大象传媒

I joined the East Yorkshire Regiment on May 8th 1939, and was sent for 10 weeks training. As war was looking imminent our squad was sent on August 1st to join the 2nd Battalion, The East Yorkshire Regiment, stationed at Crownhill Barracks, Plymouth. On 1st September we were on the move again, this time to Beverley, back in Yorkshire, to form the 4th Battalion, East Yorks, mostly made up form Hull and East Yorkshire Territorials.
It took more then 24 hours to travel up from Plymouth, such was the volume of troop movements at that time. We often spent hours in sidings with only the soldier鈥檚 standby ditty, 鈥淲e鈥檙e 鈥榚re because we鈥檙e 鈥榚re鈥�, to sustain us.
We were billeted in tents on the barracks sports field, but on 3rd September, my birthday, we were all congregated in the NAAFI to hear that war had been declared. There was much speculation amongst the lads as to how long it would last. 鈥淚t鈥檒l all be over by Christmas鈥� was the general feeling. Not one of us thought that it would last long. Events were to prove us wrong.
On January 25th, 1940, we were sent to France to join the British Expeditionary Force, and were immediately sent to cover a German advance. After the Germans attacked we were gradually push back towards the coast and we were given the task of defending a small town. Our company was in reserve, manning slit trenches on top of a small ridge, when my mate 鈥楥ocker鈥� Gibson and I were ordered to find as many bicycles as we could. We 鈥榓cquired鈥� 14 or 15 bikes and were told to store them in the Reserve Section. At nightfall I was ordered to replace a comrade who had been shot in the head. The medics got him off the embankment and I worked my way into the slit trench.
Next morning at dawn we were ordered to retreat. Most of the Battalion had marched out during the night and we had to use the bikes to catch them up as they headed for a town called Dunkirk. We had never heard of it. When we did reach them we had to ditch the bikes and march. Soon after daylight we were at Bray Dunes, about six miles from Dunkirk, when German dive bombers scattered us with machine gun fire. My section fled to the beach and dived into hastily dug foxholes. When the attack had passed we moved warily towards Dunkirk along the dunes. Stukas visited us regularly, flying no more then 20 or 30 feet above the beach and causing panic amongst the troops. At some point we came upon a medium sized boat, beached and abandoned. Following other soldier I clambered aboard, hoping that we could sail away on the high tide, but an inspection soon showed that the boat was holed on the other side, so we abandoned ship and struggled towards Dunkirk in our small groups.
With my mate Gibson in tow I reached Dunkirk Pier, and after being ordered by 2 Redcaps to, 鈥淔ollow them two in front鈥�, we reached the Medical Station. We were then ordered to carry a wounded man to a ship waiting at the end of the pier, parts of which had been holed hastily bridged by planks, tricky going without a stretched. We made it OK and handed him over to the waiting crew, then scrambled aboard ourselves. Next thing we knew, we were being woken up in Dover and put on a train for Aldershot.
After documentation on 31st May we were sent on leave, after which we were to be reformed and re-equipped, as not many arms had been brought back from France. When ammunition had run out, many weapons had been destroyed on the beaches. After reforming at Rugeley Camp in Staffordshire, we spent many short spells around England; Blandford, Maidenhead, Cattistock, Clevedon, and, among other duties we manned the coast defences at Fleet, in Hampshire.
This was the period known as The Battle of Britain, and I was promoted to Corporal about this time. We were drafted out to the Middle East on April 22nd 1941. The voyage took six weeks as we went well out into the Atlantic to avoid German U-Boats.
After a spell at Mersah Matruh in North Africa, the Battalion was sent to Cyprus, patrolling the Northern coastline. Next stop; Palestine, a quiet time for us, after which we were sent back to North Africa to try and check Rommel鈥檚 advance on Egypt. Our company was pushed back from Bir Hakiem to the operational area known as 鈥楰nightsbridge鈥�. On June 4th, 1942, we were captured when we ran out of ammo;--you can鈥檛 fight tanks with bayonets.
We were rounded up and sent to a prison camp in Benghazi. That is when I started to smoke. Fleas were everywhere and dysentery was ride, so I started to smoke to keep the fleas away for a little peace. We were shipped to Brindisi in Southern Italy then taken to a camp at Capua for a short spell before being sent to a proper POW camp at Faro Sabina, about 25 miles North East of Rome. There were about 2000 of us billeted in huts of 64. I was in charge of Hunt no. 14 as I had been promoted to the rank of Lance Sergeant in North Africa.
