wounded or captured and in total it seems that some 60 plus DLI men were killed and many more wounded and made Prisoner of War.
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After being seriously wounded in the stomach by a German bullet during the advance, Tom Tunney's Bren No 2 George Forster didn't see him again for 46 years--at a Battalion Reunion in Durham in 1989.
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Pte Forster made his way back to the British positions and the Regimental Aid Post with the aid of a 'bomb happy' shell-shocked man from D Company. The last man he remembers seeing on the battlefield from 16 DLI was RSM E Thomasson, who was back with the ammunition supplies. The RSM asked, 'What are they doing up at the front?'
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Only a badly wounded man could get away with his reply: 'Bloody well get up there and look!' I knew he couldn't do owt about it!'
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The Germans treated their prisoners fairly, not least by pointing out where their own minefields were.
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Tom Tunney
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'They seemed all right. There was one Officer we met after, he took us back. We carried one of our lads, he was wounded. There was four of us. There was a gas cape and we put him on the gas cape and carried him all the way back. And a couple of miles back they had like a little field hospital. They had their wounded and ours in these tents. Zip up, like studded together. They could make streets of tents with them. And there was a track and on one side of the track there was Jerries and on the other side there was English. With their rifles and tin hats and bits of wood, they were buried. Well, that was over the three days, that.'
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Pte Syd Shutt of B Company passed through the same casualty clearing station while helping to carry a dead DLI man to the same burial area. He remembers seeing the German medics eating captured British rations of tinned steak and kidney pudding. He also recalls the German doctor spinning a coin to choose between a seriously wounded British and German soldier for a space aboard the little Fiesler Storch spotter plane which was busily flying out casualties back to the main German hospital at Ferryville. The coin favoured the British man.
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Tom Tunney's friend from civvie street, Norman Cook was also in the Platoon and also made a POW that morning.
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'Norman was in another Section, he was took prisoner the same morning. I met him at the back. When we got back behind the lines they put us all in like a big barn.'
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The Germans took their new prisoners' cigarettes.
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'Oh aye. They got us back and they lined us all up, went through our pockets and I had a couples of 20s. Why everybody had. They took them. "Kamerad!' For you wounded!" For our mates--so they said. Well they would too, I suppose.'
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The Frontline troops didn't take anything.
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'No, we were further back. There was one officer, one of them took his watch off him. He was playing hell with the bloody Germans. A lot of them could speak English and he says: 'He took my watch!' And he got it back!
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'Another one, he took my glasses when he was going through my pockets. I
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had my glasses in. He took them out [they were gold plated]. And then it was
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on a night when we were in the big barn and he must have shoved them in to
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somebody, opened the door and shoved them in and somebody had them. Well, my name was inside and they shouted my name out: "Anybody in here
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