Sergeant Sidney George Sampey, was a Fitter with the REME and attached to the 11^th Parachute Battalion, 4^th Parachute Brigade.

Sidney Sampey was born on the 3 August 1917 and came from Leicestershire. He joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in mid-1942, and then in late 1942, or early 1943, he transferred to the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers.

He was serving in the Middle East, as a Sergeant, when he volunteered for Airborne Forces, and joined the 11^th Parachute Battalion whilst it was forming up in Palestine and did Parachute Course 54 at Ramat David, 15 – 28 July 1943.

He flew from RAF Keevil on the 2^nd Lift of Operation ‘Market’ in one of the 11^th Battalion’s allocation of seven Horsa gliders – C/N’s: 1017 to 1023. The destination was LZ ‘X’ near Renkum in Holland.

Part of his account is on pages 49 - 50, 53 -54 & 79 - 82 of ‘With Spanners Descending’, by Joe Roberts.

“We were in the area of Keevil airfield, Wiltshire, when we received another briefing from the Battalion Motor Transport Officer ^[1], and were told we'd be flying out with the second lift. I couldn't go by parachute because I’d damaged my ribs in an accident playing football, so I was allocated a glider with a jeep and three other ranks, one of whom was from the Royal Army Service Corps. ^[2] The two drivers originally assigned to me had been arrested by the local police for committing a burglary and were under lock and key. We took off and, once airborne, I thought how lovely it was, enjoying the ride without any thoughts of battle. Then, as we came in to land I heard a loud crack. The chain on the steel channel down the centre of the glider had come apart. Looking down, I could see many gliders ablaze on the ground and the next minute, upon landing, we were hit by a prolonged burst of machine gunfire. Both the pilot and co-pilot  ^[3] were killed outright and the RASC man was slumped on the floor wounded. In the chaos that followed the attack, I panicked, wondering what the hell I could do now. Like an idiot I rushed to the rear of the glider and crouched over one of the jeeps. So many bullets were piercing the sides of the craft it began to look more like a colander than a glider, and how I escaped being hit umpteen times I'll never know. At that point, I first heard, then smelt petrol dripping from a tank and came to the rapid conclusion that I’d better get out of there before everything went up. The punctured tank did in fact ignite, just as I was on the point of making my exit, and the explosion burned all the hair off my head."

 “The two other ranks had disappeared and as I got to the open door, the wounded chap called out ‘Don’t leave me Sarge!’ How I managed to drag him to the door I’ll never know, because he was a huge chap and seemed to weigh a ton. As we reached the open hatch, the poor devil was hit again and a quick check showed that this time he had been killed outright. By now the glider was well alight. I dragged his body clear of the burning wreckage, then crawled to a place where I could get some cover. Whilst sheltering, I saw a glider pilot staggering towards me. He’d been shot in the neck, but miraculously still managed to get along, proving that I wasn’t the only person around who seemed to have a charmed life. The pair of us waited together for a while. I knew that our rendezvous point was the asylum at Wolfheze. Needless to say, I’d lost my Sten Gun, my revolver and my kit in the carnage and confusion. Myself and the pilot found our way to the mental institution, only to discover that by then my Battalion had gone. Leaving the other chap behind to be taken care of, I set out to hunt for my gang. As luck would have it, while I was searching, the Battalion Motor Transport Officer appeared in his jeep. I reported that we had lost everything that had been in the glider: jeeps, mortars, Lewis? [Vickers] Guns - the whole issue. He dropped me off on the road leading to the Rhine Bridge. Soon I joined up with a lot more chaps and it didn’t take me much longer to get myself fixed up with a replacement Sten and rifle. Not that we could make much progress, pinned down as we were by sniper fire and by everything else Gerry was throwing at us."

“On the second day – we’d slept through the whole of the previous night - we started off down the right hand side of the road, where there were also some glider pilots. Speaking personally, I hadn’t a clue who I was with at that moment, and couldn’t honestly say I recognised any of the chaps either; nor had I met a single soul from 11 Battalion since leaving England - the sole exception being the MTO mentioned earlier. Anyway, here we were, making for the bridge. Next, a jeep with a Sergeant Major and two other ranks on board appeared, headed in the opposite direction from us. The SM ordered me to get into the vehicle, pointing out that we had to get a move on, because there were two German tanks coming up the road. It turned out the SM was from 3 Battalion and one of the OR’s was his batman. ^[4]

“So we went along the road and just when we’d found a turning off it, the Germans found us and greeted us with a generous amount of machine gun fire. We did a quick turn into the side road, which led to a bridge, or what had once been a bridge, for now it had been destroyed to such an extent that it was impossible for a vehicle to pass over it. Here we again met with enemy fire and, being unable to cross the bridge, we proceeded onwards, following the railway line, which was built up, thereby giving us a bit more shelter. A short while afterwards, we had to abandon the jeep, because things were getting far too hot. We returned via the road we’d just come along and were able to cross the ‘blown-up’ bridge on foot. At the other side, we arrived at a spot where there were four or five buildings, all of the same type. A matter of minutes later, the mortars started coming over and this time they’d got it ranged perfectly along the slope beside the railway. We went into one of the buildings and stayed there till darkness fell, at which time we went down to the river, and even found a boat plus some oars. The Sergeant Major said to me ‘I reckon we ought to use that, don't you? To row to the other side.’ I can’t remember whether I disagreed or not, but the upshot was that we didn’t use that escape route after all."

