Do you really want to read this????
The Gates of Hell.
This is no place for a Dorset boy!

What followed next can only be described as The very essence of war, a living nightmare, a nightmare of sheer agony.

Put into an army ambulance with other wounded in racks on each side and in a very confined space, the inside had been blacked out so that we had to lay there on our stretchers in pitch black darkness. The Journey in this iron square box of an ambulance, took us over the uneven war damaged and cobbled roads all the way to Eindhoven, in the South of Holland. This journey was the nearest thing to hell on earth that it is possible to imagine, with my broken bones grating and the indescribable pain of my back injuries.

In the beginning, I had been determined not to join in the moaning and groaning with pain, but it was not long before I was crying out in pain just like the other wounded, so much pain that it was not possible to talk to the other men.

Hell and back is not an exaggeration. Nor is the term Nightmare, I still find it very difficult to convey just how ghastly that journey was. I never knew who the other wounded were, and I do not think it was possible for the others to have survived the journey.
As we drove on, the groans had became fainter and fainter and eventually stopped. Yet, still this square steel box of an ambulance, trundled along over the broken and cobbled war time roads with its precious load of three dead men and one nearly dead.

This is the other side of war, being badly wounded, a side that nobody wants to know about. Arriving at what I think was Eindhoven? I was put into a little cupboard full of cardboard boxes with my stretcher balanced precariously on top of them, with just enough room inside the cupboard, still lying on the same stretcher that I had been on for many hours, during the journey the blood had soaked through everything, even under my back and into the stretcher. So bad, that thick congealed blood stuck me to the stretcher.

By now the pain had become unbearable, given morphine, the pain would still not subside and a nurse told me, "you must not have more, you will become an addict". Transferred later to a small ward with beds crammed all round the room, several other wounded were there. Trying to get to sleep was impossible, the pain being bad enough, some of the other men kept waking up, screaming.

Picture this scene, if you can! A small dark, square shaped ward, with all the curtains drawn, dimly lit from a small red light in the centre of the ceiling, The overpowering, sickly warm stench of human blood pervaded everything, with beds crammed in, and almost touching, men with terrible wounds and with limbs missing. Some men, motionless, wide eyed, still, silently staring at the ceiling. God knows! what thoughts held them in this silent manacled iron grip.

Blood stains everywhere, some men had thrown the covers off the beds in their agony, some sitting up leaning on an elbow silently gazing into space, the low moaning of men in great pain, your own continuous and unremitting pain of back, leg, and knee injuries. Some men talked in their sleep, often in a conversational tone, ending with a scream or a loud shout of pain, or despair.

Sleep, because of pain, was only possible for very short periods when exhaustion overtook us, then! To be wakened by the blood curdling screams and shouts of men who had suffered the agony, not only of body, but also of mind. Men, who had seen the worst of the hell of war. Dante’s Inferno had nothing on this. For here, was a glimpse into what lay beyond the ‘Gates of Hell’

For me, there is no escape from that vision, for many years I dreamed about, and relived the memory of that dimly lit ward, that ward that still exists in my mind, still there on the pathway that leads to the ’ Gates of Hell’

Even today, some 59 years on, that ward still remains with me, every detail, sharp and clearly defined. It was a place that any sane person would run screaming from, saying “For Gods sake! don’t make me go back in there”

Next day, still laying in my own thick, dried, and congealed blood that by now had firmly stuck me to the stretcher, I was driven to Eindhoven airport and was flown back immediately to England in a Dakota ambulance plane, arriving at Croydon airport, I was whisked straight into what was then an Airforce Hospital ? Straight along the corridors and into the operating theatre. I still remember being taken through the portals of the Hospital, still on my stretcher and being hurried along towards the operating theatre, my recall stops there!

When I came round, I was lying in bed with clean white sheets and in a large ward all bright and clean with a nurse bending over me. As I came round, I found that my whole body was encased in plaster, All of me, from the tip of my toes to my neck, the whole body! My legs, everything, the legs had been set slightly apart and a hole for natural functions to take place! they had a flap cut in the plaster to treat my left knee, some of that was still in Holland. A complete body plaster, rather like a mummy case. The name of this? I believe it is called a "Spica" it certainly spiked you, the only part free was my arms.

The nurses, Ah yes, the Angels. The kindness and care that those angels gave me was beyond praise, they spent their own money on me and brought me little presents, I remember those angels with tremendous gratitude, they even wrote my letters for me and would not even take the price of the stamp. I just wish that it was possible for me to express my gratitude to them, sadly, I shall never be able to thank those wonderful girls. But! I will never forget those Angels.
Sapper