大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bill Ross of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of Jack Bland, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Bland fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
===================================================

I was in 230 Field Company, RE鈥檚 in the 49th Infantry Division. When I joined up I was 18 in the Territorial Army.
At the beginning of the war, I started training despite having trained in the Territorial Army, but obviously we carried on training in different things, building bridges, mines etc. and we just carried on training in North Yorkshire.

After a few months, a few of us were sent back to Sheffield, Somme Barracks. We didn鈥檛 know why at first, but we found out later, that the Company I was in, was going abroad and we had to be 19 years of age to go abroad, so we had been sent back because we were only 18. Then, we started again in another Company, the 270 Field Company, in the 46th Infantry Division.

After a while, by April 1940, we were going abroad again, and it so happened that I was 19 on the day we were going, so I was pleased, but my best friend Arnold Losemore (his father was a V.C. in the first World War), being still only 18, wasn鈥檛 able to go, but because of who his father was, so they let him go. It was only a week or so before his 19th birthday and he was put in charge of the Lewis Gun (a great big World War 1 machine gun) and I was his number two. My other best friend Harold Priestley, was number three in charge of and carried the ammunition.

I had to carry the great big tripod, which came to pieces, but must have weighed a half a hundred weight (50Kg) and Harold carried the ammunition, though we shared that.

We were sent to France, but not to fight, but to build base camps for the troops. The troops came to these camps first and then were transported from there to anywhere they were wanted. I was sent to the Divisional HQ, because I was a tradesman. All of a sudden, we had to go back to our unit and they told us we were moving, so we had to get our kit and everything.

We went to the railway station and got on a goods train and set off to Northern France. It was a very slow train, stopping and starting. If you wanted to use the toilet, you just got off the train and if it started off, you still had time to clean yourself, run and catch it up and jump on. This carried on for about three days, until we approached some heavy wooded areas, and as we went into them, we could see over the top of the woods and could see these planes diving down, which we thought must be German planes. We could hear the bombs and machine gun fire and everything. All the smoke was rising in the air and when we just got into the woods, the train stopped. That would be about the middle of the afternoon, the third day.

While we were there and I don鈥檛 know why, the engine driver kept on hooting away and whistling, and then we would start backing away. Then, we saw troops running down the line, away from the area which was being bombed and as we were reversing, they were jumping on the train. When the train moved forward again, they all jumped off! We finally stopped and stayed there all night.

We were up at dawn, offloaded from the train and then realised there was only one of our officers left, a Captain who had been in the First World War, Captain Mills. He said to us, 鈥淐ome on, I鈥檓 going to put you in some positions,鈥� and then he told me and Arnold to come with him and he would show us what he wanted us to do. Across the road, just away from the railway line, one of the roads went over the railway line, no railway gates, it was just in the country, and he said, 鈥淚 want you to put your tripod here in the middle of these crossroads, set the Lewis gun up and you can cover all four roads.鈥� Then he went off to see to all the others, so I said to the men, "Well, that鈥檚 absolutely stupid.鈥�

There was a lovely hedge and a field with a nice banking down to it, so I said, 鈥淲e鈥檒l go down there and set it up behind the hedge, away from enemy sight.鈥� Anyhow, we got in that position, just after dawn, and then about 9.00pm, he came back and said, 鈥淐ome on, we鈥檙e going.鈥� So we got all our gear, plus the Lewis Gun, Tripod and ammunition, which was a real hard weight, and set off down the railway line, the way we had come.

When we had gone down about three miles, there was a couple of trains all smashed up with the lines all blown up, dead horses all strewn about, several dead French troops on the banking, and one of them, we noticed, was alive, so we said to him, 鈥淐ome on, come with us.鈥� Then we set off down the line again.

We kept going all night until we came to some wooded area and we were told to kip down until morning. We hadn鈥檛 been down for more than a couple of hours when we heard these tanks on the road quite near, and we said, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 great, our tanks are here now, and they鈥檒l clear them." But, straight after that, the sergeant in charge said, 鈥淐ome on, pack up, we鈥檙e off.鈥� So, we went down to the tracks and we could see all these tanks, going west, and we carried on walking and walking for a couple of days. The day after that, our officer said to me and Arnold, 鈥淵ou鈥檇 better get rid of that Lewis Gun and tripod.鈥� Well, we couldn鈥檛 just leave it, so we had to strip it and leave bits here and there until it was all gone.

That same day, we got to a small town and the captain who was in charge, went round and got whatever food he could find for us, because we didn鈥檛 carry much around with us. We found the village green and we saw a flight of German bombers coming back, from whatever raid they鈥檇 been on. Harold who was on the other side of the green and who had been carrying the ammunition, came dashing over and said, 鈥淨uick, get the Lewis Gun out.鈥� We said, "We haven鈥檛 got it any more, we threw it away yesterday." So, after all that heavy ammunition he had been carrying around, you can imagine the names he called us!

