大象传媒

Early wartime experiences 鈥� 1939-41

I lived in Canton, Cardiff, S Wales and worked in Cardiff docks as a shipping clerk until I was called up in September 1941 when I was still aged 19.

As a civilian 1939-41 I experienced German air-raids. The first real raid in Cardiff was a daylight raid in the dockyard area in probably 1940. I was at my desk in the office when it happened and I remember hearing the aircraft engines and the anti-aircraft fire. This early raid did not last very long. The main air-raids were at night. At first we heard German aircraft passing overhead, obviously on their way to English cities like Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. This went on until one night the bombs dropped on us. For protection in our own garden we had an Anderson shelter which had been dug out by the council workers in the early stages of the war and erected for us. Some landmines landed on streets fairly close to ours, sounding like very loud thuds but there were also deadly incendiary bombs which set fire to places including my old school, Canton High School. We watched it burning from the shelter. My younger brother was in the city centre that night at the cinema. He had taken shelter in the shelters in the walls of Cardiff castle and after the all-clear had sounded he walked back home from town, relieved to find us still ok. He was overjoyed when he heard the school had been burnt!
These raids continued from time to time and both my father and I went out to do fire-watching and would alert people when the raids came to go to their shelters. In spite of these night-raids I continued to go to work during the day at the docks until I was called up in September 1941.

Army training 鈥� 1942

I chose to go into the Army and was posted to join the Royal Armoured Corps Training Depot at Tidworth, Wiltshire. My basic training went on for six weeks. I was equipped with my battle dress 鈥� tunic, trousers and Army boots 鈥� and became Trooper B Martin, 7944668. The training consisted of drill on the barracks square, a lot of PE and map-reading and orientation skills. Being a mechanised unit, I had to learn to drive. I learned first of all on a 15 cwt truck, then a 3-ton lorry, armoured car, scout car and eventually a Sherman tank. Driving instruction took place on Salisbury plain, on a road layout for familiarisation before going on to real roads. As part of the training I went out with others on 鈥渟chemes鈥�, eg for map-reading, we were given map references and sat in a lorry with a driver who obeyed our instructions to the letter, wrong or not, to navigate between them. However most of my training was concentrated on tank radio communications and I qualified as a driver/operator. Apart from training, I was required to do other mess duties, including scrubbing stone floors, as a result of which I contracted 鈥淗ousemaid鈥檚 Knee鈥�, which invalided me for at least a week. This meant that my intake moved on and I had to join a new intake of recruits. The original intake, I later learned, had been posted to a unit which lost most of its members in action, and so I could say I may well owe my life to 鈥淗ousemaid鈥檚 Knee鈥�. When I finally got through training and the tests at the end of it, I was ready to be posted to a unit. We were given embarkation leave in advance of this 鈥� however as my first posting was cancelled, I had to return for further training and another week鈥檚 embarkation leave before being posted to join the 2nd Tank Regiment at the embarkation port at Liverpool.

Posting to India

We went on board what in peacetime had been a Union Castle liner, called the Athlone Castle. Once aboard, we were allocated our berths. When I heard mine was on 鈥淎鈥� deck, I hoped this was the top deck, but in fact it was the lowest, formerly the refrigeration area! We slept in very small bunks. On the first morning out, in the Irish Sea, my first memory was going to the wash room on the deck to wash and shave and felt my tummy turning over as the ship was heaving and was then very sick. Once I went up on deck in the open air I felt better, and eventually found my sea legs. We were a long time on ship, since to avoid the U-boats we headed out in to the Atlantic Ocean before heading south for South Africa. There were various alarm systems on board ship; if we were threatened by aircraft we were all ordered to go down below deck, but if it was a U-boat threat, we all assembled on the upper deck, for obvious reasons. Eventually we reached Cape Town where we had 3-4 days and were allowed ashore. The people there were extremely hospitable and whenever they saw servicemen went out of their way to help us, including one man, a dentist, who when he saw myself and a chum looking for somewhere to eat, invited us back to his house where his wife cooked a meal for us. She also volunteered to write to our families telling them she had seen us, as by that stage, we could not write ourselves for censorship reasons. My mother was most grateful.

