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THE WAR MEMOIRS OF KENNETH SHAW PROUT

These are the memoirs of Bombardier Kenneth Shaw Prout, Royal Artillery, number 1624681, covering my six years in the Army from July 1940 until May 1946.

Call-up

In September 1939, the Second World War broke out. I was working in a grocery shop (Frampton Cottrell Co-op), so I knew I would have to go when 1 was called up - no reserve occupation for me! I was originally called up in early 1940, but I was in bed with the flu and so I was passed over that time.

They sent for me again later on that year. I was delivered my call up papers on
July 27th 1940, as I was going to work on my bicycle. I met the postman coming
the other way on his bicycle.
"I've got them for you this morning!" he said.
"What's that then?" I asked.
"Got your papers", he replied. So he gave them to me on my way to work and
Ilene, my wife, didn't know about them till I got home!

I was instructed to go to Fareham in Hampshire, which meant I had to catch quite an early train from Yate station. The train was the 7.15, which we always called the 'Thornbury train because it ran from Thornbury to Bristol. I had to get a connection at Temple Meads at 8.10am and when I got to the station there were quite a few in the same boat as me, with their wives and sweethearts coming to see them off, some quite emotional. I had already said my goodbyes to Ilene at Yate station.

So away we went on the train. Our first stop was Salisbury. There we saw the spires of Salisbury Cathedral, which I'd never seen before. We had to change for a train that would take us on to Fareham, going through Southampton.

We arrived at the station at Fareham at about four in the afternoon and the Army was there waiting with its trucks. But before we were put on the trucks to take us to a little village called Stubbington, we had to have what was called an FFI. That stands for 'free from infection'. We had to go into a waiting room at the station and take all our clothes off. That was my first experience of the Army! I had the all clear and most others did as well.

Then we were on the trucks and taken to Stubbington House which was a mansion of some sort. The first thing we had was tea. It was horrible! It was pink salmon, just slapped on your plate. We had this and were then sent to our rooms. A couple of days after, I had tummy rumbles and during the night I crept down to the toilet thinking I didn't want to disturb anyone, but found nearly everybody had the same problem! We could only assume it was something in the food.

We were at Stubbington to do a month's basic training. In other words, how to be a soldier - to march, to do rifle drills, present arms and all that sort of thing. I always remember the first pay-day because you had to go up to the officer and salute and right about turn when you left. It was quite an ordeal for us doing this for the first time, because you were likely to get shouted at if you didn't do it right. As we were queuing up, the air-raid sirens went. Just down the road was a Fleet Air Arm station at Lee-on-the-Solent, called HMS Dedalias. Before we knew where we were, there were Junker 87's and Junker 88's dive bombing this place down the road. It was my first experience of the German Luftwaffe doing their bombing. Anyway, the all-clear sounded, we got our pay and then we were all put on trucks to clear up the mess at the Fleet Air Arm station. There were no bombs dropped near us.

Our pay when we joined up was 7/6d a week. On top of that, my wife had her allowance because I was in the Army. I can't remember how much that was. At the end of the training at Stubbington, some of us had sore feet or one thing or another and they let us come home for a week's leave.

We came back and then we had a passing out parade. We all had to line up and be inspected by someone higher up. Whether it was a colonel, a brigadier or what, I can't remember, but someone came and inspected us. I do remember that we were standing to attention and the chap next to me had a wasp pitch on his nose. He was making all sorts of grimaces but was too frightened to do anything until eventually it flew off on its own!

Ack-ack on the South Coast.

After Stubbington, we were posted down to the ack-ack guns, which weren't very far away, just the other side of Lee-on-the-Solent, at Browndown, on the shingle beach looking across the Solent to the Isle of Wight. I was in the 28th Light Anti-Aircraft (Ack-ack) Regiment when I was down there. They were 3-inch naval guns adapted for light ack-ack work. This was during the Battle of Britain. In the daytime we could fire at what we could see but at night all we could fire at was the German flares, to stop them coming down and lighting up the countryside. We saw plenty of action there because Portsmouth had all sorts of ships and they were attacked regularly. We used to have 48 hours on and 24 hours off, then 48 hours on and 48 hours off.

When I had 48 hours leave, I'd try and come home. My wife had to send me the money to get home because I didn't have enough in my pay. I used to manage to get home for one night though sometimes the trains were delayed because of air raids. One night it took us four hours to get from Salisbury to Bristol. I arrived in Bristol getting on for midnight and there were no buses to our place at that late hour, so I spent the night in the YMCA and came home next morning.

I remember one night when there was a terrific raid on Portsmouth and I was on guard. Bombs and flares were dropping all over the place and it was a bit scary. The sergeant major came along and asked, "Where did that one land, Prout?" I said, "Over there, sir. Over there." I had to stick out in it but he went back inside. The place we were on was an old fort, made of concrete, inches thick, so he was okay in there. It wasn't built for the Second World War; it may have been for the First World War, I don't know.

One afternoon while we were there, towards dusk when the sun was low, the Germans tried a new kind of tactic, coming in very low with the sun behind them. This particular evening three of them came over. I was off duty at the time. They came over Stokes Bay pier. Our guns were firing at them and we shot one down. The other two went over towards Southampton but one turned round and came back. As it came back, it was so low that I could see the machine gun and the pilot in the plane. It was a Heinkel 111. I heard later we shot that one down too and so we claimed two hits.

Bofor guns at Cowley.

We arrived up at Cowley and went to a small village called Horspath. We were in a big bell tent, and the guns we were on then, and most of the rest of the time, were 'Bofor' guns. I think the 'Bofor' was a Swedish gun and it was 40mm, twice as big as the ones we had just left.

While we were there, our toilets were in the middle of a field of corn. There was only like a windbreak around where we had to sit down, and I remember on one occasion a chap and I were out in there and we heard female voices. We thought, "What's going on with this then?" We looked up and it was the land girls come out to reap the corn! A mechanical cleanser had to come round every day to empty these toilets into a big tank in a lorry. One day the lorry ran away a bit, went down into a ditch and the stuff in the tank went swish all over the top of the chap in the front!

To be continued.

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