Then, we carried on and we came to Rouen and I鈥檝e found out since, that they say Rouen is very similar to Sheffield, because it鈥檚 made up of seven hills. At the top of one of these hills, we came to a proper roadway. There was a big army camp but it was completely empty. It had everything, all the proper bell tents, there were all these letters strewn about and all sorts of things about. An officer came up, though we don鈥檛 know where he came from, he wasn鈥檛 one of ours, he said, 鈥淚f I catch you doing that again, reading other people鈥檚 mail, you鈥檒l be court martialed.鈥� So, we went in this big tent, which would have been the NAAFI tent, and everything was still in there, but we never touched a thing. We didn鈥檛 know what to do, but an hour later, we were told we were off again.

That evening we came to a lake and settled down there for the night. We had found a rowing boat, so we propped it up and settled down under it for the night, to give us some cover for if it rained.
The next day, our transport came, picked us up and took us back to where we had started from! We moved from there went to a new site to start building a camp for troops which were coming over from England. From there we were moved to a small town and went to the railway line, not a station, just where the trains pulled up next to the main road. While we were there, a lot of French people came up, who had seen us and they had got newspapers. They said to us, 鈥淒on鈥檛 go, don鈥檛 go.鈥� They showed us the headlines, which said, thousands of American bombers were coming over the next day to bomb the Germans. But we had to carry on, so got on the train and ended up in the docks at Le Havre. There was a large transporter vessel waiting for us, which we got on, and while we were waiting, there were NAAFI people still on the dockside, throwing cartons of cigarettes up to us.

We didn鈥檛 know what had happened and wondered what we had done to get free cigarettes! We sailed off and came back to Southampton, and got on the train towards London. There were people at the side of the lines all the way along, up on bridges, waving to us. We didn鈥檛 know what was going on, until we got through London, and then carried on to Manchester to Belle Vue. We ended up with the animals and that night, we were told, if we weren鈥檛 on duty, we could go out. So, we all got ready and off we went.

We saw a seller selling newspapers and bought one, and saw that the Armistice had been signed between the French and Germans, before we had actually came out of France. That surprised us and so we stayed around Manchester for about two or three weeks and went to watch cricket.

Our next trip was a train ride up to Scotland where we were put to training on the defences on the beach near St. Andrew's Golf course. After three or four months we were sent back down south to Dover, and were checking bridges all round the area for some time. From there, we went to Liverpool, where we were put on boats, although we didn鈥檛 know where we were going, but we sailed right out into the Atlantic, and eventually sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and landed in Algiers, then we went right up into the north of Africa. There wasn鈥檛 much happening there really so we started laying some mines and repaired some of the bridges the Germans had bombed.

Whilst we were camped, there used to be a little Arab lad who used to be very helpful to us. He was about 14, but one day, an Arab man came and stood by him and the little lad tried to speak to him, but the man couldn鈥檛 answer. So immediately we said, 鈥淗e鈥檚 not an Arab, he must be a German.鈥� The man tried to run out, but the place was surrounded by an iron fence, and two of our men tried to get him. When they finally did catch him, we were right, he was a spy. They took him out into a quarry and shot him. I actually thought after, what a shame that was, a brave man like that, probably an officer, to be shot like that.

We travelled up even further north, and I was a corporal then, and my officer said I had to teach any soldier who couldn鈥檛 swim, how to swim. After three classes of swimming in the Mediterranean, they could all swim!

Our next orders were to travel to Italy, but the day before we were due to land, we heard over the radio that Italy had surrendered and we were overjoyed and thought it was marvellous. It would mean we would have a great time in Italy, with all the Senoras around. We landed and got the mine detectors out as soon as we landed, and immediately came across telemines, they're the German anti tank or anti personnel mines. Mines that we had nothing like 鈥� ours were like little cake tines, which could only blow the wheels off a truck, never mind blow up a tank. But a German telemine was about 10鈥� across and round. The fuse could either be set on the top for vehicles, or for personnel with a lighter fuse, or they could put another detonator on top of the bomb with a trip wire as far as they wanted. They could also put a wire underneath the bomb so that if you were lifting them, they could blow the lot up! We had nothing like that. The Germans also had S mines which had three little prongs on the top, which you couldn鈥檛 really see, but if you stood on that, you had it, you鈥檇 be blown up.
We got off the beaches and went up as far as we could, about 2 hours away from the beach. We reached an orchard and were told to bed down for the night. We had just got settled down when we could hear tanks, one of the men went to have a look, and he came running back and said, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e German tanks.鈥� Our officer told us to get our gear together and go quick!

Pr-BR

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.