大象传媒

What did I do in the war? To be frank, not a lot. An extraordinary run of good luck, kept me in England for most of the war, and apart from one or two isolated incidents, my service career was more a joke than anything else.

At the outbreak of war, my wife and daughter evacuated themselves back to my wife's home in Northumberland, and I was left on my own here in London until my calling up papers arrived. My younger brother, Wally, had been conscripted just before the war began and in about October I decided to pay him a visit.

He was stationed at the time with his anti-tank regiment in Potters Bar, just north of London. When I saw him in uniform鈥� my little brother who I had played with so often鈥� I decided there and then, that I had no alternative but to join up. Had I waited for my calling up, I daresay I could have had another year as a civilian, but the prospect of Wally holding back the hordes of Germans with out my help was a situation that could not be tolerated. At Acton Drill Hall I had my medical, and was instructed to join a Royal Artillery Heavy training Regiment in Blackdown. And so the whole idiotic train of events began.

The squad I was in was a mixed group, covering all classes of English society from top to bottom. After a month鈥檚 square bashing one of our number caught measles鈥� this is the truth, I swear it! We were isolated in a barrack room for a whole month. Our food brought to us, forbidden to go out; well we did go out once; and the rest of regiment was confined to barracks till we were safely back in our cage. This delay in our training meant that we missed being sent to France; we weren鈥檛 ready, but at the end of it all we were sent to a depot at Watford.

My God, what a dump that was. I swear that there are still gunners in Watford living in empty houses waiting for a posting. After a few weeks we were all set again for a move (I鈥檝e no idea where), and again I missed it. My father died while working on building the new Waterloo Bridge, and at last left his miseries behind and found peace.

Compassionate leave meant that I missed the posting, and after my dad was well and truly buried they shipped me off to Hull where I joined the 9th Super-heavy Regiment. Sounds great doesn鈥檛 it? 9th Super heavy Regiment Royal Artillery. 鈥淯buque Que Fas et Gloria Ducunt鈥�. The RA motto which meant 鈥淓verywhere; Where Right and Glory Lead鈥�.

This time it led to a goods yard at a railway station in Grimsby. The Super heavy consisted of two railway mounted twelve-inch howitzers, last used at Amiens in 1918. It took at least three days to get these magnificent old guns into action, and each time we did so, the powers that be decided that the enemy weren鈥檛 going to invade there, and shifted us off somewhere else.

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