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This story has been submitted to the peoples war website by Sarah Cooper at the AGC Museum on behalf of Gill Gutteridge. Gill Gutteridge fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

These are the recollections of Cdr Gordon Gutteridge OBE written over 50 years after the events entirely from memory.

At Eastertime 1943, having recently returned from the Middle East (Egypt, Alexandria, Suez Canal, Tobruck and the Western Desert on bomb and mine disposal duties) I was appointed Bomb and Mine Disposal Officer, Poole and was, at that time, a 21 year old, brand new, Lieutenant RNR. My 鈥渢erritory鈥� comprised all
Naval and maritime areas from west of Southampton to Portlands and all land areas below high watermark.

There were few enemy bombs and mines to be dealt with at that time and, since I was ex-merchant navy and presumed to be a seaman, I was taught to be a Naval Harbour Pilot so as to act as wet-nurse to the increasing number of landing craft beginning to use Poole Harbour. HMS Turtle, a naval Combined Operations base located west of Hamworthy, was temporarily home to these craft.

Pilot work also involved attending upon the Short Sunderland flying boats operating the UK to Gibraltar flights which left Poole late at night and arrived a day later at Poole at crack of dawn.

Passengers ferried to and from the flying boats included Churchill, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, most other British war leaders and including, no doubt, the Pay Corps Lieutenant Clifford James who, posing as Montgomery, was used as a decoy prior to D-Day to persuade the enemy that, at that time, allied interest lay principally in the Mediterranean and not across the Channel.

American VIPs also came and went from Poole in vast Consolidated Corando flying boats which, unlike the Sunderlands, had reversible propellers and could manoeuvre astern for mooring up.

As a third and minor duty I did night shifts on a rota on Brownsea Island which was a decoy 鈥淨鈥� site for Bournemouth. It was loaded with pyrotechnics so that, in the events of an enemy bomber raid aimed at Bournemouth, we could set the island ablaze and simulate bomb explosions so that the bombers would unload their goodies on Brownsea, including me, instead of on all those civilians across the bay.

As an aside Mrs Christie, the grand old lady who owned Brownsea Island, remained there throughout and would invite us to supper from time to time.

Sometime in early 鈥�43 Studland Bay and some 34 square miles behind it were designated as a battle training range, presumably because it was conveniently located and because it was not dissimilar to the beaches and inland territory likely to be met when the allies landed in France. This area included a dozen farms whose tenants/owners were evacuated.

By mid 鈥�43 this area began to be seriously used; initially well inland by the army for infantry and close combat artillery training and in Studland Bay by the Navy, plus appropriate military units, for landing craft beaching trials etc.

As 1943 wore on, and then into 1944, the scope of activity accelerated until, by a month before 鈥淒鈥� day (6th June 1944) tri-service beach assaults exercises on a monumental scale reached a crescendo and were a weekly occurrence.

These exercises involved very large numbers of RAF bombers, dozens of Typhoon ground support aircraft firing rockets with 60lb warheads, gunfire support from destroyers, cruisers and battleships and hundreds of landing craft.

These landing craft came in a variety of flavours; small ones carrying troops, larger ones carrying tanks or self propelled artillery and LCT鈥檚, landing craft capable of firing 1013 rockets fitted with explosive warheads in a pattern up a beach in 38 seconds flat.

These major exercises were a nightmarish two or three hours of pandemonium, of noise, explosions, dust and debris followed by very large numbers of troops and armoured vehicles disembarking and moving inland, firing their weapons as they went.

Knowle House was, of course right on the southern edge of the beach assault area and stray munitions would occasionally end up going bang, or not, in the hotel grounds.

As the work up for 鈥淒鈥� Day began in earnest, and live munitions replaced practice rounds, it came about that the battle range, particularly the beach area and for about half a mile inland, was becoming littered with unexploded bombs, rockets and shells and that these posed a hazard to troops coming ashore during the sub sequent landings and I was given the task of dealing with this problem.

So I became the Range Safety Officer, working in harmony with a most excellent RASC Captain who was in overall charge of the battle range.

First surveys indicated that, after every major assault exercise, there would be about 100 unexploded bombs, rockets and shells to be dealt with and that minor exercises, by rocket firing typhoons, ground support bombing, and naval and army gunfire would add a few more.

Most of these unexploded pieces were buried one to three feet in the sand of the beach and dunes; those that missed this area would end up buried much deeper in the farmland.

The range was only 鈥渃losed鈥� on Saturdays and Sundays so that our disposal work had to be carried out each weekend.

Dealing with each piece of unexploded ordnance one piece at a time was not possible, there were simply too many of them. We used Knoll House front lawn as our staging and control point. A tent was our 鈥渉ead office鈥�, I borrowed, from any nearby army unit, two Bren-gun carriers (tracked armoured personnel carriers) and a Valentine medium tank (c/w crews) plus about 20 infantrymen.

The soldiers were designated 鈥渟earchers鈥� and armed with red flags on tall bean sticks. My own team of a Chief Petty Officer, four trained sailors and two or three young 鈥渢rainee鈥� officers were designated as 鈥渄isposers鈥�.

Early each weekend morning our group would cross to Studland on the Sandbanks ferry and make for Knoll house.

