Wilhelm Mohr

PART II – The Ground Crews’ Participation in the War on the Continent 1944/45
For those who have not experienced driving off landing vessels
and a ’beach commander’s’ unchallenged authority in assembling and
redirecting vehicles, the situation is hard to explain. The activity on the
beaches, as well as on the big harbour bridges (Mulberry Harbours),
was still so intense that capacity was exploited to breaking point. The
’slogan’ was ’get out of the way, but stay on the route and roads, because
mine-clearing stops on the side of the road’. Along the route were infinite
numbers of various forms of transport and supplies, and after a
while there was increased movement of units that manoeuvred towards
the combat area.
The ground crews established themselves on airstrip B16 on 22
August, at the same time as the engineer troops finished the runway and
evacuation flights with the wounded left for England. There was still
sporadic shooting in the area, but units were clearing the area and life
was beginning to return to normal in two nearby villages. The Wing
prepared to receive the squadrons, and operations continued after their
arrival.
It is rather strange to think of how quickly operations restarted, despite
all the movement that still had to be done on roads with white
markings. Cleared areas were marked in the same way, and ground
crews had to make their own foxholes. The Wing had been repaid for its
preparations and training. The system worked, and there was no doubt
that the morale and spirit were solid and uplifting factors for each man,
even though the various enterprises were spread and the tasks were different
and many-faceted.
Still, it was not the actions of war alone that marked the Wing’s stay
at B16. In his book Spitfire, General Helge Mehre writes:
The weather changed from burning heat to rain and fog, runway conditions just
as fast from intense dust to slippery mud. If an aircraft ended up outside its tracks,
it was inevitably stuck. The dust problem was so interfering that one had to put on
’desert filters’ on the engines’ air inlets, like they used in North Africa. Cars without
four-wheel-drive were useless outside asphalt or ’tracked roads’. When possible,
the tent quarters were placed in woods and [on] high ground. In the mess tents one
had to lay wooden boards and rough sacking as flooring. The tables were covered
85