大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Lincolnshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Raymond Smith and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Smith fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

In June 1944 the Squadron was detailed to join the Ack Ack gun belt on the south east coast. On 6th June, D Day, our squadron was on an airfield just outside Bognor Regis in Sussex. I had watched in wonderment at the hordes of planes and gliders going over and had a feeling that victory was not going to be far away.

Flying bombs were now being targeted against London, but I do not think anyone if the squadron had been told what they looked like or how to deal with them. Fate cast its spell regarding these because once again I was detailed for guard duty at the gun post. One morning around 03.00 hours I was serving my two hours on, standing behind the 200 mm Hispano cannon. My mate, a Geordie, was sitting on the seat when the air raid alarm sounded. Moments later we heard and saw what we thought was a German plane on fire, flying low towards us. I swung the gun so that my mate could get it in his sights, and shouted to him 鈥淥pen fire鈥�. He replied we had no orders to do so. 鈥淏*the orders鈥�, I shouted and with that he opened fire. We could see our shells hitting it because one in five were explosive and incendiary. Suddenly, the plane, as we then thought, started to dive to the ground, ending with a huge explosion in a nearby cornfield, the blast of which we both felt on the gun. Later we were to read on Daily Routine Orders that Geordie and I were credited with shooting down a Flying Bomb.

We remained at this airfield some weeks wondering when we would be posted over the Channel. With Allied forces becoming more victorious and V1 and V2 sites being blasted out of action and captured, our anti-aircraft fire was needed less and less. The squadron was withdrawn eventually to Acklington in Northumberland, and once again we were in Nissen huts some distance from the airfield.

A long weekend pass from Acklington started with trying to hitch-hike home, but getting as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne, I decided it wasn鈥檛 for me, so took the train from there. Back at the unit, nightly jaunts to a public house in the village of Red Row, gave several of my pals and I a lively time. We were again quite a few miles from any sizeable place so other than the NAAFI canteen and a local dance, there was nowhere else one could go.

Christmas 1944 was still spent on the home front at Acklington and enemy air activity over Great Britain had been reduced to nothing at all now. In January 1945 the squadron was given orders to go to Dover and across the Channel. At Dover we were assigned to different LST鈥檚 (Landing Ship Tank鈥檚) and we drove all our vehicles aboard with men. For some reason we spent all night aboard the LST鈥檚 in a very choppy harbour. To amuse ourselves other than trying to sleep, we tried to listen to the radio which was a field model. I think we wore the batteries down completely.

We sailed the next morning early and found ourselves anchoring and lowering the ramps on a sandy beach near to the French port of Boulogne. Driving our vehicles off and up the beach to the road, the chaps piled on board again and off we went. St Omer was our destination. On the way the convoy stopped near a chateau in a village for a short while, presumably to await orders. Several of the drivers had stopped their lorries close up under bedroom windows of some houses, and the chaps in the back were practising their knowledge of the French language with the ladies in the rooms, some of which meant getting ready for action of a different kind than what we had arrive in France for.

At St Omer we were billeted in an old French Caserne (barracks), sleeping on bare floorboards. I soon made an alteration to my allocation of floor space. Looking around a rubbish tip nearby I found a bed spring mattress, consisting of springs only, which I took back to the billet. I slept on this mattress for the next two or three months, loading it on my lorry whenever we moved. Most days I found myself detailed to fetch squadron rations and mail from Boulogne and Calais. Nothing much was done during our four or five weeks stay at St Omer, only drill and lectures for the other chaps who were not drivers or Dispatch riders.

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