The Ceasefire Order is Issued
Heroes Remember
The Ceasefire Order is Issued
Let me tell you something about Winston Churchill.
They make a lot of fun of him but
he said one time that set the theme of the
whole war, he said, “The Germans know they must
defeat us here in these Islands or
lose the war because if they do not beat us
we are going to beat them!”
And that was easy enough.
We had gone through Holland and
then we were up in Germany;
we had captured Weener and Bunde,
we were outside of Emden when on the 4th of May
a civilian asked to come in through the
Chaudière’s Regiment’s outpost,
he said he had been sent from Orrick
to talk surrender.
So these talks were going on and
we got two very strange messages.
One of them said, now how did that go?
It said, “Hold all present positions but
take no offensive action.”
We used to say, “What the heck does that mean?”
And then came the order,
“All artillery units will cease fire,
empty guns and stand down.”
That was dumbfounding because that meant
that the guns were no longer needed and
obviously the war was over and
the war ended on the 5th of May,
three days before the war ended anywhere else,
two million Germans surrendered
in Northwest Europe.
But what really brought it through to
me that the war had ended was the next day
I was taking the wireless vehicle down to
divisional headquarters.
Nobody was on the road except a few
displaced persons when I met
an entire German infantry division,
fully armed coming in to the surrender
point to lay down their weapons.
Well, I knew damn well that there would be
a hot head that would say here’s our
chance to take another one with him but,
you know, I drove past eight thousand armed
Germans and not a threat was made and
the day before we were being paid to
kill each other on site.
And that really meant the war was over,
for me that was how it ended.
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