From Cape Town we sailed across the Indian Ocean and docked in Bombay. This was my first experience of life in an Indian city and I was astonished at the mixture of wealth and poverty. From Bombay we went by train in extreme heat, cooled only by the supplies of iced water on board, as far as a village called Dhond in the Deccan Plain, to our barracks which consisted of bungalows. A vivid memory here was of the 鈥渃ha-wallahs鈥� who came round outside our meal periods to sell tea, shouting 鈥渃ha-wallah ka-hai鈥� (? 鈥� at least how it sounded!) and we put coins out beside our mugs which they would then fill up for us.

We had been issued with tropical kit 鈥� light shirt and shorts, and topee (sun-helmet), but we were just a holding force here, acting as reinforcements wherever we might be sent. Our forces in the Burma campaign had been routed by the Japanese and had to walk their own way out of northern Burma into India, having lost all their equipment and tanks, and we were there to join them as reinforcements to the 7th Armoured Brigade.

Shipped to the Gulf

Some months later we went back to Bombay and then reembarked on a troop ship and headed for the Persian Gulf. The heat on the journey was so intense that we could have fried eggs on the deck! We were given copious amounts of water and salt to stop us dehydrating. We arrived in Iraq at a port near Basra called Shaiba. When we arrived it was during the day and still hot, and we had to wait for a train to collect us at midnight. Unlike India, however, temperatures dropped at night and we had to search around for things to burn to keep ourselves warm. Eventually the train arrived, but with no carriages and we were transported in cattle trucks through the night, arriving next morning at Latafiyah, which was just a stretch of desert with toilets! We were told this was our camp 鈥� possibly for a short time, or possibly for months. This was because the Germans were expected to have broken through against the Russians in the Caucasus 鈥� if that had been the case, we would have needed to move up as a unit to engage them. Fortunately for us, this didn鈥檛 happen, so we were there for 6 months 鈥� we never knew why! So what of the camp? We had to make up our own tents, and with typical soldierly ingenuity, we dug out the sand beneath the tents, so that we had room to stand, and made up our beds with a mattress called a dhurrie and our blankets.

Another ingenious arrangement was the wash-house, where an oil-heater was used to heat the water 鈥� you arrived with your bucket (water supplies were brought in daily by tankers), poured your water in the top and collected the same amount of hot water from the outlet beneath. It was then your decision whether to use your hot water to wash yourself or your clothes. There was also a bath-house operating a similar arrangement, and it was someone鈥檚 responsibility to oversee it all.

During this period between autumn 鈥�42 and spring 鈥�43, we celebrated Cambrai Day (20th November) since we were a tank unit, by having an open-air meal in which the officers served the men and also had a donkey race! We were still there on 25th December and celebrated Christmas in a similar fashion with a traditional Christmas meal, and New Year as well. This period at Latafiyah camp gave the opportunity to spend leave visiting Baghdad 鈥� my romantic notion of Tales of the Arabian Nights however was somewhat deflated by the scruffy appearance of the old town, although 鈥榤odern鈥� Baghdad was very elegant. I was lucky enough to have a contact in Baghdad, a representative of the firm I had worked for in Cardiff, (member of the Frank C Strick line), who invited me and another ex-employee to the attractive villa he lived in, and I had the luxury of the first real bath since leaving home! In those days it was possible to roam the streets of Baghdad alone and on one such sortie, when I was out shopping for souvenirs was given directions by a fellow-soldier on the street to find the shops by (in his words!) 鈥渟traight on after the wog on the horse!鈥� This turned out to be the statue of King Faisal I, and my host, on hearing this story chuckled and promised to tell the Ambassador next time he saw him!

Another memory of these days was of listening to 78 rpm records on a portable gramophone belonging to our Colonel who held evening 鈥榗oncerts鈥� in the desert; hearing classical recordings such as Mussorgsky鈥檚 鈥淣ight on a Bare Mountain鈥� had a considerable impact on me.

