“THOSE LEFT BEHIND”
Albert Selby fought on D-day and advanced through Western Europe before a serious wound led to him celebrating VE Day at home
During WWII, Birmingham was Britain’s third most-bombed city after London and Liverpool although the sufferings of neighbouring Coventry became better known. From August 1940, 1,852 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, which was an important industrial and manufacturing centre. Over 2,200 people were killed and many thousands more injured along with the destruction of innumerable buildings. One ‘Brummie’ who survived the maelstrom was a young worker called Albert Selby who was soon to pass from one kind of fire into another when he was conscripted into the British Army.
A blitzed city
Born in December 1923, Selby’s first experiences of WWII involved trying to survive the Birmingham Blitz with his family, “I was doing war work then and we had 14 hours of bombing at one point. I remember coming up our street when a woman said ‘Sonny, you know the shelter you’re in? There’s a big bomb down the side of it’. We later stayed with an aunt nearby but during that night they bombed the BSA [Birmingham Small Arms Company]. I went straight out of trouble into trouble!”
Fifty-three workers from the BSA were killed on that occasion and during the blitz Selby also had to contend with personal tragedies and incidents, “My mother died while I was in the army. She had cancer and when there was bombing it was a bit awkward getting her down the shelter. Also, my grandad only had one leg after being in an accident. He was down the pub one time when the sirens sounded but when I got there he was lying in the gutter. He had dived down when he heard the shelling and I thought ‘Bloody hell!’ before I got him out. That was life then.”
After attempting to volunteer for the Royal Navy and serving in the Home Guard from the age of 17, Selby was ‘called up’ in 1942 after he turned 18. After joining 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, he was sent to Scotland and extensively trained in amphibious exercises, “We did lots of training landings on little islands but every time I went out I was seasick. I thought afterwards ‘Thank God I didn’t go in the navy!’”
While the troops were aware they were training for an invasion they didn’t know where it might take place, “We all thought we were going to Italy. Everybody had ideas about it because we were training on hills with a Scottish officer. We eventually came down from Dumfries to Havant near Portsmouth and from there we got on barges and liners. The barges were alongside the liners and getting on them was a bit of a pain because you had all this kit and the barge was bouncing around. I realised then that I was going to France.”
“Come on, Suffolks!”
1st Battalion was part of the first infantry wave to land on Sword Beach for the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. Sword was one of the two British beaches and the easternmost location for Operation Overlord.
Stretching five miles (eight kilometres) along the Normandy coast between the seaside villages of Saint-aubin-sur-mer and Ouistreham, Sword was the nearest beach to Caen and responsibility for the initial landings fell to the British 3rd Infantry Division, which included the 1st Suffolks in the 8th Brigade.
Selby recalls the journey across the English Channel and approaching the beach, “We played cards on board the ship. Oddly enough, I wasn’t seasick on this occasion but I probably
didn’t know what was coming! I looked out about half a mile from the beach and saw one of our ships sink. Whether it was a mine or not I don’t know but I couldn’t imagine it was anything else.”
When the landing vessels approached
Sword, the soldiers were exhorted into battle under fire, “I remember the time was early in the morning at about 7.30-8.00am. There were three lines of soldiers in the boat and running on top was our commanding officer who shouted ‘Come on, Suffolks!’ I turned around and one barge behind us got hit. I don’t know how many got killed or injured but we were as much concerned about safety as well as getting to the objective and carrying on.”
The Suffolks quickly left the beach and
Selby soon witnessed casualties as the infantry fought their way through, “We weren’t on Sword Beach for long and went to Ouistreham, which was a little village [at the time]. We were going through it and some of our chaps were already injured or shot. They had been mortaring the village as they went through. I could see one of our lads, a young sergeant, having his wounds dressed and this was a few minutes after we started to go through the village.”
Although the Suffolks took dozens of German prisoners they also incurred fatalities, “Two friends of mine were shot, one [only a couple of feet away]. I was able to man a machine-gun and there was a lance corporal shouting ‘Charge!’ but a few feet from where I was standing a corporal was shot through the throat. I got down quick because I thought I was going to be the next one.
I assumed it was a sniper but luckily for us a tank came down a few yards from us. They were shouting ‘Come on, Suffolks!’ but as I went out two or three more lads were downed. They were some of the best and were really great blokes. That’s the kind of day it was.”
After the carnage and losses of D-day, the Suffolks had to push inland although the Allies became bogged down in the dense Normandy countryside. At one point, the battalion found themselves under enemy artillery fire, “We were in a wood where you could get lost. The trouble was that it got constantly mortared and the mortars exploded above the trees on everybody below. You could hear them coming and I dived down because I thought I’d got hit. The shrapnel had actually hit my helmet but I dived to the floor anyway.”
“AS I WENT OUT TWO OR THREE MORE LADS WERE DOWNED. THEY WERE SOME OF THE BEST AND WERE REALLY GREAT BLOKES. THAT’S THE KIND OF DAY IT WAS”
The Suffolks also participated in the Battle of Caen, a prolonged struggle that lasted into August 1944 and saw the destruction of the city by Allied air attacks, “We were dug in outside Caen, which we should have took on D-day. The commanders decided to bomb it and there were hundreds of American and British bombers. All of the fumes and smoke were coming to where we were sitting and the planes came our way. You even saw some of the aircraft being hit.”
By the time the Battle of Normandy ended on 30 August 1944, 22,442 British servicemen had been killed. As a private, Selby believes that his survival during the campaign owed something to his rank, “The officers and NCOS were the ones that got shot because the Germans knew that we followed them. In a way, I was luckier being a lower rank.”
