大象传媒

Chapter 12

Our New Role

The weeks that followed were full of hectic activity as we frantically rehearsed our new roles. Riflemen had to learn gunnery and signallers had to learn artillery signalling and become familiar with fire orders and procedure. Drivers of trucks and Bren Gun Carriers were lucky their jobs remained the same but some drivers had to learn to handle the peculiarly-shaped vehicle known as a quad, in which the entire gun crew travelled and which pulled the gun and limber.
We moved from Gravesend to Margate, then to the village of Ash, near Sandwich, then to Ramsgate, never more than a few days at a time in our billets because of the many exercises and manoeuvres we took part in as we practised our new jobs and rapidly became proficient in them. We became part of the 43rd. Wessex (Infantry) Division, an experimental Division, and took part in so many different manoeuvres all over Kent that we began to feel we belonged to that lovely county, so well did we get to know it.
Corporal 'Ashy' Warman left us at Ash, having decided to take the emigration trail back to the infantry, and we saw him no more.
(Five years later, on August Bank Holiday Monday, 1947, when our daughter was still only a one-year-old toddler and our son not yet thought of, my wife and I stood waiting for a bus to take us home after a pleasant day out on the Clent Hills. A man approached us and said: "I know your face but I can't remember your name." I recognized the voice before I even saw the face. It was Ashy. During the course of our conversation he told me he had been posted to the Durham Light Infantry after leaving us and had served with them in North Africa, where he was wounded four times.)
On one of our early schemes, when we were still not very efficient in our new jobs, one gun crew misheard an order and landed the shell in a field full of cows well wide of the target area and killed
one of the unfortunate animals, for which the irate farmer had to be suitably compensated. It was a long time before those gunners were allowed to forget that the only thing they could hit was an 鈥榰dderly鈥� defenceless cow.
Sandwiched in between all these activities were the usual mundane parades, fatigues, and inspections, and it was while we were at Ramsgate that I was involved in a most unusual coincidence. I had to attend a dental parade and marched to the appointed place, where we were told to wait in an outer room until our names were called.
We went in two by two, like the animals in the Ark, and when my name was called I entered the surgery and occupied the chair the dental officer pointed to and the other man occupied the chair at the other end of the room. As he studied my dental chart and began the examination the young dental officer kept up a steady flow of small talk. Where did I live? What was my job in civvy street? Did I like the army? (Silly question) What was my opinion of the war so far? It was all designed to take one's mind off what was always considered to be an unpleasant necessity, and I answered readily enough except when one of his instruments of torture probing about inside my mouth made answering difficult. During a lull in the proceedings, when he was consulting my chart again, I said to him: "Excuse me, sir, but you keep referring to me as 'Bombardier.' I'm not the bombardier. I'm the signaller. The bombardier's in the other chair.
He gave me a puzzled look, checked my chart again, told me to open my mouth, prodded around once more, then stepped back. "Just a minute," he said, and walked across the room to the other dentist and spoke to him. The other dentist took a Iong look at the chart in his hand, then looked at the chart in my dentist's hand, told the bombardier to open his mouth again, probed about for a few moments, and spoke quietly to my dentist, who then came back to me looking thoroughly surprised. "Well, this is amazing," he told me. "I've never come across anything like it before."
He had been checking my teeth from the bombardier's chart and the other dentist had been checking the bombardier's teeth from my chart, and they had not known the difference. Our charts were identical in every way, even down to the filling and the partial dentures. But the coincidence didn't end there, my name being Burdon and the bombardier's Burton.

