大象传媒

The beaches of Weymouth and the Dorset Regiment.

鈥淚 was born in Hampshire near Christchurch. I moved to Dorset when the war started. That is how I ended up in the Dorset Regiment. In June 1940 I was sent to a training camp near Weymouth. I was 19 years old. I remember on the second day they took us out to the cliff top and gave us five rounds of ammunition and told us to shoot in the direction of France. I was a bit worried about the guy next to me. The Germans used to come and bomb the Portland base and the surrounding area daily because there was a torpedo works there. When they did we were instructed to lie down with our hands behind our heads. We experienced an invasion scare when we found flattened white tents, because this was a German landmark to invade.

After Dunkirk we were very thin on the ground because we lost a lot of men. Young soldiers like myself were used more often to defend the coastline. We used to be penned in on the beaches creating pockets of resistance. Weapons training was an issue, we were taught to use one machine gun with the rest of our company, which numbered 30 people. In the trench on the beach we were only allowed one blanket, I remember one time our team of four took four blankets each, obviously this was completely against company policy. That was a very warm night. I remember another night when we had a searchlight lit from the beach. I manned the spotlight and my colleague manned the motor, which was further down the beach. I made sure we swapped regularly, for I was a sitting target behind a searchlight and the motor was warmer.

We rarely got newspapers but I remember one day when we did. The Chairman of the firm I worked for was also the Chief of the Hoon Guard. His name was Commander Jolly. The news read that the Mohawk Destroyer he was in charge of had been bombed, but he had managed to beach the ship even though he would later die from the wounds he received. His brother was killed whilst on duty in the Hoon guard in Weymouth. I have not read anything since about Captain Jolly.鈥�

The price of too many women

鈥淎 lot of the Dorset Regiment was sent to Africa from infantry to artillery (dessert rats). There were the first troops to go to India and the last to leave. I was not I was posted to a naval station in Winchester, Hampshire. After that I was posted to a factory that made paper for currency for the Bank of England. I worked as a guard with 5 other soldiers. The rest of the employees were women, so there I was one of six men penned in with three hundred women. It was impossible to bring home one woman, you usually brought home around 30.鈥�

Goose-stepping to victory

鈥淚 continued my training in Port Rush in Ireland. We had to dress up in German uniforms for demonstration videos. We had real German mortar bombs and weapons. We marched through the town, people booed at us. I quite enjoyed performing the Goose step.鈥�

Prisoners of War

鈥淚n 1946 I was sent to guard a POW Camp in Colchester, nowadays it is a detention centre. We had 200 Italian and German U boat prisoners. The Italians worked on the farms, the Germans were more exciting than the Italians they gave concerts, built objects and took lots of physical exercise. I was a frequent visitor to the SS Angel in Colchester.

A friend of mine Smudger Smith was a prisoner of war in Germany. The prisoners from the camp worked in a German brewery. One Christmas the Germans told the prisoners they could have some beer. They were surprised when no British POW would touch the stuff. Little did they know but the British had piddled in the beer. I shall not go into what else they did to it. Oh how I laughed when Smudger told me that story.鈥�

Barnard Castle

鈥淚 was posted to Barnard Castle in Durham for a brief spell. I remember walking back one night through a duck pond, the mud stuck fast to my trousers. The mud was so thick that when it hardened the trousers could stand up on their own. I could not wear them. The lady from our refreshment van gave me her Khakis. I was called in front of Captain Banks, a very disciplined rigid fellow. He did not even notice that I was wearing women鈥檚 trousers. My colleagues found it very funny. I used to borrow his razors; he鈥檇 call me to get him new ones because his were blunt. He had no idea I used them. Isn鈥檛 it funny what you remember.鈥�

Recorded by Sara Willliams

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