BEATRICE Harris Wall was a 13-year-old girl in early May 1944, when she walked down to the docks at Front Street with her mother and father to wave her brother Warren off to war.

She has come home from Canada for a visit and wanted to be able to take part in the Remembrance Day service to pay her respects to her brother and all of the others who lost their lives in the wars, but a heavy cold kept her at home yesterday morning.

"I was the youngest of four children, all born in Pembroke," reminisced Mrs. Wall. "Warren was the second son, and he and I were very close growing up, and I missed him dreadfully when he went overseas, of course.

"I remember seeing Warren off down by the steps on the dock, where the row boats used to go to White's Island. They got on tenders to go out to the ship. There were other people there, but it was early in the morning, and it was not some noisy flag-waving scene.

"It was very subdued. I was a young girl, and children don't take these things as seriously as they should. It seemed like a great adventure to him, and I was too young to understand that I might never see him again."

Jennifer Ingham Hind, in her book Defence not Defiance, a history of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC), described the scene on Front Street that May morning, just over 60 years ago.

"The contingent embarked on tenders at Hamilton on the morning of May 7, 1944. As the hour was early and all movements kept successfully secret, there were only the usual early morning workers to witness their departure. They sailed on a US troopship to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, where they stayed about six days before embarking on the transatlantic voyage to Liverpool."

THE Bermuda contingent knew before they left that they would be discharged from the BVRC and enlisted in the Lincolnshire Regiment on arrival in England, with a consequent loss of rank and seniority, and a sizable reduction in pay and allowances, but they went in spite of that.

On arrival in England, many men transferred to other branches of the armed forces, including 11 who volunteered for the Parachute regiment. Warren Harris and his comrades were still wearing their BVRC uniform and cap badge, although they were later issued British army uniforms, and the only mark that distinguished them as Bermudians was the "flash" on their shoulders.

"He volunteered, and mother was furious, because he did it on a bet, on a dare. He was only 21 when he left in April 1944, and was 22 and three days when he was killed. From what I was told, they were very short of men at that time in Holland, and normally they did not send them out on the first day they arrived there, but they did send him. I can't remember when the news reached us, but we were all devastated, my mother especially.

"It was during the school year, I remember that clearly, because we lived on Euclid Avenue beside Saltus Grammar School, and they always had the students marching with their drums, and the noise bothered my mother so much, we called the school and they stopped it.

"After he was killed, the Government sent my parents some money, I don't know how much, because parents didn't tell teenage girls that sort of thing, but my mother wouldn't touch it; she called it 'blood money'.

"In St. John's Church by the Ladies' Chapel, there's a plaque on the wall commemorating Warren's death, and mother sent that money to England, plus a bit more, to have that marble plaque put up. To my knowledge, it is still there. She tried to have his body brought back from Holland, but they wouldn't allow it.

"For a number of years after the war, my mother was in touch with a Dutch boy. When they got to a certain grade in school, they were given the responsibility of looking after a number of graves, and he looked after Warren's. My mother has been dead 48 years, but I know it gave her comfort to know his grave was being looked after."

(Warren Harris' grave is cared for immaculately, and will be in perpetuity, by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is responsible for the graves of all of the Allied forces who fell in the wars.)

"My eldest brother 'Dick' Harris, E.G. Harris who worked at Weldon House, he died a couple of years ago, and my sister Muriel has been deceased since 1969, but I was always closest to Warren.

"Ted's son Warren works at Argus, and Craig is with Cable & Wireless, and my own children are in Canada. I married Freddie Wall, who was a very good footballer in those days, and our children were born here, but we moved to Barry, Ontario in 1956. Freddie died 12 years ago."

It was Freddie Wall's late brother George, one of the BVRC contingent with the Lincolnshire Regiment in Holland, whose memory of the campaign was reported by Jennifer Ingham Hind.

"On October 14,1944, the Third British Division freed Overloon from the clutches of Nazi Germany. Following the dropping of the Allied paratroopers at Arnhem-Nijmegen in September, Allied Command observed heavy German troop movement in the Venlo area. It was the intention of the Germans to push forward on a line parallel with S'Hertogenbosch, sealing off any attempt of a retreat by the airborne armada.

"To counter this movement, the Allies moved up the Seventh American Armoured Division, along with the Eleventh British Armoured and the Third British Infantry Division . . . in which there was a Lincoln Battalion in which several Bermudians were killed."

"Among the casualties was Warren Harris, who was killed while on a 'feeler' patrol. John DeSilva, Willard Patterson, Anthony (Toby) Smith, and Richard White were all killed when making a frontal battalion attack on a heavily defended wood. Several others were injured during this attack, and Stuart Moniz sustained wounds from which he died almost four years later. Jay Stephenson was killed one month later on patrol."

"Others fell at Winnekendonk in Germany on March 1, 1945, during a two-company attack. D Company was led by Major Peter Clark, MC, and Major Glyn Gilbert, MC (the late Major-General Gilbert, who died last year) led C Company. The village was heavily defended by the Germans, and it was like taking lambs to the slaughter. The ratio of casualties was higher than at Overloon, and included Edward Hennessay and Francis Monkman."

MRS. Wall remembered a particularly poignant ending to the story of the BVRC contingent who went off to battle. Of the 11 men who joined the Parachute regiment, only one failed to return. After avoiding enemy fire he lost his young life when he thought all danger was past.

"The day after the war ended, 'Teddy' Hughes was in a pub in England with one of his friends, and the friend was showing him a German Luger pistol that he had found. The gun fired accidentally and Teddy was killed. I knew five generations of Teddy's family. The friend who killed him accidentally came back for a short while, but he didn't stay. He went back to England and married an English girl."