Three or four of us were carefully overhauling the cable on a mile drum, cutting out badly-worn parts and re-joining the cable, and covering minor faults with adhesive tape, when the signals sergeant called me to one side and spoke to me quietly and confidentially.
"Two things, Doug. First, all the regimental signallers are to undergo an intensive course of radio training, and second, the major is going to have a tank as his O.P. vehicle and he wants a thoroughly reliable signaller as his personal radio operator. I've recommended you, so if you do as well on the course as I know you can, the job's yours. It'll be worth a stripe or two.
I was very pleased at this unexpected item of news, but not very pleased at another a few days later. For some time past I had been reporting sick at irregular intervals with abdominal trouble. The M.O. was puzzled and uncertain as to the cause of it and was unable to do much with the limited resources at his disposal. so he decided eventually to send me to hospital for X-rays.
I was sent to Barming Hall, near Maidstone, and placed in the part known as Farm Villa. Being a walking patient I was allowed to go anywhere in the grounds when not required elsewhere, wearing that atrocious suit of 'hospital blue' that fitted only where it touched. The jacket was far too big for me and the trousers had to be rolled up until they looked like small tyres round my ankles. The collar of the off-white shirt was more suitable for a horse collar and was made to look even worse because of the way it wrinkled when I fastened the bright red tie. An intending absconder would never get away in such an abominable rig out.
I was admitted to the hospital on Monday, 8th June, 1942, and X-rayed three times a day until Thursday, 11th. June. Thursday was a gloriously warm, sunny day, and as I sat on a seat in the grounds admiring the colourful display of summer flowers and inhaling their fragrance, listening to the monotonous droning of the many insects, and thinking how perfectly everything fitted into the scene, and enjoying the comforting warmth of the sun on my face, I was completely at peace with the world.
The sound of my name being urgently called brought me back to reality with a jolt. A nurse hurried down the steps from the ward, and as she called my name a second time I raised my arm in acknowledgment and walked quickly towards her. She took hold of my sleeve and tugged gently. "You are wanted back in the ward right away," she told me, "Your X-rays have just shown you've got chronic appendicitis. You've got to be operated on immediately." Suddenly, it wasn't such a lovely day.
As I was being prepared for the operation some of the lads in the other beds expressed their opinions in no uncertain manner. Taffy Williams, in the end bed, next but one to mine, started counting the beds. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There's ten beds that side, Boyo," he announced, in his lilting Welsh accent, "and there's one, two, three --oh, you're in the third bed this side. Bed number thirteen. That's an unlucky bed, mate."
"He's right. Three men died in that bed last week," commented another Cheerful Charlie.
"I'm glad it's you in that bed and not me," another commiserated. As I was being wheeled out of the ward on the trolley towards the operating theatre they waved ta-ta and continued their expressions of sympathy. "So long, Doug. Been nice knowing you." "Have a nice trip."
"Hope the Pearly Gates are open when you get there."
"If we hear you shout we'll know they've started on you." Cheerful lot!
As the anaesthetist placed the mask over my face and told me to breathe in deeply I caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall. It was just three o'clock. Then I started to swim in space and seemed to become totally detached from everything. I continued to breathe deeply, getting more light-headed and detached until I floated away completely. I was still floating when Taffy Williams shouted "House!", the clock at the end of the ward said six o'clock.
Sister Smart came into the ward and said "Sh-sh-sh. You'll have to be quiet now. Burdon's just come round and will want to sleep." and that was three hours of my life gone in the whiff of chloroform.
When I awoke next morning after a deep post-operation sleep and feeling sick and sore I was told that my language when asleep was absolutely foul and that the nurses had to work in relays massaging my heart to keep it going.
I was in hospital three weeks, and at the end of that time those of us who could walk reasonably well and were seen to be well on the way to complete recovery were discharged. The Dieppe raid had taken place and the possibility of the Second Front was being freely discussed. Our beds might be needed for the expected casualties. We were transferred to Old Warden Park, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. That was the start of the easiest and the pleasantest three weeks I ever had in the army. Old Warden, it transpired, was a lovely stately home standing in its own spacious grounds and was presided over by the owner, Mrs. D.C. Shuttleworth, widow of Colonel Shuttleworth, formerly of the Bengal Lancers. She was also a commandant in the Red Cross.
We were allowed the run of the house, except the private and the staff living quarters. The accommodation was most comfortable and the food plain and homely and more than adequate. The extensive art gallery housed many lovely paintings by famous artists. The reading room and the snooker room were always well used, but our pleasure became somewhat muted when we were shown a small room that had been turned into a private chapel which contained a memorial tablet to Mrs. Shuttleworth's only son, who had been lost while on a night flight over the Channel in his Hurricane in 1940.
A nurse was permanently in attendance, and a doctor from Biggleswade called in once a week.
Strolling in the spacious grounds, soaking up the sun and admiring the masses of summer flowers around which the busy bees droned endlessly in the sunken gardens, writing our letters in the rural atmosphere of the thatched summer house, playing snooker in the evenings, relaxing in the armchairs in the reading room. Like all good things, it ended all too soon.
The morning we had to leave, Mrs. Shuttleworth shook hands with us, wished us luck, and gave each of us a bag containing fruit, chocolate, cigarettes, and a ten-shilling note, then we were driven away and taken to the convalescent depot at Kempson Barracks, Bedford. I don't know what Kempson Barracks was like as the Regimental Depot of the Beds. and Herts. Regiment, but if Old Warden was
our military paradise, Kempson Barracks was the opposite. Foul language, bawling and shouting, route marches, parades, fatigues and remedial exercises became the order of the day. One of the remedial exercises required two teams of twelve men to stand facing one another and throw a telegraph pole from one side to the other until told to stop. This, we were told, was to strengthen our stomach muscles. After the mauling they received it was a wonder our stomachs had any muscles left to strengthen.
Our three weeks at the depot ended none too soon for any of us, and it was with heartfelt relief that we shook the dust of the barracks off our boots and went our various ways back to our regiments. For a few short weeks a small group of strangers had been brought together by illness, become good friends, finding pleasure and companionship in each others' presence, and then separated, never to meet again. I wonder how the war dealt with them, and whether they survived or not? By the time I arrived back at my unit I had been away nine weeks. I had missed all the intensive radio training and someone else had been given the promotion I was hoping to get.

