大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jim Donohoe of the CSV 大象传媒 Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of George Pearson and has been added to the site with his/her permission.

The long training
On my seventeenth birthday, in November 1942, the four of us went into town to Sibree Hall to volunteer for the forces. I applied to join the Royal Marines, one of my pals opted for the army, one for the airforce, and the other never made it because of his faulty heart-valve.
I received papers to report to Portsmouth Royal Marine Barracks in February the following year. When my mother found out, she nearly had a fit, saying at first that she would soon put a stop to it. She soon relented. I didn't realise it at the time, but my joining up, together with one of my sisters leaving to get married, meant my mother had to get a job.
We went off to Portsmouth. I had ten days to make my mind up, we went round in civvies. They showed us round the barracks and we went into the gym. There were people doing press-ups ... "Forty-five, forty-six ...鈥� Of course, I had practised push-ups at home, but when I got to ten, I would be shattered.
There were huge vaulting horses, with a little springboard at the front, and you had to run as fast as you could and take a leap at them. Of course, we were in our socks and we didn't do any good, but the important thing was that you made the effort.
The sergeant said to us "Before you leave here, you'll jump over three of those, two in line with each other, and another one at the end, making a T. It won't be pretty, but you'll do it."
And we did, ... The idea was that you must have a go.
When I joined up, our money was a pound a week - a real drop from civvy wages which were three pounds a week, and I used to send ten shillings to my mother. As time went on, our money went up a few shillings a week.
Our barracks faced the sea. There was very strict discipline, but very little shouting. Our punishment was kit inspection. It was held at 7 o'clock in the evening by an N.C.O. You had to get all your kit out ready for inspection. You couldn't leave the barracks after eight o'clock, and by the time you'd got all your stuff tidied away, you couldn't get out that late. If you had a date, you missed it.
I had kit inspection twice, once was my own fault, once I was just picked out with a bunch of others for talking in the ranks.
We did a lot of marching, and I used to keep a bar of chocolate in my blouse pocket, and I would keep breaking off pieces and eating them. The sergeant called us all to a halt, and he looked at each man, and he got him to hold out his hands. When he got to me, I held them out, but I kept them closed. He got me to open them and there was chocolate all over them. It was kit inspection for me that night.
We went to Deal and some other depots, then we went to Wales for A.A. training. A plane towed a target across the sky. I'm sure he let out extra tow-rope when he got to our valley.
We went to Hayling Island three-quarters of the way through our training, so we could make up our minds on what specialised role we would take. I went into combined ops.
We trained all up and down the south coast. I learnt seamanship, currents, navigation, what type of terrain to land on.
I lost my first landing craft while at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
We had free use of the landing craft to travel up and down the River Dart and practice landings. We did exercises in the open seas, and went up the coast to just before Slapton Sands, where the Americans were.
We did this exercise in open seas, it was very rough, and we had to land in formation, going in at the same time. I was on the right-hand flank, just on the headland. I insisted we go in. When we hit the beach, the landing craft swung round ... the anchor never gripped properly. I abandoned ship. We got the man in the engine department hauled out, unloaded everything of value, then we stood on the beach, watching the landing craft going up and down and crashing on the rocks.
We stayed on the beach all night with no lights or fires. We had been told not to light any fires to prevent E-boats having a go at us, which was quite a laugh as there was nothing that would burn on the beach. There were some small cliffs we could have climbed up, but it would have been too dangerous as the light was failing, and we needed to stay on the beach to keep an eye on all the stuff we had salvaged from the landing craft. We clung to the sandstone, cold and soaked.
In the morning, a naval lorry came out. We got in, and the driver said "You're a bright one, fancy getting shipwrecked at Blackpool." We didn't know what he meant. It was only years later that I found out, there's a little village near Slapton called Blackpool, and we hadn't known because they took all the road signs away and removed all the place names.
We got back to Dartmouth Naval College, washed, put on some dry clothes to smarten up, got shaved and had a warm meal. I had to appear before the ship's captain the next day to explain how the landing craft had been lost.
I thought I was for it. I think that what got me off was that I explained that our orders were always to land at the same time, so I considered it my duty to go in regardless of cost. I was exonerated of all blame, and as I saluted, the captain said very quietly "Well done." I was chuffed.
We trained all along the south coast. Near Brighton, we were stationed at H.M.S. Lizard. There were lots of female officers, but very few N.C.O.s or ordinary wren marines, so we were out of luck. It was very hush-hush, they were all doing exercises for D-Day landings.
We were ferrying convoys of landing crafts, good ones to Portsmouth, bad ones the other way.

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