Only my corporal and I that survived.

Steve Melnick - WWII Veteran
Trooper in the Armoured Corps.

Liberator of the Netherlands

I was wounded in a little town, about 6 km. North of ‘s Hertogenbosch, in a little town of Anglend, right along a little canal, I can’t remember the name. We ran into a minefield when an ambulance jeep was right there, and a bunch of us got killed, and a bunch of us got wounded.  Or course our “friendly” enemy from across the canal, we were on one side of the canal, they were on the other, they threw over a few mortar bombs.  There’s no use crying about it.  It was very unfortunate, there was 11 of us, on this patrol, and only my corporal and I that survived. We were in the 4th Division, at that time I was with the Lincoln & Welland Regiment from Ontario, but my regular regiment was the British Columbia Regiment 28th Armoured Corps, I was supposed to be a tank driver, but I wasn’t at that time. We were in the little town where I got wounded, we camped outside in this little settlement, and in the mornings or when we would be having our dinner meals I can remember these little children about 3,4,5 years old coming out there, they couldn’t understand what we were saying of course, but they would be there and we’d ask them if they’d wanted something to eat.  First of all they’d take a little bit of bread, or something we’d give them, we’d noticed their mothers looking out of the window, seeing their children with soldiers, I don’t know how they felt about it, but anyway, there were these 2 little kids, a little boy and a little girl, and they came out with their spoons (laughs). That was the jolly part of it. There were lots of other things that were not so sweet.  There’s lots of things, but I’d have to think about it, that was 60 years ago, you know? We trained in England for about a year, we trained there before the invasion.
Our regiment was in Juno beach, but 2 weeks after D-day, there wasn’t any shooting there, our own people were there, I was lucky in that respect.  We went right on through ‘s Hertogenbosch, it was pretty well shelled.  There was a big place called the nunnery, where there used to be nuns, or something…We went back there when the regiment went back for a rest and regroup, and getting more troops in and rest for a week or two. 
We’d go out and another regiment would come in.  It was a nice place, we found the people very friendly there. After I was wounded I was taken to Belgium, to Ghent, that’s where our hospital was. Some people were favouring the Germans, some were favouring us, you couldn’t trust everybody in Ghent. There was a place called the Leopold barracks, it was a castle at some time, we took it over and we stayed there. When I came out of the hospital, we went back into action, and I wasn’t in shape at all, along with a couple of others, and they sent us to Brugge, and I stayed there for another 6 weeks recuperating. 
We formed another unit, the Recovery units.  We went in, and we brought back all the broken down vehicles and trucks and everything.  This was at the end of the war, it was still going, but I was no longer in shape to go into action, I was beat up pretty bad. Going back out too soon didn’t help either.  But we were very short of troops, so we had to go back. There were light trucks, light guns, troop carriers, we’d pick them up and haul them back. We also used to take enough of German equipment that was captured, we hauled that back to a depot in Antwerp….I guess it’s safe to say now, there was a place, I forgot the name…I would say it was about 15 miles from Nijmegen, we were going into….it was a lovely town that was really battered up, Arnhem.  It was mostly clothing that we would…well, we would stop for the night.  By morning we wouldn’t have too much to bring back to Antwerp, if you know what I mean. You know, a big German overcoat, 12 or 15 guilders, whatever they wanted to give us. We didn’t need it, it didn’t cost us anything, it was all enemy stuff….we would deliver back to Antwerp what we didn’t sell (laughs)…I guess everybody knew we were doing that, but nobody said anything.  We did that for quite a while…