大象传媒

I was called up on 22nd January 1942. I was one of the first group of eighteen year olds to be called up. Previously to that only over twenty year olds had received their papers and it had always been said they (the government)wouldn't call up the eighteens; however this was after Dunkirk and things were pretty desperate.

I had to go on the train from my home town, Halesowen to Birmingham to pick up a connection to Church Stretton via Shrewsbury. We left Birmingham just after 9.00am and we didn't get to Church Stretton until 6.00pm because there was heavy snow. The train stopped at several stations on the way and everyone that got on the train was eighteen.

By evening the snow was four feet deep and we were hungry having had no food provided all day. The army marched us to a cookhouse in the middle of the village, an old flour mill I believe. We were fed and then taken about half a mile away to the barracks where we were split into groups of 30. All we could see in the dark was a large house and some nissan huts.

The next morning we were marched back into the village for breakfast then back again to the barracks where we were issued with our kit. We had to wrap our civvy clothes in brown paper and label them. I addressed mine to my mother, Jenny Partridge, a widow, back in Halesowen little thinking how she might feel when she received the parcel.

At this stage for us the war was a new adventure and we spent the next month getting fit. In PT we'd stand in rows of twelve opposite each other and tss a log log (the trunk of a tree) from one row to another. If you were tall in between to shorter lads you took the full wieght of the log when catching so we used to try to sort ourselves out in height order. Then we went to All Stretton to get used to Two Pounder guns and working in gun teams. The sergeant's favourite training was to get each crew to run with the guns up and down the slopes of the Long Mynd.

After three months training were were split up into our units. I was sent to a newly formed unit with around forty others from the training camp. The 81st Anti-Tank Regiment based in Cromer. All of our sergeants in the unit were ex-Dunkirk veterans who no doubt saw us as a load of very raw recruits.

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