The soldiers, usually French Canadian and speaking little English but under their own officers, would form up in line abreast about 12 feet apart and 鈥渨alk鈥� the beach, flagging anything dangerous on the surface or for which they could see a hole-of-entry. They would then return, covering the adjacent 250 foot wide strip and continue sweeping in this manner until about 4pm.

Following these chaps at a safe distance my team, with the Bren carriers and the tank, would uncover each unexploded item, identify it and log it, and then lasso it with a wire tow rope secured to the tank (if the ordnance was big and would be dangerous if it exploded) or to one of the Bren carriers. Then with everyone ducked well down in these armoured vehicles, we would haul each bomb, rocket or shell out and tow it to join others in small heaps for demolition at the end of the day, after all military personnel had returned to Knoll House.

Once in a while something would explode when being hauled out of the sand or whilst being bumped over the ground by the towing vehicle. Since the tow ropes were only about 50 feet long (for convenience in handling and manoeuvring) there would be one hell of a bang, usually with shrapnel zinging off the rear of the armoured vehicles, but our biggest hazard was jagged shrapnel that had gone skyward and was surely going to come down again.

At about 4pm each working day the task of searching, flagging and hauling the explosive ordnance into small piles would end and demolition charges would be placed in each pile and detonated. This was noisy and satisfying but once in a while the occasional warhead would fail to detonate and get blown for a considerable distance by the main bang. This caused much ducking for cover, usually under the tank, and then it had to be found and blown up separately.

On one occasion a 400lb phosphorous bomb, not actually identified during our frenetic activity, got included in one pile and blown up. These produced a huge cloud of rather poisonous gas (phosgene?) which then drifted slowly and with horrifying inevitability, on a gentle breeze across Poole bay towards Bournemouth. Not enough time to have a gas alarm sounded in the town on a Saturday afternoon, which would have caused considerable panic since everyone had long given up carrying gas masks. Fortunately the cloud had largely dissipated by the time it arrived in town though reports of seeing it coming and smelling it were made.

One invasion lesson learned early on and caused us a lot of trouble. The RAF would 鈥渃arpet-bomb鈥� the beaches as a first phase of assault. This made huge craters along the shoreline and in shallow water. The craters would fill with water so that drivers of tanks being landed could not, in all the excitement of a very realistic mock battle, easily see them. Several tanks drove into these carters, sank and had some of their crews drowned. We inherited the difficult job of cutting up these tanks under water with explosives so that the pieces could be hauled away.

The army also used sea-going tanks, ones fitted with an inflatable rubber boat hull so that they could be launched at sea and make their own way ashore. They weren鈥檛 very sea worthy nor manoeuvrable and several sank in shallow water, turning them into underwater obstacles upon which incoming landing craft could founder, with possible loss of life. I am told that some of them are still there and make useful 鈥渉ouses鈥� for the local fish!

Shortly after D-day (a date then unknown to us) King George VI was scheduled to come down to Studland in his private train to watch one of the final major assault exercises (a visit also unknown to us) and was to be met at Holton Heath Halt and taken to an elevated, and safe, observation bunker.

The night prior to this visit a lone German bomber dropped a stick of six 50kg high explosive bombs and about two hundred 2kg incendiary bombs across the railway line between Hamworthy and Holton, all of which failed to function. It was, I believe, an attack on the RN Cordite factory at Holton Heath and not intended to incommode our Monarch but it led to some very urgent disposal of the incendiaries and assurances that the high explosive bombs were actually duds (dropped from too low an altitude to arm properly).

These duds, all buried themselves to a depth of about 12 feet and were dug out, stripped down and disposed of later.

Following the wind-down of battle range assault exercises prior to 鈥淒鈥� day we were able to put in a six day week for several weeks 鈥渨alking鈥� over Studland, from the beach to about half a mile into the range, in close order, searching for and probing for any unexploded ordnance that had been missed in our weekend searches. A hundred or more were found, many well buried, and disposed of until, by the end of July 44, we were down to finding, perhaps, one or two a day. During our 鈥淪tudland鈥� period of just under a year, learning as we went along and always in great haste and under pressure to keep the beach area safe, we dealt with just over 2700 pieces of ordnance, achieving a one day record of 109 and a weekend record of 190, without a fatality.

Sadly, we had one serious injury. We had found a broken-open, unexploded, 500lb high explosive bomb on the edge of the range area and all too close to Knoll House. The fuse was found and removed. Rather than detonate this large heap of explosive we spread it out over a two square yard area and set it alight, safely from a distance.

TNT, unconfined, almost always burns furiously but rarely explodes so a young sub-lieutenant RNVR was left to keep watch over the conflagration from a safe distance whilst we got on with our other disposal work. By ill-chance, and quite unknown to us, a large unexploded bomb lay buried beneath the burning TNT. It 鈥渃ooked-off鈥� with an enormous explosion, which I saw and heard from a distance. No one except the Sub Lieutenant was at the scene and he was not hit by flying shrapnel but sand, at high velocity, which cost him his sight.

At this time I moved on to HMS Vernan (D), the disposal groups located at Brixham. After a brief stay to work-up and re-equip a team we set out for the ports of Holland and Germany, ending up on VE day clearing mines from Bremen docks, Bremerhaven and the River Wesser. For pretty well everyone else the war was over; we would be
fighting our quiet underwater war for another two years.

12 May 1995

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