大象传媒

Experiences of a young man at War

Cyril Norman ("Sandy") le Gassick was born on the 9th April 1925 at a nursing home at Gillingham, Kent, the third son of Captain F.N.le Gassick, MC,Croix de Guerre, RGA. Sandy's father had been made redundant within the Army under the Geddes Act of 1923, and had opted to become a "mine host" of a public house at the top of Bluebell Hill, on the North Downs between the Medway towns and Maidstone. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Sandy, then 14.5 years old was a pupil at Sir Joseph Williamsons School at Rochester. Because of the threat of bombing the school decided to offer evacuation of its pupils to a location in Wales. The evacuation was entirely voluntary, and Sandy, who had been excited perhaps over the years by his fathers gripping stories of his experiences during the First World War decided that he would prefer to remain at home.

Another school had to be found for Sandy to attend and his family were fortunate to find vacancies at Maidstone School, where a number of pupils and families had evacuated to more safe areas. Maidstone School was a very old seat of learning having been established in the 15th Century and it enjoyed the status of a Public School. A feature of such status was that the School had an Officer Training Corps (OTC) and an Air Training Corps in which pupils were encouraged to join as an extra curriculum facility. With the military background of his family Sandy quickly joined the OTC and became proficient in a number of basic Army disciplines such as footdrill, armsdrill , fieldcraft and camoulflage., and was quickly promoted up to the rank of Sergeant, The school was fortunate to be located close to the Barracks of the West Kent Regiment and, of course, benefited from the regular attendance of their Depot instructors.

When,in 1940,the threat of an invasion caused the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), Sandy, who was tall and mature for his age, was" persuaded" to increase his age by a couple of years and quickly recruited into the LDV Section in his village as a Corporal when he was tasked with imparting his basic military knowledge to a number of very raw volunteer recruits. Apart from this he actively engaged in leading nightly patrols in the surrounding countryside looking for German paratroops! Because of their location the LDV Section was issued with Lee Enfield rifles. Sandy was very familiar with this rifle as it was the same as used in the OTC, and he considered himself fairly proficient in taking it apart and cleaning it.

It was of course an exciting time for the LDV and it is true to say that the Section that Sandy served with took their duties very seriously and perhaps with some thought as to where it was all leading to. The subsequent formation of the Home Guard to replace the LDV was greeted with great enthusiasm as it meant setting up an organisation based on Regular Army principles, with an extended range of weapons and equipment. Sandy's LDV Section was absorbed and reformed as a platoon of "C" Company, 13 (Kent) Battalion, Home Guard. The Company Commander was a Major Clive Anderson , onetime Mayor of Rochester, and the owner of a printing business. The Second in Command was Captain Charles Eldridge - a stalwart in the local village and a very proficient plasterer by trade. There were two other platoons in the Company - one located at Burham and one at Snodland. The Company HQ was set up at Bluebell Hill . There were few other officers or senior NCOs in the company simply because there were no other volunteers who were capable of discharging supervisory duties or being willing to accept responsibility Sandy, in spite of his tender years, had become well respected in his company simply because he knew what he was doing when it came to basic practical military matters and perhaps more importantly had the capability to impart his knowledge to others. His company commander recognised his abilities and persuaded Sandy to accept promotion to the rank of Company Sergeant Major. At his "official" age of 17 plus and actual age of 15 plus, the holding of this rank was thought to be a record for someone in His Majesty's Armed Forces but, of course, this fact was sub-judice on a need to know basis ! The late Colonel Colin Mitchell it is believed to have laid claim to being a CSM in the Home Guard at the real age of sixteen. If this is true then it would appear that Sandy was ahead of him by a few months!

When the Battle of Britain started in 1940 it heralded a particularly busy time for all Home Guard units in the South and Southeast of England. Not only did they have to learn about how to use a wide variety of anti-tank weapons they also had to be prepared to assist the local authority during the violent daytime air raids. Sandy was fortunate, in a way, that much of the aerial activity took place during the School holiday period. This meant that he found himself on duty most days watching the air battles going on over the Kentish countryside, and responding to calls from the local Constabulary to guard crashed RAF and German aircraft In this respect Sandy tells the story that having seen the heroics of the RAF fighter pilots he had set his heart on joining them when he was old enough. However, one Sunday lunchtime he watched an aerial battle over Maidstone which resulted in an ME109 spiralling out of the sky to crash between Aylesford and Burham. The ME109 disintegrated about 1000 feet above ground, with the wings and tail coming off. The pilot had not been seen to bale out. Sandy was asked to go to the site and guard the remains of the aircraft until the RAF recovery team arrived. When he got to the site he found that the pilot was still aboard when it came down and he was thrown out when the aircraft disintegrated He was found close to the aircraft where he had struck the ground face down with his right arm raised as though he was giving the Nazi salute. The pilot had a bullet hole in his head. After this Sandy admitted that he was not now all that keen on becoming a fighter pilot! Subsequently, Sandy together with four of his friends at school called at the recruiting office in Maidstone to volunteer for the Royal Tank Regiment, They were advised to go away and come back when they were all 17 years of age!

