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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Ted Newcomen from the Hastings Community Learning Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Edward Collins with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Joining up and postings in Britain
My name is Edward Collins and in 1939 I turned 17 years of age and was living at home with my parents in Sidley, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex. I volunteered for the Territorial Army two months before war was declared - joining up on the 30th June 1939 at the drill-hall (now the site of Underwaterworld) on Rock-a-Nore Road in Hastings. I kept a detailed record of where I was posted throughout the war and still have this document in my possession.
I was too young to be sent to France with the B.E.F., so after training was posted to No. 1 Kent Fortress, at Sheerness. Here I looked after the big diesel machinery that powered the powerful searchlights that picked out the German bombers in the night skies on their way up the Thames estuary to target London.
After going on various engineer training courses around the country I was eventually posted as a sapper to 210 Field Company. In May 1942 I boarded the troopship MacAndrew at Greenock in Scotland. The ship was an old American banana boat with a flat bottom, which caused her roll about a lot, and it made for a very uncomfortable journey out to North Africa.

North Africa and Sicily
We arrived in Egypt on 21st July 1942 and I was almost immediately put into hospital with dysentery. On my recovery I was posted to 209 Field Company, just before the Battle of El-Alamein.
Our unit’s job was to clear paths through the minefields just prior to the start of the offensive. On the night of the big push we’d barely finished our work and were stuck in the middle of the minefields as the massive opening barrage went off with shells from both sides passing over our heads.
I went right through the North African campaign, through Libya to Tunisia — always doing mine clearance work or looking water points. Mine clearance was a dangerous and slow old business as this was often done just using bayonets to prod every inch of sand and then put up pickets (red on the danger side/white on the safe side) with tape attached to mark the safe path through.
I remember on one occasion being ordered to clear a minefield using our Polish mine detector equipment. This comprised of a hand-held detector to sweep the ground, a back-pack with all the electronic gear, and ear-phones that would give off a high-pitched wail as the sweeping head passed over metal objects under the surface.
Almost immediately upon putting on the kit I got an absolutely deafening sound through the headphones and asked my mate to turn down the volume knob on the backpack. To which he replied, ‘It’s already turned right down!’ We then scraped away the sand beneath our feet and it turned out that I had actually been standing on a huge German Teller mine. These were designed to blow up heavy vehicles and needed over 250 lbs. pressure to go off — luckily I didn’t weigh as much as a tank!
In August 1943 I participated in the invasion of Sicily during which I drove a Daimler armoured car.

Return to England and Invasion
I returned to England via North Africa, arriving in Liverpool in December 1943, whereupon I got 14 days leave, my first since going overseas. I went back to Sidley to visit my parents.
By now I’d had enough of mine clearance work and not wishing to push my luck any further managed to get myself retrained as motorcycle dispatch rider.
210 Field Company than found itself going into France on D-2, the day after the Normandy invasion. I then went right through the entire campaign, through northern France, Belgium, and Holland. In September 1944 this included helping to rescue the British Airborne troops who were trapped on the far side of the river during the failed Arnhem offensive. A couple of months later we were hurriedly sent south to reinforce the U.S, troops in the Ardennes. Where we to set charges ready to blow the bridges if the last big German counterattack had successfully broken through in what later became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
210 Field Company then put up the longest British built bridge (1110 ft long) over the River Rhine at Rees. By the time the war finished we were in Germany at a place called Verden.

Demobilisation
I was finally demobbed in Group 29, when I was rewarded with a pin-stripped suit & a trilby hat. I can remember ‘spivs’ offering to buy my new clothes as I left the barracks to go home where people pulled my leg and said I looked like Al Capone in my outfit.

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