大象传媒

I was a radio operator in Northern Ireland as the IRA were a bit nigly and in 1940 Lord Louie van Backen (sp?) of the Royal Family returned from Burma and wanted volunteers with no ID marks, ie. tattoos to identify you as being British, 鈥渟tupid kids for dirty jobs鈥�, commando!

HMS Buldo flat bottom ship so it can go close to shore. I did 5 D-day landings in 9th Nov 1942 on my birthday! I was already on shore in Algezars and captured Maison Blanche for the petrol dump, then we worked our way through North Africa and stayed at Suez and did training there 鈥� assault landing training in Saudi Arabia, and going to Sicily to invade Sicily. Hour E O Day (HEOD).

Captured Seracuse then went across to Naples for D Day landings all up Italy to Nartura, Solero, Anzio where our 鈥渘oble鈥� American allies, General Bradley was frightened of his own shadow. We could have been in Rome in 2 days and he wouldn鈥檛 let anyone move off the beach. By which time the Panza (German) elite division crossed over Italy and bombed the hell out of us. There was 3 big guns on a railway train and you could look up on the clouds and see the reflected flash on the clouds and you would say, 鈥渂loody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell鈥� (three times) and then 3 big shells would land along and among the ships. In the 1914 War the Germans had guns called Big Bertha and these guns at Anzio were called Anzio Annie.

When a bit of peace and quiet had arrived, we, No. 1 Advanced Landing Group, special force, came back to England to go across to France for HEO D-day at Aramanche.

Where the 2 houses are 鈥渨hen you watch the news鈥�, the one on the right is where I had to climb up and fix the stainless steel aerial because the Bulolo signal ship handled 2134 radio messages in that one day.

That day was like any other D-day. You shot them, they shot back and you were always cold and wet. When you鈥檙e 5鈥�6鈥� tall and your landing barge hits a sandbank and the water is 6鈥�0鈥� deep, keeping your weapons dry is difficult. Short as I am I was more like a submarine with a periscope up than a rifle.

Then we came back to England and landed at Southampton and a WAAF lady said, 鈥淎lexander, you鈥檙e posted overseas鈥�.

That鈥檚 when they took us to where the gliders were and towed us over in a glider, a HORSA glider, and landed at map reference A68 in France. There were more bomb holes and bombs than you could see at the factory; it was grim.

Food was rationed, I had 2 slices of bread a day. I later found out I was in Juvencourt. They say it was the thousand bomber raid. There were bomb holes in bomb holes. If the police had picked us up they couldn鈥檛 have identified us by our fingerprints as we had none.

The Mosquito intruders raiders used to fly over Germany every night from that spot after we built a landing strip. The reason we had no fingerprints was because we had to do heavy labour picking up house bricks and throwing them into the lorry to be taken away and our hands were cut from it.

Our rations were very limited and we were starving. 3 miles away was a 鈥淵anks鈥� landing strip and they couldn鈥檛 land until we had finished building it and my winger and mate, Norman Bales, who came from Manchester, and myself went in to see if we could obtain some food from the Yanks. They could give us food but we could have as many huge catering cans of grapefruit or tomato juice as we wanted. So we took 2 back to Juvencourt and went and pinched all the Frenchmen鈥檚 onions and boiled them in this tomato juice. The best 2 meals we had for days.

We had 2 officers and a squadron leader and a flight lieutenant in charge who came over later after everything was quiet. Squadron Leader Saunders and the Flight Lieutenant was Robinson I believe, he was the manager of a Woolworths store in Cheltenham.

When we got these 鈥渏ankers鈥� mine was for swearing and Norman Bales got his for discharging a gun without permission in the middle of the war. He shot through the hut to stop the 2 officers firing the veri pistol at night. We both received 2 weeks of punishment which was hard labour. Had to do any dirty, filthy, stinking job. After this we were both sent back to England. Then, like the SAS are now they tried to discharge us for 6 months. When I came back all they did to me was to send me all up the east coast to all different aerodromes where I put radar sets in boxes to be smashed up to dispose of them. The same as the Mosquito aircraft (605 Squadron 鈥� Warwick and Birmingham) - they were made of wood) I don鈥檛 think there is one flying now as they were destroyed. The precision bombing was always the Mosquito鈥檚 work.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Kenneth Alexander and has been added to the site with his permission. Kenneth Alexander fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.