大象传媒

These are some of my fathers experiences during and after the War.

Training
Eddie's training in the Royal artillery took place at Weybourne on the Norfolk coast. His regiment the 52nd L.A.A operated bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns. One day he borrowed a small bore shotgun off a local and shot 11 partridges on the Kings estate at Sandringham, as 12 were needed to feed everyone in his hut he caught and killed a pigeon. The birds were prepared and cooked. The officer had the pigeon as Eddie reckoned that he wouldn't tell the difference. After the meal the officer said that he wasn't going to ask where the birds came from but it was the best meal he had had since being in the army.
Eddie caught measles so was sent home on leave, to get a few more days off he got his local police inspector to write a letter for him saying when he had recovered. This may have been on condition that he promised not take his son on any of his poaching expeditions again. When Eddie got back to camp his unit had been moved on and when he finally caught them up he was given duties in the cookhouse as punishment for being absent without leave, as his letter was not believed. The person running the cookhouse was dealing on the black market and he said if Eddie kept quiet he would get some whisky and cigarettes, so Eddie found himself with some vital supplies!

France
The regiment went over to France with the B.E.F. When the German advance started they retreated towards Dunkirk. If they passed by farms and the animals were locked up in buildings Eddie would let them out as he said they would stand a better chance of survival. Eddie found it very hard to leave any injured animals suffering along the roadside and there were many horses. So if he could these were shot to put them out of their misery. On reaching the Dunkirk perimeter they had to abandon all equipment except personal weapons. Eddie had a Winchester .22 pump action rifle and a Lewis gun left over from the Great War that to cock you had to use a 4 inch nail!Taking shelter in the dunes from the bombing someone had acquired a bottle of whisky that Eddie and his fellow gunners took turns to have a swig from till one bomb landed so close the bottle was knocked over and the drink drained away into the sand.
They had just about given up being rescued, as no boats were coming into the beach, when a small fishing boat came into view. They thought at first it was sailing away but it then came towards the beach. They started to wade out towards the boat, Eddie was only 5'7 tall and as the water came up to his neck he prayed it would not get any deeper as he could not swim. The Lewis gun was dumped into the sea as it was a burden to carry. The water did not get any deeper but when Eddie reached the boat and he was about to be pulled aboard a sailor said that there was no more room. But Eddie's friends were not going to leave him behind and saying that there was always room for one more they dragged him aboard. Eddie, due to having no sleep for days, then feel asleep from exhaustion and didn't wake up till reaching England.
Some days after the Dunkirk evacuation had been completed a postman delivered a parcel to Eddie's home, it was large and heavy and wrapped up in an artillery leather jerkin. His mother opened it up, broken down into various components was the Winchester rifle. She was worried that someone might find out about it, but as the postman knew the family he said he wouldn't say a word. That gun was to be used for over 35 years shooting game birds, rabbits and hares. Most on land where Eddie should not have been shooting!

North Africa and Greece
After being re-equipped the regiment was sent by convoy all the way round Africa to Cairo. Eddie said that in the desert you froze at night and baked during the day and if you were trying to eat during a sand storm the sand would get in your food even if you were in a tent with your head under a blanket.
What started as a limited raid against the Italian army turned out into a full scale advance as 30,000 British and Commonwealth troops took tens of thousands of Italian prisoners as they were chased across the desert. Some prisoners Eddie's troop took were allowed to keep their equipment ,including motorbikes, and they used these men to scavenge for food for the battery. Chrismas day was spent cooking a Christmas pudding. It was made from any ingredients they could find , wrapped up in someones vest and boiled in a dixie of water.
With the Italians defeated Eddie thought they would get some rest but their regiment was ordered to drive 800 miles back across the desert and his battery, the 155th, were embarked to Greece.
Eddie never spoke a lot about this campaign but he remembered being up in the mountains with a column of tanks and it was very cold. When the Germans started their advance they seemed to be always under attack from aircraft. The retreat took them across the Corinth canal where Eddie said they lost a lot of men. He couldn't remember where they were picked up from but they were very lucky to get away. But it was a case of out of the frying pan into the fire as their ship took them to Crete to assist in its defence.

Crete
Having lost all their artillery Eddie and others from his battery were used as infantry. When the German parachutists and gliders came he was in the vicinity of Chania. As the Germans advanced he was holding a position which was like a bandstand , he was sent off with another man to find some food and water, when they got back it had received a direct hit from a bomb. Later while coming under heavy fire in a house Eddie said that if he had only one bullet left and there was a rat in one corner of the room and Churchill in the other the one with four legs would have lived!The soldiers were ordered to retreat south across the island to Sphakia. It was hard going up and down mountains along tiny rock strewn tracks but it was to no avail as there was no way off the beach. An officer standing next to him said that the game was up and they would have to surrender, he was then hit by a bullet from a German aircraft and killed. The Germans marched everyone back over the island, the troops were very thirsty and Cretans tried to give water to them. Eddie always remembered the face of a young boy who risked being beaten by the guards to give him some water. While being held on Crete he noticed another prisoner hiding something in the sand ,Eddie had pretended to be asleep but when the the man had moved away he dug out a large tin of meat. This was shared out among friends and quickly eaten but as they had no water to drink and the meat was so salty their tongues become so swollen that they had wished they hadn't eaten it so fast . When the man who had hidden the tin found it was missing he told the guards who told him he should not have been so greedy and it served him right. Eddie was shipped over to Greece and then by train to a prison camp. They were transported in cattle trucks, the trucks were very crowded and it took 4 days and 3 nights to get to the camp.They arrived at Stalag 18a in Austria where he was to have a quite memorable time as "The Poacher In The Stalag"

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