{"id":2219,"date":"2010-02-03T15:55:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T19:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=2219"},"modified":"2010-02-04T06:36:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T10:36:33","slug":"an-eye-opening-sight-kangaroo-rats-and-british-liberators-volunteering-at-the-norwich-archive-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/02\/an-eye-opening-sight-kangaroo-rats-and-british-liberators-volunteering-at-the-norwich-archive-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"An ‘Eye Opening’ Sight, “Kangaroo Rats” and British Liberators: Volunteering at the Norwich Archive Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday I was able to make my third visit to the Norwich Archive Centre.\u00a0 I listened to two audio recordings which were both about an hour long.\u00a0 The first was of an American veteran from Alabama.\u00a0 He enlisted in August 1942 but due to being underweight was sent home for a week to gain weight.\u00a0 The morning of his physical, he ate a \u201csack\u201d full of bananas and drank lots of milk (which allowed him to gain the weight required).\u00a0 Despite being over 6 ft. tall, the veteran was able to enroll in gunnery training after telling a Sergeant he joined to have a gun in his hands and after threatening to go AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave).\u00a0 He flew 13 missions over Europe before being shot down near Giessen, Germany<\/a>.\u00a0 Luckily, he bailed out and when he hit the ground, he encountered a farmer and his wife; the farmer was able to disarm the veteran of his pistol.\u00a0 Shortly afterward, villagers arrived to see what was happening.\u00a0 It was decided that he was to be taken to the town\u2019s jail.\u00a0 However, because his legs were slightly injured, he required help to get to a wagon which would take him to town.\u00a0 Two young Germans (a boy and a girl) helped him walk about halfway when they stopped to rest.\u00a0 It must be mentioned that the veteran was also bleeding from the head and because of the temperature while descending, some of the blood froze in and around his eyes so seeing was difficult.\u00a0 So as the veteran was being helped up again by the young German girl, he was able to see up her dress.\u00a0 Humorously, the veteran notes that at this exact moment his eyesight fully came back to him.\u00a0 Jokingly, he said perhaps it was that sight which gave him back his eyesight.\u00a0 After spending some time in the jail in town, he was eventually transferred to a German army hospital.\u00a0 While at the hospital, he was able to make friends with a German officer who offered to help him escape.\u00a0 However, three captured US Army officers soon arrived and joined in the plan.\u00a0 One of the captured officers was a Colonel who after carefully considering the escape plan, decided not to allow it.\u00a0 Luckily, that decision saved the men\u2019s lives as the place where the German officer would hide the men (his house) was bombed later in the war.\u00a0 The men were eventually transferred to a prisoner of war camp, where they were liberated by British troops later in the war.\u00a0 Interestingly, the British officer who liberated the camp stood atop a jeep and eloquently stated, \u201cGentlemen, you are officially liberated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second audio recording was of an American veteran who, at first, was not stationed in England, but Africa.\u00a0 Specifically, he was in Benghazi, Libya<\/a>.\u00a0 The veteran mentions some of the conditions of his desert environment.\u00a0 He notes the water rations, dehydrated food and powdered lemonade (which was actually used to clean out mess tins because it was so strong).\u00a0 There were no showers at the base but occasionally they could go to the beach and swim in the Mediterranean (which many only did once or twice because of the amount of salt and the desert conditions they had to go back to).\u00a0 One interesting anecdote he mentions is of a \u201csport\u201d developed by the men at the base.\u00a0 This \u201csport\u201d involved \u201chunters\u201d who would wear only their boots and either a necktie or a hat (there were \u201cno women within 99 miles\u201d) and chase what they called \u201ckangaroo rats\u201d into trenches where they would bash them to death with a stick.\u00a0 Later in the recording, the veteran mentions a bombing mission of Ploesti, Romania<\/a>.\u00a0 After bombing oil fields there, the veteran\u2019s B-24 came under German attack and due to the extent of the damage they were forced to make an emergency landing in neutral Turkey.\u00a0 After a forced landing at a Turkish military base and being surrounded by hundreds of Turkish soldiers, the crew was interned.\u00a0 They were taken to a Turkish military academy where they were given a fair amount of freedom; they could go into town, watch movies, gamble, etc.\u00a0 However, this did not stop many from escaping.\u00a0 The veteran took part in a staged fight (thus distracting the guards) and this allowed for 17 men to escape.\u00a0 Eventually the veteran himself was able to escape and he served the remainder of his duty in Britain.\u00a0 Ending on a happy note, the veteran was married on 24 March 1945 in the Norwich Cathedral.<\/p>\n

Volunteer Time: 2 hrs. 15 min.<\/p>\n

Total Time: 5 hrs. 30 min.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday I was able to make my third visit to the Norwich Archive Centre.\u00a0 I listened to two audio recordings which were both about an hour long.\u00a0 The first was of an American veteran from Alabama.\u00a0 He enlisted in August 1942 but due to being underweight was sent home for a week to gain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[733],"tags":[2033,2032,2031,1982,2021,936],"class_list":["post-2219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-f","tag-2nd-air-division","tag-american-veterans","tag-norwich-archieve-centre","tag-oral-history","tag-volunteering","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}