description
Content description
Word-processed memoir (46pp, written c. 1996), covering his birth in Windygates, Fife (December 1911), his family, childhood memories, jobs, births, marriages and deaths, starting work at Earlseat Colliery, details of working in the pit aged 14, a General Strike in 1926, life in Fife in the 1920s, an accident in the mines making him want to avoid working there and join the Black Watch (1932), posting to 2nd Battalion Black Watch, moving to Maryill Barracks, Glasgow (September 1933), being a member of the Regimental Pipe Band, taking part in several engagements as part of the dancing team and moving round the country, posting to Dover Castle, working as a batman, preparing to leave the Army and learning a trade, posting to Chiseldon, Wiltshire (1939), not leaving the Army due to the outbreak of war and posting to Dover Castle with 1st Battalion Black Watch, crossing to France (c. September 1939), moving to Drocourt, Pas-de-Calais, preparing defences, accidental deaths and fights, moving to the front line near the Maginot line with 154th Brigade (51st (Highland) Infantry Division), playing the pipes at gravesides following skirmishes, leave, moving to St Valery (June 1940), being captured by the Germans, being marched as a prisoner of war through France and Belgium, the hunger and thirst, seeing the plight of civilians, arriving in Holland (July 1940), a cattle train journey to the Rhine, being taken to Stalag VIIIB, Lamsdorf, Poland, the poor conditions, joining working parties, volunteering for a working party at Mechtal (Miechowice) in a coal mine, befriending a young local lady, Paula Blacha, who gave him food, improvements with Red Cross parcels, being moved to another coal mine at Knurow, Paula still visiting in secret, scams and bribing guards to leave the camp, dinners with local family, being moved to a factory in Tichau, near Auschwitz (June 1944), Christmas 1944, Russian bombing and hearing firing in the distance (January 1945), taking part in a forced march west, with details of the conditions on the march, seeing dead Russian soldiers, crossing into Czechoslovakia, bartering with civilians, the death of a friend, continuing to Munich and into Austria, seeing conditions of German Army, defeatism, liberation by Americans in Laufen, Germany (May 1945), his return to the UK, treatment on his return, posting to various places, posting to Queen's Barracks, Perth, working as Post Corporal despite being a Private, re-joining the Black Watch Pipe Band, playing regularly at Gleneagles Hotel, meeting his wife, playing pipes for the Queen Mother (1950) and General Eisenhower on his leaving SHAPE (1952), before leaving the Army in 1955 and becoming a postman. The account has an introduction by his son (2013), and is illustrated with copies of photographs of Grieve in uniform, performing as part of the dancing team, with others in the POW camp, and his being carried out on a table top by his fellow soldiers on his leaving the Black Watch after 22 years' service, with additional copies of nine photographs of Grieve in uniform, 1932 - 1952, and 1995, including an inspection by Field Marshal Montgomery.
History note
Cataloguer SJO
