War was not all doom and gloom, there were many humorous incidents which befell us during the Second World War. What follows is a true account of just such an incident in which I was involved. In March 1945 I was a driver with 536(G.T.)Coy. R.A.S.C., our vehicles being those amphibious craft commonly known by the letters which prefixed their chassis number as DUKW's.

A few days before the Rhine crossing our vehicles, loaded up with ammunition, were parked nose to tail along a country lane about two miles from the river. My comrades and I thought at the time that this was asking for trouble because it only needed one Dukw to be hit by a shell to set the whole lot on fire. In the event, we were lucky because nothing happened until the evening before we were due to cross the Rhine when a lone German plane attacked us and come daylight I could see that the tarpaulin had been riddled with machine gun bullets a few inches above my head.

The night before we crossed the Rhine we were served with M & V for supper, (the letters stood for Meat & Vegetable, but we nicknamed it 'Mother's Vengeance'), which turned out to be an appropriate name for it in view of what happened the following day. At about five in the morning I woke up and the call of nature being so strong I hardly had time to pull on my trousers and shove my feet into my boots before dashing to the latrine.

It was pouring with rain and I had to rush across a muddy field where the latrine, which was just a deep hole dug in the earth with part of a tree trunk suspended over it to act as a seat, was situated. The edge of the hole was too far away from the seat so one had to balance precariously with their legs dangling over the hole. There I sat, wet and miserable, like a bird on its perch.

Climbing back aboard our vehicle I was met with the grumbles of my mate who blamed me for wakening him. Explaining that I seemed to be suffering with dysentery I settled myself comfortably in my blankets. A few minutes later I was disturbed by my mate who jumped out of his blankets and made a beeline to the latrine just as fast as he could. It seemed that both of us had contracted dysentery.

Later that morning, on our way to the Rhine the convoy of Dukws kept stopping and starting as one driver after another had to go behind the bushes to answer a call of nature. When it was my turn again, my mate told me to hurry as he was waiting to go once more. And so it went on...

Although the DUKWS could only travel through water at about a maximum speed of four knots, we got across the Rhine safely. The few shells fired by the enemy exploded in the water wide of their marks, and although we thought we were sitting ducks having regard to our slow passage, miraculously the Germans failed to score a direct hit.

Much later we came to the conclusion that ‘number nines�?(laxatives) had been included in our M & V. Our assumption being based on the fact that two of our comrades who hadn't had any of the Mother's Vengeance were the only two who didn't suffer with loose bowels.

A few weeks later the R.A.S.C. Journal reported our Commanding Officer's account of the Rhine crossing, apparently he said that there hadn't been as much action as a Dukw Company was used to. But that's all he knew.....

© (1970) Alex Roberts