“By now it was pitch dark, and I hadn’t the foggiest where the bloody hell we were going. But we ended up in the loony bin place and went straight to the shelters. I don’t know if we scared the patients and nurses, because they looked at us a shade apprehensively. We only stayed half an hour then went on our way. By then, myself, the two other ranks and the Sergeant Major were all dead tired, so the latter suggested we lie down where we were, which was on sloping ground, for a bit of shut-eye. How much later I don’t know, but whenever it was, I got woken up suddenly by a noise of some sort. With a hell of a shock, I realised that there, coming towards me, was a Gerry soldier. Like a fool I grabbed him. We wrestled a bit, then I felt a blow on the top of my head and it was lights-out time."

“I came to in a building. There seemed to be German wounded in there as well, because I could hear their cries of pain. The chap I’d seen before, and was grappling with when struck down, came up and though I couldn’t understand the language, I could tell from the look on his face and the violence of his gestures that for some reason, he was playing bloody hell with me. I got the idea he was bomb happy, shell-shocked or just plain mad, because his eyes had a strange, glazed look. He came up to me quite a few times and sounded off I remember thinking ‘Bugger me. The next time, he’ll take out a gun and shoot me.’ However, I discovered that not far from where we’d been captured was an SS camp, so consoled myself with the thought that if that lot had come on us we’d probably all be dead by now anyway. The fact remained that we were ‘in the bag,’ and that situation wasn’t at all pleasant - especially as, in the days that followed, we got hardly anything to eat."

Sgt. Sampey was reported as a prisoner on the 25 September 1944, and initially sent to Stalag 12A at Limburg in Germany, where he was given the POW No. 93652. Later he was transferred to Stalag 8C, at Sagan in Poland.

“We were sent off to a place called Limburg, which I think is on the Dutch-German border. We stayed there about a week in a marquee-sized tent. And I do mean ‘stayed’, because they wouldn’t let us out under any conditions, so when you wanted to pass water, you had to pass it into your boots. Eventually, they said, we would be taken to a ‘good’ prison camp."

“The day came when they loaded us into some railway wagons, normally used for transporting goods. Our Gerry guards had about three quarters of the space of the wagon we were in and they also had plenty of straw to bed down on. We, on the other hand, were crammed into the little space left, with nothing to sleep on but bare boards and, to make matters even more uncomfortable, we were fenced around by barbed wire. We had to take it in turns to relieve ourselves and to sleep, because there wasn't enough room for everyone to lie down at the same time. We were on that train for five days. Bloody deadly it was! To add to the rotten conditions we had practically nothing to eat and only the occasional drop of water to drink."

“After this hellish journey we arrived at a camp known as Sagan Luft VIII. It wasn’t much better here than in the rail wagons. We were still half starved. So much for the promise of a ‘good’ camp and the ‘good’ meal we’d been led to expect on arrival, which took the form of a bowl of spaghetti. Our beds were three-tiered bunks; there was nothing, not even a blanket, between us and the boards and so bitter was the cold that we never took our clothes off."

 “I 'mated up’ with a bloke called Joe, who was with the South Staffs Regiment and came from Birmingham. We made up our minds to get out of that place somehow. Our plan was to keep ourselves fit, in case the opportunity came, but it never did. One day, Joe and I were walking around the compound when we saw this truckload of Germans arriving and there was one of them who had a white lapel on his coat. Joe said, ‘We’re not saluting him,’ and we’d just gone by when the officer, I think he was the Camp Commandant, called us to him and took our Stalag identity discs off us. This was just before Christmas. On Christmas Eve, during the afternoon, we were marched in front of this Camp Commandant who said ‘We salute your officers, and we expect you to salute ours.’ So he gave each of us twenty-one days detention on bread and water. I’ll never forget that particular afternoon. We were dressed in green riding breeches, coats with white letters written on them and had clogs as footwear. They allowed us outside for about an hour each day, which we had to spend walking around in bloody circles- or rather skating round, because the ground was like glass, with all the ice on it."

“Before this event, we heard they were going to try and get us some Red Cross parcels, or at least part of one parcel. Each day, we had a loaf of bread, which had to be shared by five of us. We made up our minds to save a small part of our bread ration each day, so that when the parcels came we could make a little Christmas pudding. Of course, Joe and I thought we'd never get ours because we were in detention, but when we finished our sentence, we found the other chaps had saved ours for us. As this incident demonstrates, there was a terrific spirit of comradeship amongst Airborne lads."

