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I was called up in 1939 and went to Boyce Barracks, Aldershot to do a medical training. I joined Field Ambulance 155, The Low and Scottish Unit and spent from September until the end of the year in Scotland at Edinburgh and Moffatt. In April we went to Somerset to Marriott. From there we went to Newbury and back to Aldershot to Waterloo Barracks. We were inspected by George VI. Then we went to Southampton and over to St Malo as part of the British Expeditionary Force. This was June 1940. We marched ten miles inland and got on a train with coal and lime trucks. We spent the night in the trucks. The next day we went back to St Malo. We had egg and bacon out of tins for breakfast and dried biscuits. We were on a green in St Malo and a red cap came up and said to the colonel, ‘Get these bloody men back on the boat quick!’ We piled on the boat, back to Southampton, and went up to Leicester. From Leicester we were put on a bus back to St Ives. The next day we were sent to Ely and we saw ourselves on the pictures leaving for France - when we were already back in England!
Then we went to Necton Hall, Norfolk, then to Oxburgh and different places in Norfolk. In May 1941 we went to Gifford, near Edinburgh, and then in October to Alva, Clackmannanshire. When we were at Alva, John Innes who played rugger for Scotland said, '’Tubby, have you got your rugger boots?’ ‘No, I’ve never played rugger.’ ‘You’ll be excused all duties for the next fortnight and I’ll teach you how to play rugger.’ And I played with him in the Combined Services Team for Scotland. He took me with him each time he played for Scotland. When I met him again after the war he asked who I played rugger for. I said I’d never picked up a rugger ball again.
In April 1942 we were at Rothes, and in July at Aviemore near Inverness.
One afternoon when we were in Scotland I was told to get all the fellows on parade as the NCO’s were having a map reading exercise on the moor. ‘Ruff, have you got any rope? Go to the stores and get some, we’re going to have a river crossing.’ The colonel said to me, ‘You tie the rope round your waist, take your trousers off, put your boots back on’. The river was in flood. Volunteers had to be ‘posts’ in the river, supporting the rope. The Colonel said, ‘I’m going to be the first across.' He stepped into the river and the current swept him off his feet. I pulled him in on the rope. Some soldiers on the bank said, ‘Let the bugger drown’. He said, ‘You’d better go to the farm and tell the RESC to come and fetch us back.' One night we went out onto the moors with the colonel. We got completely lost because he took a compass reading on a cloud.
When in training in Scotland we lived one month in the hills and another month in the Billets, mainly in Aboyne. When in Mountain Training we slept in 8-man tents and had to crawl into a sleeve to get in. While up Ben Nevis near Loch Gar we had to dig snow holes to stay in as shelter.
The Very Reverend Ronald Selby Wright from Edinburgh was padre to our unit for two or three years, then he was sent to Bedford. He lived in De Parys Avenue and every Sunday night he broadcast to the Forces all over the world from Bedford Corn Exchange. In the week he went up to the War Office in London to get coded messages to put in his sermons for the Underground Organisations in Belgium and Holland.
We did ‘Goliath I’ a big assault landing exercise out at Culloden Moor, Lees Castle, and Spean Bridge near Aberdeen in December 1942 when we were based at Alva. We went back to Aboyne in May 1943 then we did ‘Goliath II’ in October 1943 at various places.
After the war I was told that it was the fact that we were in Scotland doing mountain training that kept the Germans in Norway.
In May 1944 we went to to Inverarary, then in August to Chartridge, Bucks. We were all ready to go to France in gliders after the invasion but that was cancelled. Then we went up to Skegness, and in October to Fort Monkton, Hants and onto the Princess Astrid to cross to Ostend and then to Wortegem. When we were there and not fighting one day the Colonel came up to me and said, ‘Ruff, can you do some showers for the lads?’ I had made some once before. I needed a water cart, a 5 gallon drum and a burner. I couldn’t find a drum, so I finished going up in a German house and taking a gas geyser, and with a number 1 burner and a rotary pump made a shower. A carpenter made a box for the geyser and we carried this about as a portable shower for the lads.
On 1st November we were at Breskens in Holland then overnight we got on an assault landing craft to Flushing then Bergen — op — Zoom.
While in Flushing in Holland, which is now named Walaram Highland we got the German to pick up all their dead and our dead. Our dead were thrown in a big heap in a Post Office. The Germans were in another room in a corner doing the Nazi salute.
The RSM asked us to clear out a big white house which had been shelled. I took a gang into the bottom floor to clear it and Corporal Barnes went upstairs. One chap found a very large unexploded shell and asked what he should do with it. Someone said as a joke, ‘Throw it out of the window!’ They had to stop him doing this. The RE’s took it away and exploded it.
While in Flushing we had lots of wounded English and Germans. They were in a large dark cellar and it was hard to tell who needed urgent treatment and who didn’t. I decided to cut discs from flimsy petrol cans and paint some green and some red and soldered pins on the back. I placed red discs on the men who needed urgent treatment and green on the others. I believe the Military are using this kind of system using plastic discs to this day!
In December we were going back between Germany and Holland We were in fighting around Maastrich and Rothem and Aachen. We went back to Trebeck and then we crossed the Rhine. I saw my cousin on guard at the Rhine Bridge. I had no idea he was there.
While we were in Trebeck it was New Year’s Eve. The colonel was drunk and he came and fetched us out of the schoolroom we were in to play Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses. The bombs were dropping on the outskirts of the town and there was anti-aircraft fire. The RSM reported him to Major Wigram who was a doctor in our unit, and had been in a Mount Everest expedition before the war. The major reported him to the divisional command and he was soon out of our unit and into a hospital in Belgium. He’d been in Africa before he came to our unit and was bomb happy. The RSM told me this after the war.
In 1945 we were fighting at Sittard and in April we were at Ahaus, Rhiene, Recke, Bensen, Nienburg, Gadesbunden and Soltau. Peace was declared on 19th April when we were in Fallingbostel. Me and the corporal were given a big bottle of rum to take round to the lads, but most had gone off to a dance with misplaced persons. We went to Stalag 11B there. The British had been in the landings at Arnhem. They were surprised to see us. One of them was Ernie Moyce from Shefford, but he died soon after the end of the war. Another was David Madigan. They had not been properly fed and only had boards to sleep on.
Two days after the end of the war we were in Hamburg. The LST went to Trondheim and landed on a beach. We took over a blind school and used it as a hospital for Russian PoW’s. There were lots of Germans from the Heavy Water Plant. I had to give them jobs to do, but they wouldn’t co-operate. Some were very hard line. Older ones were better — one cleaned our billets and all our brasses for us. One gave me a walking stick he carved himself which I still have.
We exhumed graves where the Germans had buried Norwegian Resistance fighters to try to get them identified. I have a certificate signed by the King of Norway, thanking ‘Corporal Ruff for his part in the Liberation of Norway’.
In the blind school was a darkroom and it had loads of films, which the Luftwaffe had taken, about a foot wide, also photographic printing paper. I made my own little box with 40 watt bulbs — red and white and did my own contact printing. I took some down to Photo Larsen, photographer of the King of Norway and he helped me with chemicals. That started my career as a photographer. Back at Keysoe I cut a hole in the blackout of the bedroom and fixed a camera. I used daylight, a day when there was no sun.

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