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 Please be patient. This page contains some large pictures which are well worth waiting for  . . . .  .

 

Alfred Searle's Memories

Since this article was published the following Email has been received from Alfred's son David

 Ivor, We have never met or corresponded before but I am the son of the above named who (fairly) recently contributed some photos and memories to your website.

 

It is with deep regret that I must advise that my Father was admitted to Ipswich Hospital early on 15th September 2006 and died in the operating theatre of a burst Aortic Aneurism some 3 hours later.  The surgeons advised that most people suffering from this do not make it to hospital, and praised the toughness of a 79 year old able to fight on for that length of time. It is also interesting to note that the hospital staff (in the town where he lived his whole life) were unable to find any medical records for him - Dad had never, ever, been in hospital before! Whatever else the army may have done for him all those years ago it certainly did his health no harm!

He did not approve of what he considered afterwards to be the "brutalisation of legal infants" that was exacted on 18 year old conscripts at that time and it has to be said that with his great and lifelong love of aviation he was more than a little disappointed not to be called up into the RAF  - he was however very proud of being an Irish Guardsman and still wore the tie at every appropriate opportunity. I imagine that like the rest of his generation he saw what needed to be done and shut up and got on with it!

Alf's funeral took place at Ipswich crematorium on 29th September at 2.30pm and his ashes were interred beneath a "Peace" rose in the Ipswich Millennium Cemetery on the following Monday at 10 a.m.

David Searle
Peterborough, Cambs


Here is Alfred's story
              2725698 Guardsman Alfred Searle wrote: 

 

 


"Although I knew my call-up for the armed forces was inevitable I had not anticipated joining an elite regiment like the Irish Guards  . . . . In February 1945 I presented myself at the Guards Depot, Caterham, in Surrey and became an Irish Guardsman. After training there and at the Training Battalion, Hobbs Barracks, Lingfield I was posted to the 2nd.Battalion then stationed at Gummersbach

In my album I have limited my memories to just a few because there are so many. I have included an extract from the News Guardian (the newspaper of the Guards Division) giving an account of the Officers v Sergeants football match on Christmas Day 1945. I hope it will be of interest to those who read it. I have never seen another contest to match it !

Hamburg the most interesting guard in which I took part involved the return of the prisoners from the Graf Spee. This is an extended edition of what I sent to and was  published in "The Times" last year. In March 1946 I was transferred to the Orderly Room where I made out hundreds of leave passes, not many will remember me but I bet they remember those leave passes! The Battalion returned to the UK in March 1947 and was stationed at Goojerat Barracks, Colchester. There I was privileged to be a member of the Escort to the Colour when the colours were handed in upon the disbandment of the Battalion. I went with the remnant of the Battalion to HM Tower of London and eventually became Company Clerk. In September 1947 we moved to Chelsea Barracks and I completed my service with the Regiment in early 1948. I am grateful to Norman Evans for getting in touch with me when he saw my piece in "The Times" which in turn put me in touch with Ivor"


GUARDS DEPOT  - CATERHAM  1945

Click picture for enlargement

 

"Quis Separabit"
 
 
GUMMERSBACH  1945

A page from my album showing various views around Gummersbach which will revive memories for many Micks.

 
Click on me

ABOVE: Gdsn. Ernie Masters on the left, and me leaning against a Bren Gun Carrier outside No.1 Company billet.

RIGHT: Taken by Gummersbach's professional photographer, at his studio, in Kaiserstrasse, in return for a few cigarettes.

 

  

Gummersbach 2nd Irish Guards “Run Amok”


Never in their wildest fancies had the Germans in Gummersbach seen or heard such a scene of madness as that provided by the Crazy Officers v Sergeants “Mad Micks” Football Match played on the town parade ground on Wednesday. How can one begin to describe such frivolous and abandoned ‘Mickery'
Surging around energetically in the mud and slush were figures in last war Prussian uniforms with vivid scarlet breeches, top hats and tails, crash helmets and one legged trousers, Uhlan cavalry helmets, breeches with the seat stuffed regimentally until they resembled balloons with feet. Cornets horns and whistles screamed gay discord and a huge soda siphon was squirted down the necks of many unlucky ones in possession of the ball. Tripping and tackling and running with the ball left the Sergeants undeterred as their goalmouth  was completely boarded up with planks and placards.
Standing on the touchline were several enthusiastic supporters firing an unending shower of flares, smoke bombs, Verey lights, screaming flares and mid-air bangers. This developed into target practice on the  players themselves. Blue, crimson and yellow smoke belched forth continuously all over the ground.
To complete this scene of utter madness, a jeep with two inch mortar smoke bomb attached and gas-rattle  rasping away, roared round and round the pitch like a destroyer round the Fleet, surrounding the players with a belt of sickly grey fog. Picking out an odd figure here and there, the fireworkers fired their flares and smoke as fast as they could load. In sheer ecstacy the jeep leapt up a 45 degree bank flinging many of the hangers on to the ground.  Both teams finally tottered off  looking a frightful mess.

