Paul Elwell's Story - Part 3 - War Service

3. WAR SERVICE
At Huyton once again, I took the “King’s Shilling”, contracted measles, and had to spend three weeks in quarantine while awaiting posting to a training centre. But it was less demoralising than before! A week’s leave and a free “open” railway-warrant before “proceeding” to Ilfracombe concluded this episode. I visited two girl-friends before returning to my parents.
The Pioneer Corps was something less than the army’s aristocracy. It certainly offered no fighting. We contributed to the war-effort in various ways with dubious effectiveness. We installed tank-traps, built decoy oil-tanks, devised and tested booby-traps, constructed camps all over the West Country for the “Yanks” expected for the Second Front, built a concrete road to a tank firing-range, cleaned out sewage farms overstrained by the Yankee influx and their detritus! The quality of workmanship was questionable, for all the talent employed — square pegs in round holes! Although the official Pioneer Corps motto was Labor Omnia Vincit (“Labour overcomes all”), perhaps “Give us the job and we’ll finish the tools” — a neat inversion of the wartime slogan “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job” — would have been more appropriate! One of our least effective members had become Professor of Concrete Technology when I met him in Sydney 15 years later!!
Two years of such essential work decided the powers-that-be to trust us to bear arms. Transfer to fighting units was conditional on a name-change from German-Jewish to more British-sounding ones, in case of capture, even though some accents were dead give-aways! So by Army Council instruction, “Eichwald” became “Elwell”, the name Richard had adopted by deed-poll soon after coming to England. It had been Aunt Violet’s maiden name and was thus “in the family”. I had previously unofficially adopted my second name, Paul (unchanged from German), in preference to the anglicised version (Charles) of my Dutch godfather’s “Carel”.

Still a “Friendly Enemy Alien”, I transferred to the Royal Armoured Corps. Suicidal maybe, but better than footslogging or potential trench warfare, it offered greater variety. The Private became a Trooper.
I had become engaged to Thalia Allen, whom I had first come across as a fellow student in London, and got to know at Aberystwyth, soon after returning from “exile”. Mother reacted with a slightly shocked “...but you’re much too young! How on earth are you going to support her?” We married in July 1942. It automatically meant German citizenship for Thalia — in British, though hardly in German eyes. She immediately applied for and was granted re-naturalisation, even though I was still regarded as technically German. She might have saved herself the trouble, since the laws were amended shortly afterwards. Now the name-change meant yet another identity-crisis!
I became a real soldier. At the end of a six-month training course as a driver-operator at Farnborough I was recommended for a commission, but failed the crucial Officer Cadet Training Unit course. The paper-work and tough physical requirements presented no problem. I had wanted to succeed. I may have recoiled instinctively against the Sandhurst upper-class traditionalism and “bullshit” which passed there for “military discipline and efficiency”. Clearly my handling of the first TEWT (Tactical Exercise with Troops), held in Snowdonia under simulated battle-conditions, undid me. None of us had a clue what we were expected to do. No doubt I should have asked, but didn’t. My exercise was a shambles. The Officer-in-Charge sat us down in the sodden moorland. “That was atrocious, Mr. Elwell,” he lectured us. “I want these exercises done like this...” and detailed where I’d erred. The following exercises went impeccably, like clockwork. So I was RTU’d (Returned to Unit), feeling myself and the family let down. Failure often “knocked the stuffing” out of those returned.
The whole group had specifically opted for the Armoured Corps to fight the Nazis. Instead, they were transferred to the Reconnaissance Corps and sent to face the Japanese in the Far East. If designed to avoid possible capture by the Nazis, the policy was hardly consistent. Most of those not considered for commissions fought in Europe; many were killed or wounded, as were other ex-Pioneers in other branches of the fighting forces. Their sacrifice assuredly contributed to Nazi Germany’s ultimate defeat.

My own role was decidedly unheroic. After months of repetitive refresher-courses I went, just before Christmas 1944, to the Eighth Army. The Italian front had “frozen” during the winter, when it and the Fifth US Army were “milked” to support a diversionary thrust through southern France which contributed nothing.
I was posted to the IVth Hussars, then resting at Gubbio in the Apennines after a mauling from the new 88mm dual-purpose guns on the Gothic Line. The regiment gradually moved along the Adriatic coast towards the front line during the next two months. At Riccione, we prepared about 400 disabled Sherman tanks for the expected offensive, an object-lesson in maintenance as a major factor in battle.
The offensive, the final battle, initially proved hard going. Our opponents at the Argenta Gap were élite parachute and panzer divisions, battle-hardened and well-equipped, their morale still high despite the inevitable end. Our decisive breakthrough came at Portomaggiore, where I had to interrogate the first prisoners taken. They were arrogant no longer, but frightened — particularly when a violent mortar counter-attack engulfed us just when they thought themselves safe. One moment I was talking, the next they were under my tank, human beings in need of shelter, help, food! Once we had crossed the Po, resistance collapsed. During the frantic hot and dusty pursuit we were everywhere greeted as liberators. The end came, for us, at San Daniele del Friuli with the surrender of the Germans in Italy. We learnt of Mussolini’s capture and execution, with his mistress, by partisans. Hitler’s suicide and the collapse of the “1000-year” Third Reich after little more than twelve climaxed my personal war-aims.
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