Advance through Europe
The Allied breakout from Normandy at the end of August 1944 was a decisive moment and German forces swiftly withdrew across occupied France with the Allies in relentless pursuit,
“The Germans would retreat quite far back sometimes and we had the Yanks with us who were red-hot with loads of troops. At one place we were [stopped at] the Americans were driving through. One of our lads shouted ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ and he received a boxful! Everybody in our lot then had packets of cigarettes.”
While he was still in France, Selby had a close shave during a night-time bombardment, “You just went on and on and there were some places where you didn’t even know where you were. On one particular night the moon was very bright and the Germans were shooting down from hills because I think they could see most of us in the light. I had to drop down all of a sudden and there was nobody near me. A mortar bomb came down and I thought it was going to hit me. I was right by its side and when it exploded the blast bumped my head. I don’t know how I survived.”
A frequent occurrence during the advance was the capture of German soldiers, although it was often fraught with risk, “I took one prisoner on a night patrol down a narrow lane. There were four of us and I said ‘There’s somebody down here’. We were on edge and moved back a little bit before I grabbed a man who turned out to be a German. He’d got a red light on him and was probably doing some signalling when he came down the lane. When we took him back a friend of mine from Birmingham almost shot me while he was waiting on guard.
“On another night there were three of us and there was a German stuck in the middle of the road. He couldn’t move because he’d only got [the use of] one leg. Me and another chap were crawling backwards while a Jerry was firing above us. We could hear the bullets although as we got further away he stopped firing.
This other chap said ‘We can’t leave him [the German] here’ and I said ‘Of course not’. We grabbed him by the arms and took him back. I don’t know if his wounds were patched up before he was handed over.”
As the Allies advanced through France and then Belgium they liberated the local populations who had been occupied since 1940. However, Selby recalls that they were not always welcomed, “Some of the younger ladies fancied the Jerries and I suppose it was one of those things after years of occupation. I remember passing one lady and she was staring daggers at me while we were walking through. She had a baby and was probably one of the Germans’ girls.”
Despite these women’s antipathy towards the Allies, their neighbours would inflict a cruel punishment for fraternising with the occupying forces, “Whenever a girl had messed about with the Germans they would get a pair of
German soldiers’ trousers and pin it on their door. The locals would then get the girls, cut their hair and march them through the town.”
“It was a disaster”
After passing through Belgium, the 1st Suffolks advanced into the Netherlands. Despite being in continuous action, the British troops were welcomed by the Dutch, “Jerry was often about 200 yards away from us in Holland but I remember two young girls kept running out and giving us bread and bacon. We also took a place in Weert and the local kids were coming up to us and wondering if we would play football with them! The Jerries had only just retreated and were more or less still there. However, across the canal there was a nunnery and the nuns came out and sang to us. That was bloody marvellous.”
Despite the liberation of the southern part of the country, the Allied progress dramatically stalled during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Selby remembered the vain attempt of the battalion to relieve trapped British airborne troops, “We dropped a lot of paratroopers at Arnhem but it was a disaster and we got stuck. The paratroopers were being cut off and the regiment went to help them out but we could only go so far. They stopped us at a certain place and we lumbered there before moving on again.”
Instead of Arnhem, the Suffolks were dispatched to Nijmegen. The city was close to
the German border and American-led forces had captured the strategically important Waalbrug bridge over the River Waal, “The Americans had taken the bridge at Nijmegen and all their helmets were on the floor when we got there.
The Germans used to come and fire from a distance because they wanted the bridge back. However, we wanted it for our crossing.”
Fighting continued in the city and it was during this time that Selby lost one of his friends, Lance Corporal Reginald Cooksey, “He was killed by the side of me and there was nothing you could do. He was a likeable guy and had three children. It’s who they leave behind that I think about, it’s terrible.”
Selby was himself seriously wounded during an attack, “I ran into a house for safety but
I was hit by a blast and wounded in the right ear.” Selby had also been injured on one side of his body and face and was briefly treated in Brussels before being flown to London in a Dakota transport plane. He was then hospitalised nearer home at Dudley Guest Hospital, “There were wounded people in there that had every kind of injury. I wanted to know what was going to happen and my first thought was about the operation. I spent a few months in hospital and they took me to different specialists. I was then discharged from the army and had the operation afterwards.”
“WE DROPPED A LOT OF PARATROOPERS AT ARNHEM BUT IT WAS A DISASTER AND WE GOT STUCK”
“You miss them”
By the end of the war, Selby was working again in Birmingham. Although he had been medically released from military service and seen extensive action in Europe, he was mistakenly accosted by an angry civilian, “A young girl stopped me in the street and called me everything under the sun. I was wearing a ‘Discharged’ badge on my clothes but she said ‘You should be out fighting with the lads!’ She gave me hell and I couldn’t really explain to her what I was doing. I was annoyed, but what could you do?”
On 8 May 1945, Selby celebrated VE Day in his home area of Balsall Heath. He remembers the jubilation but primarily recalls feeling relieved, “Everybody was happy and some people were climbing up lampposts. I was dancing myself outside somebody’s house but I’d got two left feet! My main memory I have of VE Day is that I was glad there would be no more bombing during the day or night. People could finally get some sleep because the bombing had been murder. From where I lived in Balsall Heath you could see where every bomb was being dropped in the city centre during the blitz.”
Now the recipient of the Légion d’honneur from the French government for his role in the liberation of France, Selby hasn’t forgotten what the war cost his closest friends, “I never tried to get the medal and it’s hard to put into words really. I was happy to receive it but sad about the soldiers who were left behind. My friends in the regiment were great. You worked with them for years and you miss them. I always think about those they left behind.”