From North Africa to Italy

Finally in the spring we were given orders to move across the desert northwards by truck to Syria and the Lebanon (again, no idea why!), where I had the pleasure of bathing in the blue Mediterranean. I had a week鈥檚 leave in Beirut which was then a most beautiful city. I also visited Baalbek with its Roman temples, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The next move was to Egypt, crossing various types of desert and passing through Palestine (now modern-day Israel), eventually reaching Suez, where it was a surprise to see ships apparently sailing through the desert! While in Egypt, the Italian campaign had started, so we went by troop-ship through Suez to southern Italy. The ship landed at Taranto, and I was taken into hospital. During the trip across the Med, I had fallen asleep on deck and caught bronchitis. After a week in hospital I was sent to transit camp outside the town to await rejoining my unit. This was the first time I had a chance to see an Italian opera 鈥� a performance of Madame Butterfly by the local opera company, however missing the last act in order to get back to camp before the bridge closed for the night.

I rejoined the unit by meeting two of its members in Taranto where they had been part of a rear party, and by travelling with them, against the wishes of the camp authorities who wanted me to return to base, I rejoined the unit in Ancona which was now at the front line. It was here that I first heard and saw enemy fire. While not directly involved in action as a tank crew member, I was a member of the spare crews. Because I had lost hearing in one ear as a result of an incident in the Lebanon, I was transferred to a Forward Delivery Squadron whose function was to bring up new tanks to the front line to replace those which had been knocked out in action. Some of the replacement tanks lacked equipment, and it was part of my job to check them for radios. Many had non-functioning radios and these had to be taken and out and replaced. This often entailed going out into the field to the knocked-out tanks, search them for functioning radios and bring these back to put into the replacement tanks. This of course was against regulations; as a radio-operator I was not supposed to hold any equipment, so when word went round that the War Department Inspectors were coming, we transported these spares, usually at night, to somewhere outside where we were operating. So it was only thanks to doing this that we were able to supply fighting units with properly functioning kit!! Nevertheless as a result of my work here I was promoted to Corporal!

As part of the 8th Army, we were fighting in the campaign on the Adriatic coast, gradually moving northwards through the winter of 鈥�43 and all the way through 鈥�44, as the Germans retreated. We passed through many battered Italian towns, where the population was at first suspicious of us, then gradually became very friendly, providing us with food supplies when we broke down as tanks often did. In some places we were welcomed by smiling girls throwing tomatoes up to us on the tanks, and people hailing us as their liberators. When the war in Europe ended I was by now in North Italy encamped in a small town near Ferrara, called Bondeno. Here I became very friendly with an Italian farming family, in particular with their lovely daughter Rosina. We listened on the radio to the reports of VE celebrations in Britain and I was particularly pleased to hear the celebrations in my home town of Cardiff.

The end of the war in Europe

My unit now became involved in transporting tanks up to southern Austria, where we had a camp on the W枚rthersee near Klagenfurt. Here for the first time we were able to experience the peace-time pleasures of sailing in boats on the lake. It was from here that I had my first home leave since 1942, travelling on the back of 3-ton trucks over several days back through southern Germany, seeing the devastation our bombers had caused on German towns. I particularly remember Ulm, where in the centre of the city only the cathedral with its very tall spire remained standing amongst the rubble. We travelled through France to Calais and home to Dover. After 3 years away, to get on a British train, read English newspapers and drink tea was elating. My homecoming was welcomed with great joy by my parents. This was only leave however and I had to go back, but this time to Palmanova in northern Italy, waiting to be de-mobbed. However when I was posted back it was to a RAF unit in West Raynham in Norfolk, as our tanks were being used as target practice for the bombers 鈥� not using real bombs though! After a couple of months I was sent to the demob centre and received my pin-stripe, double-breasted demob suit and hat, shoes etc. I was expected to stay on the Army roll until January, but got early release as I was enrolling on a University course in modern languages. And the rest as they say is history!

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