The above is an extract from the “News Guardian”, newspaper of the Guards Division for the 29th December 1945 reporting on the Football Match between Officers v Sergeants  of the 2nd Battalion Irish              Guards on Christmas morning 1945.   It was of course the first Christmas after the war.

 
HAMBURG  1946

 

 

One of my six pre-war scenes of Hamburg City centre.Click on the picture to see an enlargement

Click on the pictures to see enlargements

 

 

Paddy's Day at Estorff Barracks

Graf Spee Prisoners of War arrive in Hamburg

"The most interesting guard in which I participated involved the reception of the prisoners of war forming the crew of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. It may be remembered that in late 1939 the Graf Spee had been driven for shelter into the River Plate at Montevideo in the South Atlantic. When forced to leave, the ship was scuttled and the crew interned for the rest of the war. They were returning to Germany as prisoners of war and had arrived at Hamburg on board the liner Highland Monarch.

Our entire Company was involved in the operation which was under the command of Captain Foden Pattinson. We arrived at Hamburg docks on an overcast day with a bitterly cold wind carrying snow flurries. We stood on a dockside beside the train which was to take them to a prisoner of war camp and onto which they were to be loaded. There were no carriages, just cattle trucks, identical to those which transported all those millions of people to their deaths in the concentration camps. The Captain warned us that trouble was to be expected when the loading of the train took place. As we waited for the operation to begin a German truck arrived with the usual gas bag on the roof. We did not realise it at the time but there was another one in the driving cab. This lorry allegedly contained the rations for the prisoners while on their way to the prisoner of war camp. The driver was a large fat German wearing a high crowned peaked cap from which only the swastika was missing, he also wore a field grey greatcoat and jackboots. He began strutting about the dockside, practically giving our NCO’s orders until one of them called Captain Foden Pattinson. When the Captain arrived the German displayed the same arrogant attitude towards him. The worthy Captain became exasperated by the German’s attitude, then drew his revolver, pushed it into the mans stomach and.uttered words numbering two, understandable whatever your native tongue. This had the desired effect and with alacrity, the man jumped into his lorry and went rattling off in it down the dockside and we saw him no more. We assumed that the prisoners would have to go hungry.

Small parties of us boarded tugs and set off down the docks. In places the devastation caused by the bombing was complete. We passed a huge ship in dry dock in the Blohm und Voss shipyards which must have been there a very long time for it was completely red with rust. We passed a place where they had built U-boats upon a fabrication basis. The quay was lined with circular sections waiting to be joined together. We also passed the U-boat pens and saw how the RAF had finally penetrated the 20 feet of concrete which protected them. Seeing those huge 20 feet sections at crazy angles was an amazing sight. The German skipper of our tug told us how during the war he was taking his tug down the docks one night when one of the special RAF bombs missed the U-boat pens and buried itself in the bed of the River Elbe. The resulting miniature earthquake produced a tidal wave which lifted his tug up and deposited it on the quayside.

We drew alongside the liner Highland Monarch which towered above us and while we waited our turn, the Royal Marines on board began dropping down to us tins of 50 cigarettes. Not being at all short of that commodity we gave some of them to the tug skipper and his crew who in their turn shared with us a bottle of Schnaaps, the real stuff not the watered down stuff Charlie served us with in Gummersbach, the drink was very welcome on a cold day. A small party of prisoners boarded our tug and sat in the open part of the vessel aft. They were clad in white tropical uniforms which the wind must have cut through like a knife. Goodness knows what must have gone through their minds when they saw what was left of Hamburg docks. They had obviously enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle during their internment in Uruguay, they looked well fed and sunburnt. They now faced the subsistence level now being endured by their countrymen. It was no wonder that the authorities expected trouble when these men saw their next mode of transport. We landed them at the foot of a long concrete ramp. Facing at the top on a parapet was a Bren gunner. As they reached the top those carrying cartons of 200 American cigarettes were relieved of them, officially or unofficially I know not. In fact no trouble was encountered when they were loaded on the train. They left for a prisoner of war camp and we saw no more of them."
Alfred Searle

 
 
BAD DRIBURG
Orderly Room Staff Course

Click on picture to see enlargement

This photo shows me on the extreme right of the third row and Gdsn Bob Annison fourth from the right in the second row. We were attanding an Orderly Room Staff Course at Bad Driburg near Paderborn
 
COLCHESTER  UK
Goojerat Barracks 1947

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This picture was taken on 10th June 1947 and shows the occasion when the 2nd Battalion went into 'suspended animation'. The colours were handed in at Goojerat Barracks, Colchester.
The soldier on the extreme right is CSM Bell,  I am immediately to his right

 

Click on the picture to see enlargement

My second picture of handing in the colours in which the soldier on the extreme left of the front rank is CSM Mitchell MM and the officer on the extreme left is Captain Foden Pattinson

Click on the picture to an enlargement

 

Alfred's son David will be pleased to hear from anyone who remembers his Father, or any of the events in this article.

 

"Quis Separabit"