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We done five assualt river crossings - the Maas, the Rhine, Weser, Aller, and the Elbe.
And it was on the Aller that we done the fighting to liberate the camp of Belsen.
We did not go in Belsen, we just marched past it after. But what a pong. Reeking. Oh, what a sight.
And they sent in the engineers and the medical people from the 11th Armoured Division - the Raging Bull.
They went in there and, as they say, a few days later they just torched the place and burned it down.
In the meantime, we was up at Lüneburg. Then we crossed the Elbe.
Then it was a case of getting to Wismar and getting to Lübeck, Wismar, Neustadt and all that.
Neustadt we found another camp. We found the three ships that were sunk out in the harbour,
full of DPs [displaced persons].
On the beach were all these bodies which had to be buried.
They reckon that Neustadt was a transit camp for detainees out of concentration camps.
Take them to Neustadt, bunging them on ships and taking them out, you know.
But these three ships had got sunk with the prisoners onboard. And the bodies got washed
up on the beach. And those that survived and swam to the beach got shot by the SS. Yes.