大象传媒

I Joined the Royal Corps of Signals in March 1939 and after the initial training in Catterick did my trade training as a Operator Wireless and Line (OWL) in Canterbury. At that point WW2 started so I finished my trade training back in Catterick. From there I was sent to a holding battalion also in Catterick, but got fed up with doing nothing and watching my pals go abroad. So I requested that I be put on the next posting. It soon happened and I found myself and two others at the bottom of the town hall steps in Masham.
We walked up the steps through some large doors and all I could see was a mass of drunken soldiers with one of them pouring beer into the piano that someone was trying to play. My introduction to 49th Div. Signals. (A TA unit from my home town of Leeds. I had my own papers and also the papers belonging to the other two men so when I spotted a rather tuby Major I saluted him and offered him the papers. His reply was "Stick them in your pocket because if you give them to anyone here they will lose them. Follow us when we march on the railway station and when you get on the train someone will take them off you. In the meantime get yourselves a drink.

Well later I did march behind them on to the train and a sargent did collect the papers and early next morning we arrived in Glasgow and boarded The Reno Del Pacifico. It had just come off a South American trip and it's hold was full of Ford cars. These were just allowed to freewheel down a gangway on to the docks (some ran into the Clyde. We set sail about tea time met up with our naval escort and on April 15th 1940 we landed in Harstad northern Norway.

April 17th 1940 was my 20th birthday and just after having a meagre hard ration breakfast two German Heinkels appeared and we we billeted in a church in Harstad. Just outside was a Bren Gunner with his gun set on a tripod. Along with the battleships in the harbour they opened fire on the German planes and for a moment we thougt one had been hit as it came down in curved dive, but no; it dropped its first bomb at the end of the church and the wall opened up and ten men dived under the pews. Then all hell was let loose as those two planes dropped their bombs wherever they wanted. The first casualty was a Military Policman who stepped out from where he was sheltering to tell a Norwegian lady to take cover.

(The story can continue if you wish as it takes in Polish and French troops who fought with us to take Narvik and I spent two year in Iceland and Four years in the far east then was recalled to the services in 1950 to go to Korea. I am too tired to carry on at the momment)

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