“Senior ranks weren’t expected to work, but Joe and I volunteered, so we were sent to Breslau, where they gave us a job unloading wagons. We hadn’t been there more than three or four days, when we were told to pack up and go on this march, because the Russians were coming. We started out, heading west and carried on walking for weeks. In all, I reckon we must have covered close on six hundred miles. We were dive-bombed by the Yanks several times and on one occasion, when we were on the autobahn which was high up, there was another bombing incident and on that raid something like one hundred South Africans, captured at Tobruk, were killed. We were extremely lucky to have got out of that sticky situation with our lives."

“We eventually arrived at a place called Ziegenhain. At that point in time, we’d never heard of the atrocities committed there, but, while entering the camp, we saw some chaps with striped uniforms on and wondered what it was all about. I soon found out, because even in the general sense, the Germans at this camp were complete bastards. They used to put us outside as soon as the air raid siren went and if the bloody Yanks dropped bombs we were forced to stand there, while they took cover. We learned about the nasty tricks they’d been getting up to in the camp and wondered if they’d try to do the same to us. The one and only good thing they did was allow us to have a shower This was the first we’d had since being bagged and needless to say, by then we were all literally lousy."

“After we’d been only a brief while there, they said ‘You’re going on another march’. So off we set off again, once more in a south westerly direction. The next thing we knew, they were suddenly ordering us to turn around and go east. It seems they were trying to do two things. One was to avoid the enemy (that’s our side, not theirs): the other was to reach the River Elbe. At about four o’clock on the afternoon of the day we did the about-face, they decided to rest us. Just off the road from the point where they called a halt was a small culvert. There and then, Joe and I made up our minds to get into it and a lot of others crowded round us, to screen off what we were doing from our guards. Fifteen minutes later the party moved off. Taking a great risk, we stayed where we were, in the culvert. Not till dark did we venture out and then we kept travelling for three or four days. On what was to prove the last night of our travels, we found ourselves in a forest. Ahead of us was a tall tower of the sort used as observation posts in case of fires. We climbed this tower in an attempt to see the lie of the land below. While looking around we heard some motors starting up. Our first thought was ‘Surely we Haven’t come all this way, just to land up amongst Germans again!’ Cautiously we descended, warily we checked the landscape, then realised to our great delight that the troops were Americans – complete with tanks, equipment and food."

"In fact at the moment we happened on them they were enjoying a meal! However, it seemed to me that a cautious approach was advisable. ‘Before we come out of cover,’ I suggested to Joe, ‘Let’s take off our vests, put them on a couple of sticks and wave them. Then we might not get shot.’ So that’s what we did. The Yanks certainly got a shock, but let us go far enough forward to tell them who we were. They then took us to an officer and, when we’d repeated our story, he said he was sorry but there wasn’t a great deal he could do, because it would be another three or four days before the Red Cross relief supplies arrived. In the meantime though, we had the freedom of the cook house. The odd thing was that although we were starving, so great was our excitement at finding ourselves amongst allies once more that we just couldn’t eat a thing. Whilst in the cookhouse, we got talking to a couple of Yanks who said they had both been ordered to take a jeep and trailer to Luxembourg and would we like to join them?"

“At every village on the way, we stopped and the Americans demanded all weapons and other, unspecified stuff, to be handed over. Soon, both trailers and jeeps were full to overflowing. However, this caper didn't interest us. Our sights were set on home sweet home and the sooner the better. At Luxembourg we went into this place that looked like a castle. No sooner had we set foot inside though, than the Yanks were arrested and marched off to the cells -for what, we had no idea, unless it had to do with the weaponry, etc, and the chance it had been not so much confiscated as looted. As for us, we were taken to see a chap who we thought must be a Consul. He arranged for us to be sent immediately to Paris, where we were stationed in a beautiful building. It was almost like living in a palace. We ate out though, going by Metro for three good meals at some other building. Only a few days later, we boarded a plane which hopped us across the Channel to England. Brize Norton in Oxfordshire was our happy landing place, very early in the morning. In double quick time we were given medicals, had X-rays and by four o’clock that afternoon were on our way with six weeks' pay and - even more welcome - leave passes for the same period.”

NOTES:

[1] 167910. Lieut. Laurence Atkinson. Reported as wounded & missing 21/09/44. He was sent to Oflag 9A/H.

[2] T/10690465. Driver. Thomas Brennan. Reported as KIA: 25/09/44, But his burial place indicates he was killed in the glider on 18/09/44.

[3] The two glider pilots were possibly 938652. S/Sgt. Laurence Frank Watson & 4127426. Sgt. John Evans, from 8 Flight, ‘D’ Squadron, The Glider Pilot Regiment. Neither have a known grave.

[4] This is probably 3770241. W.O.II. James Seeckts, the C.S.M. of HQ-Company, 3^rd Parachute Battalion.

Researched and submitted by Robert Hilton.