大象传媒

AN INNOCENT ABROAD.
Doodle Bug Alley.

After volunteering in June 1940 at the age of 18 ,I was now a corporal in the
RAF Regiment and in early June 1944 I was on a course in Filey Yorkshire in
Preparation for being sent across to the continent with my Bofor gun crew, and
On around 13th June, I was given a railway warrant and ordered to leave
Immediately for Lydd in Kent, when I arrived I was directed to a site on the
Coast to meet up with the other members of the gun crew and the gun, they
Finally arrived with the gun being towed by a coal lorry with the sergeant sat in
front with the driver, and the rest of the crew sat in the back of the lorry, we
checked the gun over , then started to dig a gun pit in the shingle, manhandled
the gun in position then sand bagged the circumference of the gun pit making
ammunition bays with corrugated iron and sand bags on top, then levelled up
the gun and the predictor & then connected them together, in the meantime the No
5 and 6 were ,filling up the ammo bays from the ammo dump, we then did all our
predictor control tests and were ready to fire at any V1 Or enemy aircraft that
came in range, in the first couple of days they came sporadically but later on
they came along in their hundreds, like trains on railway lines,and of course we
hadn鈥檛 seen them before and they were an awesome sight at first, they looked
like small fat bellied planes and made an angry noise like a very loud, harsh
two stroke engine and had a great flame coming out of the back ,which was in
fact an advantage at night for our gun aimers.
So we started to fire at them and soon discovered that when we got a near miss
It threw the Doodle Bugs (as we now called them) Gyroscope out and they
then went haywire and dived and exploded , or went round in circles until they
hit the ground or the fuel ran out, so some times even going to the latrines could
be a bit of a lottery knowing you may be chased round the field by an angry
sounding Doodle bug, and although this was quite funny to us if we saw it ,trying
to guess where it would land, it was also very dangerous because we could still
be firing and hadn鈥檛 seen that one had gone out of control, so a new system was
started, where the officer on duty, who was on the sand bagged platform of an
old railway waggon behind the line of guns was given a Heath Robinson gadget
of a stand with a large iron triangle suspended on it and a large iron bar to rattle
it with as an alarm if he saw a D B. going astray , and although we didn鈥檛 always
hear it above the sound of the DBs and the gun fire, it was better than nothing
and if you did hear it you were supposed to dive in the bottom of the gunpit or at
least get your head below the parapet and when we got a direct hit the DB. Of
course exploded but as you can see our communications were rather primitive
compared to nowadays , but I like to think that maybe after the war one of the
officers may have joined an orchestra as a triangle player.
However we were in that gun pit and never got out for 5 days except to go to the
latrines ,then we got some reinforcements and went from predictor control to
gun control and split into 2 teams with the Sgt in charge of one crew and me the
other ,so that we could do 4 hrs on and 4 off.
Doodle Bug Alley.
Page 2
So ,that night as I was only 22 and the Sgt was in his 30s (a middle aged man to me in those days)I said to him I wouldn鈥檛 mind doing the first shift , then he could get some rest, because he was a good man and we always worked well together ,but he said no he would carry on with the first shift, so I dug a hole behind the line of guns about 6ft. 6 in. by 2ft 6 in. and 3ft deep. got a palliasse
And pillow case, filled them with straw and put them in the hole along with my kit ,went to the ablutions stripped off and had a good wash and changed my clothes, the best thing was changing my socks as when I took them off my toes were bleeding ,then I put my bivouac over the hole , got on the palliasse put the blanket over me and with the tin hat over my head slept like a log despite the noise of the guns and the D.Bs I woke at about 5 am , got my boots on, got out of my bivouac to find why I hadn鈥檛 been called for my duty shift and saw that my gun was not manned, so I went to see the officer , he told me that some of the guns were running out of ammo so he had some of the 4 sec fuse ammo box鈥檚 dug up which we had previously buried as being dangerous because they were going off early and these were being used by the gun on our left , when one of the shells went off alongside our gun and the Sgt ,and the number 3&4 were all seriously injured with the shrapnel and they had been taken to hospital ,along with men with less serious injuries who eventually returned to us ,but those three never returned to the squadron ,it was to me an avoidable tragedy, I suppose nowadays they would call it friendly fire but I call it just stupidity.
Another problem we had, was that behind us as the next line of defence there was an American battery of 70mm guns and just like some of them nowadays
They behaved like Cowboys, we now had strict permitted arcs of fire, so that we didn鈥檛 create any friendly fire incidents , so had the Yanks , but unfortunately
They didn鈥檛 stick to theirs , one night something disturbed me and I turned my head on my straw pillow and some thing burned my cheek I sat up saw there was a hole in my tent, felt on my pillow and found a piece of hot shrapnel courtesy of some Gung Ho American gunner.
Food was also a problem we had, or rather the lack of it ,we just weren鈥檛 getting enough to eat! so much so that one evening I took one of my men and we sneaked out of camp and walked into Lydd, where we went to the church army canteen , these were a godsend to the forces ,and we ordered 200 penny sandwiches which we had put into 2 boxes and took them back to the camp where we shared them out to the lads.
We were in that camp until February 1945 when we were sent to Stapleford
Tawney an unused Satellite Drome in Essex for a much needed rest camp, and
While we were there one morning to stop the men getting bored , one half would go in the hanger doing gun drill and stripping down and reasembling ,(which we used to do timed, as a competition between all the gun crews to see which crew came out fastest, it was very good and created some good old fashioned rivalry, but the thought behind it was very serious, because when we got a breakdown while in action, then seconds in putting it right counted ),and the other half would go in the large wooden hut next to the hanger which used to be the Naffi.
Doodlebug Alley
Page 3
So although I was still a corporal I was acting detachment commander of the gun since we had lost our Sgt due to the so called friendly fire, so I tossed up with a Sgt to see who did what , and he won the toss and elected to do gun drill in the hanger , so that it is how I came to find myself sat on a form in this large wooden hut, which had a very large pot bellied stove in it which was glowing red as it was snowing out side ,watching Flight Lieutenant Blair conducting an unarmed combat Session on mats in the centre of the floor, when suddenly without any noise at all I found my self and all the other men who were sat on the forms rising up in the air in incredible slow motion , and I also saw the stove pipe break and start to fall on top of the officers head and I shouted to try to warn him but of course it was impossible to stop it and then suddenly we heard this tremendous explosion because the V2 (and that is what it was)travelled faster than the speed of sound, and it seemed that all hell broke loose and , we were flying through the air at tremendous speed and being knocked by and into all kinds and pieces of wood and obstructions ,finally coming to rest under a mountain of wood and debris , and the ones like myself who wern't badly injured got ourselves from out of the rubble and started to pull the debris off to get to the ones who were injured underneath it , and we also saw that the Hanger had all but disappeared and there was just a crater where it had been ,we also found the FLT LTN, and he had been hit by the stove pipe and he was taken to hospital with many others and I was told later that he had a fractured scull and broken ankles .After two more days of searching the devastated site the total of dead was 18 and more than 30 injured enough to be hospitalised, plus all the rest of us who had many cuts and bruises, plus many nightmares afterwards , but of course counseling had'nt been invented then. SOME REST CAMP INDEED.
CPL JOE. B.

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