Finally, an old soldier fought his demons

The then-72-year-old former dispatch rider took a large manila envelope into the office of his local paper, the Middleton, Moston and Blackley Guardian, in north Manchester. He addressed the envelope to “Mr Kenny”, a senior reporter, and inside was a 13-page typed article headed “THE ENTRY OF THE FIRST BRITISH SOLDIER INTO BELSEN”.

Kenny’s first paragraph quoted West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s speech when he visited Belsen in April 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of its liberation, which had predated the World War Two VE Day by three weeks. Kohl had said, verbatim: “The first British soldier to enter the Belsen Concentration Camp will never forget what he saw and the feeling of horror he had and the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. This British soldier was a corporal dispatch rider of the 35th Coy RASC [Royal Army Service Corps] attached to the spearhead advance of the Eighth Army. His name, Herbert Kenny.”

Now, four decades on, Kenny was breaking his silence. His 13 pages were passed to junior reporter Mark Hodkinson to deal with, and in what Hodkinson says was curt, workday prose they recounted how Kenny “debarred the gate that closed the road to intruders and rode into the camp”. The former soldier wrote of the piles of dead, mass open graves and “people walking around with a glazed look in their eyes, so terribly thin they looked like skeletons”.

Hodkinson phoned Kenny and interviewed him the very next day in his neat council maisonette. The Middleton, Moston and Blackley Guardian was mostly dedicated to typical local newspaper fare – readers’ letters, births, marriages, deaths, church meetings, football match reports and bulletins from old folks clubs. Hodkinson’s write-up was headed “The Man Who Found Belsen” and subheaded “Horror That Still Lingers After 40 Years”.

It was a page lead but “buried” near the middle of the paper, and wasn’t followed up by any of the national newspapers or agencies that kept an eye on local papers for worthwhile stories. As Hodkinson recounts, the 40th anniversary of VE Day had finally made Kenny ready to set free “those seared images of death, cruelty and suffering”.

The old soldier’s family, the army and the medical profession were all unaware of his post-war torment. There had been no succour, no counselling, no regimental reunions. Kenny was working class, and as such conditioned by family, workmates, teachers and friends to conceal his feelings. In those days and localities he and his kind didn’t proseletise or seek gratitude.

Kenny was born in 1912 and died in May 2001 aged 88. Hodkinson says today that the story had “tapped me on the shoulder ever since” their meeting in May 1985. Finally, another four decades on and in the new millennium, he decided to look deeper and write about it. “I am its custodian… I would finish the job he had started when making those notes.”

First, as he explains, he reassured himself that Kenny had not exaggerated his role and was not simply in the vicinity of Belsen rather than actually the first to enter. As a reporter, albeit a junior, Hodkinson felt he could read people, and face to face the 72-year-old had shown no sign of duplicity. Kenny’s speech, eyes and body language had all been convincing.

Thus: “I have carried this story for many years, as Herbert did. I have written it because I owe it to him and others, the unknown and unsung, who, across many areas of life, have been burdened indiscriminately by great adversity and grief. They do really walk among us. And they inspire us with their grace, humility and strength.”

Helmut Kohl aside, Hodkinson searched the internet to see if Kenny was acknowledged. The best website, the Liberators of Belsen, listed senior army officers, chaplains, journalists, photographers and medics among 241 soldiers and ancillary staff. But no Herbert Kenny.

Deeper in the book, Hodkinson questions claims that other British soldiers had been “the first to discover Belsen”. Four such men – Lieutenant John Randall, Major Dick Williams, Brigadier Hugh Hughes and Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Taylor – had indeed been there on April 15, 1945 but, says Hodkinson, it would be almost unprecedented for soldiers of this rank to have been sent to such an advanced position, with its inherent risk. As for film actor and author Dirk Bogarde’s claim, he may have been in the camp vicinity but that was all.

And, readers might ask, does it really matter who was first to open the gates and “discover” Belsen? The great thing was that Germany was losing the war. And more importantly, surely, it had been Kenny who met a Frenchman on a bicycle, chatted and been asked if he knew of a camp where there had been “many killings, shootings and the prisoners were starving”.

Kenny reported to headquarters and was sent on his Matchless G3/L motorbike to investigate. He was backed up by men “at a discreet distance” and told that if he needed help he should fire three shots. Riding through country lanes, he carried a Sten submachinegun, a Luger automatic and a Mauser pistol. Reaching the nondescript gates, he found about 40 German soldiers with a white flag. “It would not be a mistake to propound that he was about to suffer one of the greatest shocks of anyone who had ever lived,” Hodkinson says. The ultimate count was 60,000 “skeletons” and 13,000 unburied corpses. The stench was awful.

Hodkinson is from working-class Manchester, much the same as Kenny, and readers are first given an informed insight into northern English society before and after the war, what it was like to grow up and live in the unexceptional Lancashire milltowns, in this case Middleton.

Kenny was a fairly unremarkable person, a welder and a responsible Everyman. His father survived several great battles in the First World War but then was killed as peace approached, when Herbert was six years old. Kenny married Grace and as a father of four he volunteered for the Territorial Army, a part-time voluntary force to back the regular Army. “We might come in handy if the Hun keep stirring it,” he said.

After the war began came a series of training camps and then he crossed the Channel shortly after D-Day and went ashore on a quiet beach near the French village Arromanches. He was a dispatch rider for the RASC 8 Corps, which supplied food, water, fuel, clothing, furniture and stationery for essential paperwork. Kenny delivered messages and supplies to the advancing troops. He did a dependable job amidst carnage in taxing terrain and weather.

Kenny quickly became used to death. Post-war, he suffered a bodily collapse as his traumatic experiences caught up with him, and was hospitalised. Later he would often be “in his own world” and have mood swings. Like many who had fought, he internalised his distress, not wanting to burden family and friends with what he had seen. But he got fit and coped.

Those original 13 pages are quoted throughout and the author is said to have had unprecedented access to Kenny’s personal notes and to have conducted scores of interviews. Despite a couple of inconsistencies, here is an extremely readable and illustrated account of the thrusting of an ordinary man and others like him into extreme circumstances.