Bermudian war veteran Graham Madeiros, one of the soldiers featured in the Bermuda Maritime Museum's upcoming Defence Heritage exhibit, said the experience of serving in Germany during the Second World War "made a man" of him.

Mr. Madeiros, now in his 80th year, was a young man of 18 when he was called up for service by the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC).

He served in Bermuda as part of the BVRC for four years, then spent two-and-a-half years abroad as part of the Lincolnshire Regiment.

"I'd always liked the army, and when I was a younger boy I had been in the Cadet Corps," said Mr. Madeiros. "The army separates the boys from the men, that's what I say.

"Going overseas made a man out of me. I grew up, I had more responsibilities, saw how other people lived, and realised how well-off people are in Bermuda."

After serving with the BVRC, Mr. Madeiros volunteered for overseas service in 1944.

He decided to fight abroad because he was "fed up with doing guard duty in Bermuda".

The group of more than 80 Bermudians arrived in England sometime in late May

They were expecting to do a few month's training in England; but after a week they were informed that they were as well-trained as the other new recruits in the UK.

"So after six weeks, they were shipped over to France.

"We went over as 82 and we thought we'd stick together, but the Company commander didn't recommend we go together because he said in a tough battle, we could all be wiped out at one time," said Mr. Madeiros.

"He was right, and so he divided us amongst a battalion.

"For a while there, I was the only Bermudian left. Some had been killed and others wounded."

Mr. Madeiros and his company travelled through recently-liberated France before going to fight in Holland, Belgium and Germany in the trenches.

In the spring, they were moved to a different site in Holland - and were told they needed to "take" a small village.

The soldiers had to cross an open field to get to the woods about 500 yards away.

Once we got there, the place was literally covered with mines; that was one of the worst battles I can remember," said Mr. Madeiros.

"One afternoon, they sent in a whole battalion of men; a battalion is 900 men.

"We had an awful lot of casualties; out of 900 men, we had 265 casualties - not all were killed, some were badly wounded."

One of Mr. Madeiros' most frightening memories was of his experience being ambushed by Germans in a Dutch village called Smatt.

"It was in no-man's land, this place was. We would go out at night 14-strong; we were doing that for several nights and I think the Germans knew it," he said.

"This particular night, four o'clock in the morning, November 11, 1944, they ambushed us, they attacked us."

A fellow soldier, nicknamed Seeko, realised they were under attack and fired on the Germans with a machine gun.

"We got up and ran, and when we did, they shot him right in the back. "He crawled into a building and howled. I was outside and so scared I didn't know what to do," said Mr. Madeiros. "They came up and kicked me on the shoulder two or three times, but I was too scared to say `ow'. I guess they figured I was dead," he added.

"I reached for a grenade and pulled the pin, and nothing happened. So I took the other one, did the same thing, and it went off.

"One of those Germans really must've got it... he yelled, he screamed, and his mates picked him up and took him away, back to their lines."

Mr. Madeiros went into a nearby barn and was able to find only one of his mates alive after the attack. Both men got up and went back to their lines.

"The whole way back to our lines as we got close to our trenches, we kept calling out `sentry don't shoot, sentry don't shoot' - we wanted to let them know it was us coming back," said Mr. Madeiros. "That's something I will never forget.

"When I got back, I couldn't talk to intelligence for two days because I was so shook up. I don't smoke, but my sergeant major gave me a tin with 50 cigarettes.

"Well, I laid in my trench and I had my tin hat as a pillow, and I chain-smoked those 50 cigarettes," he said. "Out of the 14, only two of us survived. It was a miracle..."

Mr. Madeiros said he spent most of one winter fighting in the trenches, where weary troops lived in mud and slush, battling their enemy as well as harsh living conditions.

Often, Mr. Madeiros was close enough to the enemy line to hear the German soldiers' meal trucks coming.

"We were always tempted to open fire on them, but were told not to," he said. "Let them eat in peace so we can eat in peace.

"It was nice when our food came up. You would get tea with a little shot of rum in the winter.

"They'd give you whatever was for supper, you'd take that back to your trench, and with that you'd get a pair of nice, fresh, dry socks," he said.

"In your pack, there was grease you would use for rubbing between your toes to prevent trench feet. "If you got trench foot and it was determined that you didn't use any of this stuff, you were put on charge."

After the monotonous time spent in a cramped trench, Mr. Madeiros said soldiers sometimes looked forward to patrol duty because they could stretch their legs and get some exercise.

Soldiers were expected to do one hour on, one hour off guard duty - and if an officer found you sleeping, he had the right to shoot you on the charge of cowardice.

Every few months, they would send a group of soldiers on a 48-hour pass to Brussels.

In Brussels, there was a large army canteen where war-weary soldiers would eat a good meal and sleep in a warm bed.

"In this canteen, called the Montgomery canteen, they would have stage shows and dancers for us," said Mr. Madeiros.

"Then you could go to a movie in Brussels.

"During that time, they had a place for us to stay that had sheets - which was nice for us, since we hadn't seen sheets for a long time.

"But when you come out of a place like Brussels and you go back on the line, they hold you back at least 24 hours before going into battle again.

"They call it `battery inoculation', so you can hear the guns and get used to them again."

Mr. Madeiros said some of the Bermudian soldiers, although part of the Lincolnshires, stood out as being slightly different from their European counterparts.

"They used to call us Bermudians `colonials', but half of those boys in the Army had never heard of Bermuda," said Mr. Madeiros.

"There was one Irish sergeant and he didn't like the Bermudians at all he used to call us "the f***ing colonials" and there was nothing we could do but just take it.

"I don't know, but I think they thought we were superior in those days because we were very good with what we did - in our training, in our marching.

"We stayed in little chalets for a few weeks during the summer.

"There was no running water, there were just these big galvanised tanks outside each chalets," he said.

"They would come around once a week or so and fill up the tanks with water - this water was for washing. Sunday mornings, all these Bermuda boys would be washing their clothes - t-shirts, underwear - and hanging them on the barbed wire.

"The company commander said he had a complaint that the Bermuda lads were using too much water. "He said: `I stood up for you and said you weren't wasting it, you were washing your own clothes.

"You Bermuda lads are the cleanest bunch of men I've ever had under my command'. We felt proud about that..."

Mr. Madeiros met his wife while overseas, an English woman who was also in the service, and the couple was married in uniform.

Once the war was finally over, Mr. Madeiros spent some time in Europe before finally returning home to Bermuda.

He said returning to his life as a civilian was not particularly difficult, but admitted that "in those days, whenever I heard an explosion, I would duck".

Defence Heritage exhibit launches appeal on Page 36