大象传媒

I was stationed in East Anglia waiting for Germen parachutists to land we on stand to from dawn to dusk 4.30am - 10.00pm. then we were allowed to stand down. Could sleep from 10 - 3pm. but had to keep our boots on.
Told that German's could be disguised as old women or British soldiers. The way to tell if unsure was to ask them to say squirrel as German's could not pronounce this!. Steeple Bumpstead had a reported sighting but they passed the test as they called out Whacko!
After this I went to the middle east on a convoy which took 14 weeks so instead of landing in Greece we were diverted to Egypt. It was a converted cargo ship designed to hold 250 but transporting 3000 so thing were in short supply. We had to shower in sea water - not to be recommended for long periods. I was then in the dessert infor eighteen months and came bac to UK as a prisoner of war convoy. My recollections of the time mainly revolve around bugs! There were what seemed to be millions of them everywhere including your food. Much of the time we were bored as we were waitng for things to happen - you don't remember the awful things you saw.
When we came back we had 80 men to guard over 3000 German prisoners some of whom might be naval men so they had to be watched carefully for 6 weeks as we were not in convoy.
Then I went to Normandy from Southampton to Tennyson, no-one spoke on the crossing which took about nine hours. When we came on deck we were surrounded as far as you could see by other ships of all descriptions. I had 72 hours embarkation leave but spent a long time stuck on a train outside Birmingham. When we landed we went to Bayeux on D1 and then faced some heavy fighting. I was demobbed at York and vowed to sleep in my own bed every night from then on and I've stuck to that.

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