Guarding crashed aircraft was a fairly frequent event, Those that caught fire were the most dangerous as invariably the on board ammunition exploded every now and then, so it was wise to stand at a distance. Sandy's outstanding memory of all the crash sites was the smell of heat and burning.
A Spitfire came down in woods to the North of Bluebell Hill village and the local Bobby asked Sandy to come with him to the site,with a shovel. On reaching the site the Spitfire had torn into a group of fairly small saplings and buried itself with soil over the cockpit. The wings had come off and there was the usual burning smell. There were no reports of the pilot being seen to bail out so the purpose of the shovels became frighteningly clear - the pilot was expected to be found within the heap of soil , Th Bobby and Sandy dug away all the soil and happily found nothing! A little while later another policeman arrived with the news that the pilot had bailed out over the Isle of Sheppey and was safe and sound ! The local Bobby left and asked Sandy to look after the site until the RAF arrived. Sandy admits that this particular day was one which he remembers as probably the most frightening of all his Home Guard experiences. He asks to consider being alone in a eerie and silent wood alongside a slowly burning crashed aircraft when suddenly the peace is broken by the sound of air raid sirens in the distance, followed by the sight of a pack of some twenty Heinkel and Dornier bombers surrounded by escorting ME109 fighters making their way towards London. The bombers are peppered by bursting anti aircraft shells but still make their menacing way towards their target. The enemy formation passes on and relative quietness descends until thirty minutes later the remnants of the formation returns overhead. One wonders if they have dropped all their bombs or can one expect off loading to help their flight back to base. Two bombers which had become detached from their group were pounced upon by RAF Fighters and crash to the ground some miles away. That day was September 15th 1940!

Perhaps a more rewarding experience for Sandy was the day a Dornier Bomber which had been involved in a raid on London was hit whilst returning to base and the pilot apparently realised that he would not make it back to his base and decided to land at Rochester Aerodrome. When approaching the aerodrome in a South-North direction it passed over the North Downs at Bluebell Hill at about 1500 feet. At this point it was fired on by a battery of AA guns sited at Burham and a large piece of the tail was blown off, ( as well as extensive damage to the roofs of the village houses !) When this happened, the Captain, (it was later established) ordered the crew to bale out. Three of the crew appeared and glided to earth. Sandy had seen all this happen from the garden of his home so he slung his rifle over his shoulder, got on his (Army) bicycle and headed for where he thought one had landed. in woods on the road to Walderslade. Sandy was lucky that a local resident had seen exactly where the the crewman come down in the woods. Sandy found him hanging from a tree, and the German immediately surrendered by throwing his pistol on the groumd. Sandy then marched him down to the Police Station in Walderslade. This action was not without drama as the local residents expressed their anger at the German airman and the prisoner was very relieved to safely join the rest of the crew at the Police Station.

An equally exciting activity within the the Home Guard was Sandy's duties as Assistant Bombing Officer to the Company Second in Command, Charles Eldridge. Sandy always admired Charles who was quite fearlessly expert in this discipline.. Sandy recalls one occasion when members of the Company were given the opportunity to throw live hand grenades in one of the chalk pits on the North Downs, used as a training area. Sandy manned the assembly pit whilst Charles supervised the actual throwing of the grenade in an adjacent pit connected by a trench. A Private in the company was a man who worked at Shorts aicraft factory at Rochester Aerodrome and had survived an air raid on the factory. As a consequence he was extremely nervous and with hindsight should have been dischared from duties with the Home Guard. Sandy gave him a No.36 grenade and told him to hold it in his throwing hand, and he recalls that he held it so tightly that his knuckles were white. Charles called him forward into the throwing pit, told him what to do (everyone had plenty of practice with inert bombs) and went through the procedure - "remove pin , prepare to throw, THROW. " The man held on to the bomb too long when he threw it with the result that the bomb landed on the bank at the front of the pit. Fortunately the bombs were fitted with 7 second fuses and Charles leapt on to the pit bank grabbed the bomb which was lodged in some ivy and threw it forward where it exploded. Charles was made an MBE a few days after the event for his calm reaction to a traumatic event.

Being a "Front line Battalion" Sandy's Company was equipped with a wide variety of anti tank weapons. Spigot mortars, No.75 grenades , Fougass dischargers and Northover Projectors. The latter weapon was developed by a Major Northover who lived at Faversham, a short distance from Bluebell Hill. The major carried out all his development work on the weapon at the chalk pits used by the Company. Sandy used to fire the weapon with different levels of repellant and caused consternation at home whenever he arrived back in the late evening with boots glowing with phospherous! The Company was assembled one Sunday to witness the effect of a live firing of a Fougass discharger, which was very very impressive and raised the mens morale considerably, and confidence that it would cause problems to any German armour making its way up Bluebell Hill.

When the threat of invasion disappeared the activity of Sandy's Compamy quietened a great deal, but training still contiued on two days each week. Back at home a rather quiet and mysterious customer, who patronised the Saloon Bar most evenings, asked Sandy's father what Sandy intended doing when he left school. Sandy's father said he thought he would follow in his footsteps and join the Army. The mystery man offered an appointment in The War Office, subject to Sandy passing an apptitude test. Sandy agreed to give it a go and shortly afterwards joined about fourty other young men who were about to leave school, at an old Napoleonic fort, Fort Bridgewood, which was some three miles away on the road to Chatham. Sandy had often passed the fort and noted that it had two large Wireless Masts with a number of aerials strung between them. The apptitude test was to determine the ability of each to learn the Morse Code. Sandy passed the test and in the company of thirtyseven other young men completed a six month course learning to read Morse Code at 22 words per minute, and learning the intricacies of German Army and Luftwaffe morse procedures and format. After qualifying as an "Experimental Wireless Assistant" sandy spent the rest of the war intercepting enemy morse code messages which were passed on to Bletchley Park, Station "X", and later a member of a UK wide high frequency Direction Finding network. On reaching the age of 18 Sandy with others was recruited into the Army for one day and immediately put into the Class "W" Reserve. Soon after VJ Day Sandy and the other thirtyseven "EWAs" were "recalled to the Colours". Sandy subsequently served in the Royal Corps of Signals for thirtyfive years, retiring in 1980 in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was appointed MBE in 1967

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