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28 — Albert Sealey, born in Birmingham in 1923, relates his time as a Police Runner
and consequently as a Royal Marine in the War:

"I worked as an insurance agent for the United Friendly Insurance Coy., (doing) a part time job as a runner for the Police, before I went into the Army.. I was seventeen and a half/eighteen, I was a police messenger, and the week the uniforms for the police messengers came through I was called up for the Navy, so I didn’t have to have the uniform.

In case of utter devastation of the local area from the bombing, all the lines being down and all the communications cut off, I had got to use my bike to do any messages. We did several dummy runs like, you know, ready for this job, but fortunately we never had no bombing after 1940/1, or very little, only just the odd spy planes coming over, but no real bombing; so I never had any call to do any active service on the bombing as a police messenger. I did odd things like unexploded bombs, stopping parked cars and vehicles going into the road like with unexploded bombs, I did little jobs like that but no real…
I had a gas mask and a tin helmet with ‘police’ on it, and a revolver holster full of bandages! No good!

Well I was called up at eighteen and a half and they said to me which arm would you like to go in, Army, Navy or Air Force? I said I don’t mind the Navy, because you didn’t really have much of an option. They said well have you had any sea experience? I said well I have been to the Isle of Wight! I was only 18 mind you, and they said oh, a funny man are you, we will have you in the Marines! So I landed in the Marines. And I did my Marine training in ’43, and then they put me in the Second Beach Battalion, then later on the Army took over the beach work, because we were expecting to open the front in Normandy (but we didn’t know it was Normandy at the time), it was in France, and the Army took over all the beach duties. I got married in ’43, so I have been married 60 years this year, and they said all the married people will go in as landing craft personnel, and unmarried men will go as commandos, so I was landed as a landing craft coxwain, and trained with a landing craft for the D Day landings. Went over D Day, a most tremendous experience, that.

We came back ater six weeks, because they had finished with landing craft, and we retrained as foot soldiers, and as a landing craft coxwain I was a corporal, and I was a section leader to go back into Europe and….we were used for any landings like you know, any river crossings like, but then we were eventually sent to Hamburg, Kiel Canal, around the Kiel Canal stopping them wrecking all their submarines in the Canal, and took over the submarines. Took over all the craft in the Canal, and we disarmed them all and brought them with escort, took all the prisoners for the army to put into pens.

When I came back out of the forces in April ’46 I went back into the insurance, and in the meantime my insurance book had been split in half and two ladies had taken one each during the war, and I took over one book so I had half a book. The idea was to go to build it up again like, you know, which I did do but only for 12 months,, and I actually doubled it in 12 months, doubled the premium. And then I started off on my own after that. I started a lending library up, using a shop in Poolway as a shoe shop and a library, and the library books went a lot better than the shoes."

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