大象传媒

I was born in Ayr, Scotland and was 17 in 1939. I was in my last year of school and due to begin a 4-year course in Civil Engineering (6 months university study and 6 months in summer training) But once at the University I was called to a WASB selection board and told that if I continued with the course I would be exempt from war service provided I passed my exams. So I finished my degree in 1943 and was called up as soon as finals were over.

After a general army training course I was appointed to REME on a course setting guns and instruments. From there I went to an army workshop in Glasgow and then overseas: we were on our way to Burma. We went through the Straits of Gibraltar to Naples and luckily instead were diverted to a brigade workshop servicing the 78th Division in the line north of Florence. It was in the Gothic line north of Florence at Castel del Rio. We were stuck there in the very severe winter of 1944 and living in tents with snow on the ground. The brigade workshops repaired jeeps, getting them ready for the last campaign in April 1945. After 3/4 weeks of the final campaign our Division got away to the mountains and we were in Venice for VE Day. Troops in Italy were called the D-Day Dodgers because they missed D-Day and we were in reality very lucky to have missed it.
After VE Day the Division was sent to Yugoslavia to discourage General Tito from taking over Trieste and Venice. Then from VJ Day until 1947 I was part of the force in Salonika, Greece, discouraging the Communists from taking over the administration. Finally, in 1947 I was demobbed from Cairo. A year after demob though, I was called up again: this time as a Z reservist, and we served in Colchester barracks for a week.
Years later I returned with my wife, Olga, to Castel del Rio and found the town unchanged. We went to visit the war cemetery close by and it was dreadful to see the graves of all those young men from the Division who had been killed, many aged between 18 and 22.

(This story was submitted by Pat Yates, a volunteer with Age Concern on behalf of Ken McInnes with his permission and his full understanding of the terms & conditions of the site)

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