I was posted from Battery H.Q. to "D" Troop, though still in 179 Battery, and was given the job of signaller on the Forward Observation Post, sometimes operating the No.19 radio set in the back of the Bren Gun carrier (known as Roger Dog) and passing fire orders to the guns, and on other occasions walking miles across country with the No.18 radio set strapped to my back just as in the Worcesters as we accompanied the infantry on divisional exercises. That was when I first understood the reason for Captain Woodward's enquiry at Borgarnes about experienced No.18 set operators. He must have known even then of our impending transfer to the artillery. It was on these schemes that 172 Battery found it was officially in support of the 1st. Worcesters, and I had the pleasure of meeting up with two of my friends of our signal training days at Norton Barracks, Joe Mobley and Bill Ingram.
In the late summer of 1942, only six months after we had become field artillery, all we had learned from the many exercises we had taken part in culminated in a hectic three-weeks' manoeuvre called "Exercise Spartan." It was well named. Rain, wind and cold dominated everything. We were on the move continually, snatching a bite to eat or a quick nap if and when the opportunity arose. On one occasion, after three days and three nights without sleep or a break of any kind, I had just curled up on a pile of camouflage nets in the back of M.5., "D" Troop's 15 cwt. maintenance truck, to snatch a quick nap, when the canvas cover at the back was flung suddenly open and the sergeant stood there. "I'm sorry about this, Doug.," he said, apologetically, "but a squadron of bloody tanks has just charged right through the Battery position and chewed up all our telephone lines. I want you to go out and help repair them. I'll have a hot drink ready for you when you get back," he added, by way of consolation. That was at three o'clock on a cold, wet and stormy morning. As we were all thoroughly soaked to the skin, anyway, a bit more rain would not make matters any worse.
The result of "Exercise Spartan" has now passed into military history. It convinced the High Command that massed artillery barrages were far more effective than dive-bombing as practised by the Germans and this information was passed on to Field Marshal Montgomery in Egypt. The result was the massive artillery barrage that heralded the start of the battle of El Alamein, and the beginning of the end for the German Afrika Corps.
The ensuing months allowed no respite from our persistent activities, except for the occasional spell of leave, and it was not until we lined up on parade one morning early in June, 1944 that we knew all our efforts would soon be put into practice for real. The N.C.O. taking the parade called the roll, told us to "Stand Easy", and blandly informed us, "I don't want to worry you, boys, but the Second Front started this morning."
A burst of laughter greeted his words, and someone asked: "What, again, Bill ?.鈥� We had been hearing that rumour continuously since the Dieppe raid and were inclined to be somewhat sceptical about it.
"All right. If you don't believe me, look behind you.鈥�
We turned round, and there, right in front of us, stretching along the coast from east to west as far as we could see, was one long line of ships. Big ones, little ones; long ones, short ones, sleek ones tubby ones. Ships of all shapes and sizes. steaming parallel to the coast, heading for a common destination that we were told was Normandy. "Good luck, lads, " someone murmured quietly as the full significance of what we were seeing burst upon him. "Good luck, whoever you are."
From the preparations that began almost immediately it was evident that we, too, were destined for Normandy, though nothing official was ever said to confirm this. An officer from higher command came to brief us on what we might expect in the near future. Those of us who had been in H.Q. Company in the 12th. Worcesters were delighted to see the officer, for he was none other than our popular and respected former Company Commander, Major Knott. The applause that greeted him when we recognized him was reflected in the huge grin of pleasure he bestowed upon us in return .
"I don't know where you are going," he told us, at the end of his speech, "but I've got a very good idea."
To which came the unanimous reply, "So have we, sir:"

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