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Private Leslie Thomas Grier
Unit : No.11 Platoon, "C" Company, 156 Parachute Battalion
Army No. : 4801924
Awards : Mentioned in Despatches
Leslie Thomas "Jock" Grier was born in Bedern, York, to William and Ellen (née Dunbar) on the 8th July 1919. He enlisted in the Lincolnshire Regiment on the 27th November 1936, and joined their 1st Battalion in India. Having completed either parachute course 31 or 32 at Chaklala, in October 1942, he joined the then 151 Parachute Battalion before it was renumbered 156.
His sister, Catherine Jean "Kitty" Grier, related the following story which occurred after the Battalion's return to the UK in 1943. They were with friends at a pub in Grantham, and Leslie asked the landlord for a glass of Whisky but was told that the bottles behind the bar were private property, for consumption only by our American allies, who were stationed around the town. Denis Kendall, wartime MP for the area, had recently caused a furore when he said in parliament that American servicemen stationed in the area made it "Unfit for a woman to walk unescorted through the streets of Grantham any time of day or night, due to the ineffectiveness of the American authorities to deal with the improper behaviour of the American forces". Incensed, Leslie drew a pistol from his tunic, simultaneously cursing the Americans, the Whisky and the landlord, whilst firing two shots towards the bottles standing behind the bar, before throwing his pistol onto the table at which he had been sitting, then disappearing out of the pub and into the night. Amid the pandemonium that ensued, Kitty picked up the pistol and placed it into her handbag. The police arrived and searched all the men still in the pub, but as it was considered improper at the time to search ladies, Kitty was able to make her way home with the loaded pistol in her handbag, and Leslie was never officially associated with the incident.
During Operation Market Garden, Grier flew aboard aircraft No.634 with the Second Lift on Monday 18th September 1944. On Wednesday 20th September, the remnants of the 156 Parachute Battalion were attempting to reach the Oosterbeek Perimeter, during the course of which Lieutenant Donaldson, the commander of No.11 Platoon, was fatally wounded. Grier and the no.2 on his Bren gun, Private Lewis Kemp, dashed out and carried him to safety by using a blanket as a stretcher. Later that day, during the fighting around Hackett's Hollow, Grier did excellent work with his Bren and was recommended for the Military Medal, but this was ultimately reduced to Mentioned in Despatches. Both he and his No.2 were subsequently wounded by shrapnel, Grier in the head, Kemp in the ankle, and taken prisoner.
Whilst recovering at St Joseph's hospital, Apeldoorn, Grier is said to have struggled out of his bed and walked across the ward to a photograph of Adolf Hitler, which he turned to face the wall, explaining "I'm fed up with looking at that bastard", to the amusement of the patients and particularly the guards. This incident though has also been attributed to Private Flamberg of Support Company; both men were noted 156 Battalion comedians. On the 2nd October 1944, Grier was sent to Germany aboard a cattle truck and on 6th October arrived at Stalag XIB, Fallingbostel, where he received the POW number 118351, and was admitted to the camp hospital, remaining there until 23rd November. Lew Kemp was also taken to Stalag XIB and recorded his experience as follows, much of which may be similar to Grier's:
25? Sep 1944. Picked up by Waffen SS troops and taken to an SS officer, to be sent to have my wounded foot dressed at a first aid post only after he had relieved me of my cigs. Moved as a group into a railway shed, to be locked inside two cattle trucks travelling for four days of stop-start into Germany, with the RAF bombing the railway tracks. We arrived at Frankfurt Stalag 11a, interrogated by the Gestapo, who know more about the regiment than I. Confined under canvas for a month, it rained every day, before moving to Stalag 11b at Fallingbostel where we came under the discipline of RSM Lord. He demanded that we should be treated under Red Cross rules, though our rations were very small. As my foot was still weeping I was not sent out to work but the Germans said that those prisoners who did not work would get no food - (‘Nix Arbeit, nix essen’).
December 1944. As Christmas approached, we tried to cheer up when we received a two-man Red Cross parcel to share between four of us.
March 1945. After a heavy bombing raid, we were sent to sort out a railway station and siding, (clearing railway lines of rubble, the result of allied bombing) though because we had no tools we work with just our bare hands. Having lost the other when I was wounded, I still had only one boot and had replaced it with a piece of wood bound onto my foot with a strip of cloth cut from a blanket. This was not the best solution because the snow was deep, and temperatures were in the minus 20s. We were held in open cattle pens with straw to cover us at night. Food was scarce, though the guards also didn’t have much for themselves. I said ‘Nix Arbeit, nix essen’ to one guard and he took me to an officer, who pulled out a revolver and pistol whipped me. He then ordered that I should be taken back to Stalag 11b as a passenger aboard a civilian train. The German women travelling on the train spat at me all the way back, as he knew they would.
April 1945. We were liberated by 30 Corps; the same unit as should have relieved us at Arnhem eight months previously. After several months without a bath or change of clothes, I arrived home still with only one shoe. We were all crawling with lice and were treated with sprays of lice powder after we were met at Wing aerodrome, in Buckinghamshire. We were re-kitted, granted twelve weeks leave and double rations as our weight was down to around seven stone.
1947. Demobbed after six months keeping Tito out of Italy. (Yugoslav statesman and dictator Marshal Josip Broz Tito).
Returning home, Grier married Christine Sharman in Leicester in 1946, but they separated after a time. He returned to the Lincolnshire Regiment on the 31st January 1947, and was likely demobbed shortly after. Grier struggled to settle down in the post-war period, working at various times for the Hotpoint Electric Appliance Company, and as a floor-layer and metal polisher, residing in Leicester, Suffolk, Peterborough, and Grantham. In 1949 he was fined £5 at Grantham Court for being in possession of stolen goods, and in 1957 he appeared in a local newspaper for having failed to stop his bicycle at a road junction, for which he was fined £1.
In 1957, Grier was living on a houseboat on the River Nene, at Peterborough. He tragically drowned a week before Christmas that year, aged 38. The inquest recorded an open verdict.
My thanks to William Lawrence and Bob Hilton for this account.