Beginning to Sense the End of the War

Actually I was beginning to see the end of the war but I wasn’t sure how much further ahead it was but things changed so that there wasn’t the same pressure that there was. It seemed to have ended with the Falaise Gap which was back in France and freeing France at the end of August or liberating if you like so the French would come in and take over instead of the Patton army going into Paris, the French people were able to recover their own country because it had all been over in August. So we bashed on through, the whole army of course, not just me, through Belgium and Holland and ended up in Germany and then back into Holland before it was all over but getting into Holland was a period of some relief but not totally because it was tough, tough getting across the waters of the Scheldt estuary with what went on in that period of time, you know, with the shelling that the Germans were capable of doing on the other side of that waterworks, we finally captured Antwerp which made a big difference and that sort of triggered the difference, now we can have food and supplies and armament and everything. The Germans were wilting down slowly and they were losing the game. But it gave us a chance in some respects to ease up a bit, you know, or get more rest or get a shower or get your clothes changed; things like that that weren’t always easy.