大象传媒

My name is Alf Clapton I was born in Cheltenham, 1 of 10 children, my father was born blind so it was a hard life. I left school and served 2 years apprenticeship at H H Martin furniture manufacturers. I did 2 years
apprenticeship but decided to leave and ran away to join the army. The year was 1936 and I was 16yrs 3mths old, although the army thought I was underage they let me join. I was sent to Horfield Barrocks where I joined the Inkerman Squad. On arriving at Horfield i was surprised how good the accommodation was, for once i had my own bed. The pay was 1s a day, the army wrote to my parents and let them know where I was, so they made me pay my mother 3s.6d a week to stay in the army. Some of the people in my squad were Sgt Dusty Miller,Cprl Watkins, Prvt Bill Layton and the youngest in our squad Alf (Charles) Hill from Berkely, who became my best friend.
At Horfield we trained on all the latest types of millitary equipment, Bren Gun, Rifles etc. At this time I also took up boxing and athletics, my fortae being long distance, I was sent to the 2nd Battallion at Seaton Barrocks Plymouth where we trained for the machine gun Battallion. I volunteered for transport duties and after a short period I drove an Austin 7 car for the Company Commander. We were the 1st to attend Seaton Barrocks so everything was brand new, I was there until January 1939 when I was sent to Burma. We sailed on HMS Dunera it took approx 1 month so I arrived in Bombay in February we disembarked and from there travelled by train to Madras and then travelled by boat to Rangoon. On stepping off the boat everything was chaos but one of the first faces I saw was that of my old squad Sgt so at least I knew someone out there.
I did well in the army I could except the discipline and enjoyed some of the training, I kept my head down and stayed out of trouble, so, after a short period i was made up to a Lance Corporal, unfortunately after being so I found that I lost all my friends as you were not allowed to mix with privates on or off duty. So I asked to be deferred back to the ranks, my fellow officers were not very happy and tried to get me to change my mind, but I insisted, and then they told me I would have to be transferred so it was then that I joined the Royal Signal Corpse where I learned Morse Code, Semaphore and radio transmission. I boxed for my company in the inter company challenge where we won all the trophies going.

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