At the NCO i/c Hut, it was my duty to keep the men in order, issue their meager rations, and to supervise the doling out of the main meals of hot soup every day. Three huts were served by a large cooking pot and the Sergeants took it in turns to dish out the food. A man from each hut would stir the soup as we served, in order to ensure that we did not keep the thickest at the bottom for any particular hut. It was also my duty to implement all the documentation required by the Red Cross.
In the early days we were allocated two Red Cross parcels of food, about shoe box size, between five men. Later this was increased to 1 parcel between two men which, with the Italian rations, was just about enough to keep us going.
To pass the time we played all kinds of sports; football, cricket, netball, and boxing, etc. We also had debates and produced concerts, anything to keep active.
After a while some of the men were marched out to work on the farms, in payment for which they received extra food. Often they would smuggle potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, or anything edible they could lay their hands on which would augment our rations. We had an escape committee and many men dreamt of 鈥榞oing over the wire鈥�, but many attempts failed.
Time dragged slowly by until September 3rd 1943. It was my 24th birthday and I had been a prisoner for 15 months. A solitary British aeroplane suddenly flew over the camp dropping leaflets telling us that the Allies had landed and were expected to advance. They advised us to stay put! Most of the Italian guards drifted away as Italy had packed it in, leaving only a few guards and the Camp Commandment. The C.C. advised us to leave quickly as the Germans were on their way to take over the camp. We left immediately and were led into the mountains to the North East, away from Rome. At one of our rests, our RSM called all group leaders together and advised us to split into small groups.
I told my men that I intended to march all day and get as far away from the main group as I could. Eleven men joined me and we marched into the hills, bypassing a lot of small villages, the approximate location of which the Italian guards had given us. We holed up in a shepherds鈥� cave for three weeks, scrounging off the land for any kind of food that we could get. We took it in turns to go to a nearby village to beg for food.
One evening I was in the village with two South Africans when we met an Italian officer who was traveling South with a companion to join Marshall Badoglio, the new leader of Italy, who had joined the Allied cause.
We three agreed to travel with them as they knew the language and the area. The other lads in our group preferred to sit it out in the cave. We five headed through the mountains, reaching the Cassino area by October. Being not more than four miles from Monte Cassino we could see and hear the shelling. As there were a lot of German troops in the area we could not make progress, so we agreed to split up. We three headed East towards Venafro, and we came within about 2 miles of the town, on 20th October, before we managed to find shelter in a shepherds鈥� hut, which was just big enough for three people. These huts were built of dry stone and roofed with tin sheets. The next day we stayed inside and thought out our next move. I decided that I was going to try to get through the German lines as we were in range of small arms fire. The South Africans were content to sit it out.
Next morning before dawn, I headed South very cautiously. I kept among trees for cover, looking out all the time for Germans. At one place, seeing nothing suspicious, I walked slowly past some trees into open ground. 鈥楬ALT!鈥� called a gruff voice. For all my caution I had blundered straight past a German dug-out containing four solders, plus two more in a slit trench. It was very crowded in the dug-out and I must have looked a real mess. My dress, which I had swapped for my British uniform shortly after leaving the POW Camp, consisted of old raggy trousers, filthy shirt, and a tri-corn hat. My feet were wrapped in rags as my boots had worn out long ago. I tried to convince the Germans that I was an Italian, and I supposed that I must have succeeded, because after an hour or so they kicked me out of their dug-out. Their weapons had been stacked in a corner and I had been thinking of taking my chances if they caught on that I was a British soldier. Now I was glad that I had not had to have a go.
I scrambled down the road for about 50 yards, the slid down a steep bank into a dried up rived bed. No sign of troops but I noticed that Yankee K-Ration boxes were strewn about; also the telephone wires were a different colours. I was through the front lines and into the American-occupied town of Venafro.
I was interrogated and sent to a unit about 5 miles to the rear, and then on the 5th Army HQ at Cassaferta, to be de-briefed by an Intelligence Officer. From there I went to a transit camp near Naples, not far from Vesuvius. I had a medical examination there, but apart from a dose of crabs and being a bit underweight I was generally OK. Within a week I was crossing the Mediterranean yet again, this time in an American ship, en route for Bizerta, North Africa, then on to Algiers, from where we sailed to Gourock, in Scotland, which we reached on New Year鈥檚 Day 1944. I still think that there is no finer sight than the fields getting closer on both sides as you sail up the Clyde.
After six weeks leave I had a medical at Croydon, and a month鈥檚 rehabilitation at Headingley, before going to Ireland where I was attached to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. It was my job there to convert surplus Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel into infantry soldiers for occupation duties in the part of Europe already won by the Allied front line troops.
In May 1946, I was sent back to Beverly in East Yorkshire where it had all started so long ago, to get ready for demobilization.
I left the Army on 10th May, 1946, after serving 7 years with The Colours.

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