldn't do."

The war continued through Italy, through house-to-house fighting against German paratroopers in the last battle for the Axis stronghold of Monte Cassino, then through the last pockets of German resistance in Austria.

By the time the war ended in 1945 the surviving veterans of the pre-war army were worn out by five years of constant fighting. The war had taken its toll on Walter Pearce too.

Exhausted and haunted by the dreadful scenes he had witnessed, he was a different man to the one who had cheerfully set off to France in 1939.

So much so that when he arrived back in Grantham after the war, his own mother, who had earlier received a telegram saying he was missing believed killed, could not recognise him.

"When I got to the door I said 'Hello, don't you know me?' and she basically said 'Who are you?'. She didn't recognise me. I was tired and in a very bad state - I had been away for years. I went away as a young man and came back as a hardened veteran."

Although he settled down to a civil service job and married, the war still haunts Walter Pearce.

Every Remembrance Sunday, without fail, he journeys to the nearby war memorial in Leonard Stanley to pay his respects to the friends and comrades who were not so lucky.

"I sincerely hope there will never be another war," he said. "It is hard work. You have no idea what it is like being under threat one day and the next, up to your eyes in mud, facing bullets and shells."