大象传媒

I was accepted into the Royal Engineers 5th july 1939 aged 14 years and 7 months and entered Army technical at Fort Darland in Gillingham Kent.
On the Sunday after war was declared the siren went off while we were in the middle of a church service and the service was abandoned and we were ordered to take shelter in the trenches that we had previously dug. The all clear sounded about an hour later and that signalled the start of the war for us.
The next few months saw the call up of the Army reservists and the introduction of conscription. The trrops were sent into France, Belgium and Dutch borders and what was known as the phoney war started and continued until April 1940 when the Germans attacked through Holland and Belgium by passing the Maginot Line, the British and French Armies were forced innto retreat ending in the evacuation of troops in June at Dunquerque.
During this time our training continued at Fort Darland. After the successful landing of our Army back in England action was taken to repel German Forces if the expected invasion too place. As we were expected to be the key people in the forces at the end of our training it was decided to disperse us throughout the country and that the quickest and safest way was to send us home! This they did and we were expected to seek employment with our old companies untill such time as they recalled us.
I went home to Netley Abbey near Southampton and was employed by Folland Aircraft Co. at Hamble and later by Thorneycroft shipyard at Southhampton. During this period the german mass bombing of London and other major cities took place, including Southhampton and Portsmouth.
On the first night of the first mass bombing of Southampton I had gone to the Majestic cinema in the High Street. The bombing got worse and we like others got out of the cinema, ran across the town though the parks over the railway bridge and down Bridge Road towards the river and the floating bridges, passing an air raid shelter on the way. We hesitated whether we should go in but decided to go on. We later heard that the shelter had been hit and everyone in it had been killed.
We got to the river crossing only to find that the Floating bridges had been cancelled and had to sit all night in the river shelter with the tiles falling off the roof as the bombs fell. The supermarine Spitfire works across the river was also hit as we sheltered there.
We survived that bombing but my grandparents cottage was hit by and incendiary bomb in a later attack. My uncle and I managed to get it out of the bedroom in a bucket, before the fire brigade got there and they did more damage than the incendiary.
After about 6 months I was recalled and sent to the Army Technical College at Chepstow to finish my training which I did on 19th December 1942.
On the 20th december I was posted with my colleagues back to Kitchiner Barracks at Chatham, Kent.(My 18th birthday). I began my Field Engineer training as a sapper, learning all about bridging, explosives, mines and other field engineering tasks.
In June 1942 I was posted to Blandford, Dorset and a few weeks later back to London under canvas in the grounds of St Pauls School. With the bombing still in prgress we had no protection whatsoever!.
We were emploted in the repair of buildings in Earls Court, where we later realised the planners were planning the invasion of Europe. Later we were billetted in Ealing.
In December 1943 I was posted to 505 Field Company RE 50th Northumbrian Division(Tyne & Tees). This division had been right through the North Africa Campaign, the invasion of Sicily and into Italy. We joined them in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, which seemed like the end of the world to me as I had never been further north than London.
After joining them we were sent to tain on the Yorkshire Moors in snow, to establish how long we could exist in bad conditions and without sleep. This completes we were then sent to Chesil Beach Dorset doing wet bridging and training on landings etc ready for the invasion of france.
In May 1944 we were moved again to holding camps in the Winchester area and on June 1st to Southampton, boarded the US landing ship and sailed out of Southampton Water, past Netley where I was born and grew up down to the Isle of Wight where we were held on board ship in bad weather for 5 days.

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