大象传媒

Bob鈥檚 War

There was a saying in the seaport City of Plymouth where I was born in 1925, 鈥淛oin the Navy and See the World, Join the Marines and see the next!鈥� Little did I realise, when I enlisted in the Royal Marines in 1942, the 鈥楧arkest Hour鈥� for our country, that I should very nearly succeed in doing both.

I was familiar with the sea, at least water, from a very early age. You could see the River Plym, from which Plymouth takes its name, from our house at Mount Gold on the outskirts of the city. Its banks provided our playground and helped provide our sustenance. We used to gather seaweed from the riverbank on the Embankment and take it back in a handcart up the hill to my father鈥檚 allotment, where it was spread on the soil to supplement other means of enriching the soil. I think my father had seen it done in Ireland during his army service there.

I could swim from an early age and developed a passion for messing around in boats through helping to bale out and shift around the rowing boats that were hired out for the pleasure of visitors. Sometimes going to the rescue of stranded ones whose boats got caught in the mudflats as the tide went out.

I well remember one occasion during a regatta held on the Embankment, when I entered for a swimming race. I went home the proud possessor of a box of handkerchiefs, having won third place; but the glory of the occasion was tarnished somewhat when I was asked how many had been in the race and I had to admit 鈥� Three!

Falling in or being pushed in were frequent occurrences, surrounded more by inconvenience than danger, especially if you happened to be fully clothed at the time. The biggest problem then was to avoid getting a hiding when you got home for getting your clothes wet. I could never seem to convince my parents that it hadn鈥檛 been my fault.

It was all good training for what was to come, as you will see, and certainly helped me to develop a healthy respect for the sea and its many moods.

I was still at school when the War began in 1939. Sutton High School, whose main outlet was either to the Plymouth Dockyard, to which I had no aspiration at all, or Oxford University. I managed, by some miracle to pass the Oxford School Certificate examination with sufficient credits to qualify for Oxford University, but there were much more exciting things to do as far as I was concerned, and in any case my elder brother, George (eighteen months older than me), was looked on as the bright boy and my parents didn鈥檛 press the matter.

I finished up in one or two dead end jobs and then joined the Civil Defence/A.R.P. Service as a Motor Cycle Messenger. I enjoyed the training, especially being taught to ride a motor-cycle. They were mostly B.S.A. 350.c.c.s and Norton 500鈥檚. Reconditioned ex-army despatch riders鈥� machines of dubious performance, but they provided an outlet for my youthful exuberance.

It got a bit hectic at times though because the terrible blitzes on Plymouth had started by then and I think that job could well have been a 鈥榙ead end鈥� one in a more literal sense.

My father had been a time serving soldier who rose through the ranks to Quarter Master Sergeant and had served throughout the First World War, being awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in the course of it but he would never tell us anything about it, or about his war service. My mother did tell us once though that he got the medal as a result of one of the major battles fought during the war in France, when he was the only surviving non commissioned officer out of 800 men of his battalion who went into battle. They were overwhelmed by a superior force and he led the survivors, about eight in all, back through enemy lines.

Ours was then, a service orientated family. My older brother George enlisted in the Royal Air Force as soon as he was old enough and so it seemed a natural thing to do when I got to 17 years to join the Royal Marines. Firstly because I had a preference for their smart uniform, and secondly, because it was the only active service unit in which you could enlist at that age.

My last domestic chore before leaving home was to assist my father in planting out several rows of leeks in the allotment. These had to be laboriously 鈥榙ibbled鈥� in into separate holes with a shortened spade handle, suitably pointed, the young leeks being placed in individually and then watered in by filling each hole with water.

We said our good-byes at home, it wasn鈥檛 considered the done thing to come to railway station, so I set off in solitary state to Deal where I became a member of Plymouth Division Royal Marines. I should have been quite hurt if it had been Portsmouth or Chatham the other two divisions into which the Royal Marines were then split.

After kitting out with the drab khaki service uniform etc, not the glamorous walking out uniform with the peaked cap that I had envisaged and the brass buttons and the white belt that I had so admired on the marines I had seen walking their girl friends on Plymouth Hoe Promenade on a Sunday evening! Our joy was made complete, if you can call it that, when we found that we were to be sent by train straight away to of all places, Newcastle on Tyne, for initial training.

Our actual destination was a place called Whitely Bay, a seaside resort in happier times. We occupied houses which had been emptied of their former occupants and everything else and now contained only the very basics for living. To add insult to injury we learned that we were to be seconded to, and trained by, the newly formed R.A.F. Regiment which was responsible for guarding the R.A.F. establishments, particularly airfields, which would be very vulnerable in the event of an invasion from France, which was a very real possibility at that time. Our role apparently was to provide a similar protection for the Royal Naval Air Service Establishments, whose planes played a vital role in the defence of the seaward approaches to our shores.

We were not at all impressed to find that our instructors included a motley collection of N.C.O.鈥檚 from various infantry and guards regiments beside R.A.F. instructors, and my honeymoon with the sea seemed to have been cut short before it ever began, except for the occasions when the beach was used as part of the endless assault courses which some of these N.C.O.鈥檚 embellished with sadistic ideas of their own to see first, how tough these 鈥楳arines鈥� in the making were, and sometimes meant that we finished up in the sea having been chased across the beach in full kit regardless of the incoming tide.

Having somehow survived the initial training we were dispersed to various units and were thankful to be restored to the tender care of the Royal Marines proper in Warrington, Lancashire where our seemingly endless training and toughening continued. I must have shown some promise because I was selected to go on the N.C.O.鈥檚 course at Deal, in order to qualify, if I passed, to cross the tremendous chasm from Lance Corporal , the first step in the chain of promotion to full corporal, and the entitlement to wear two stripes and give orders instead of always taking them.

Some idea of the arduous nature of this course can be gained from the fact that of the 700 Lance Jacks who were in my entry about 350 applied for a return to their units before the end of the first 14 days. The policy was to weed out all but the most determined characters and every form of abuse and humiliation was heaped upon us including waking us up at some unearthly hour of the night and ordering us on to the Parade Ground in ten minutes dressed in full marching order!

However, both my father and my brother knew the reason why I was at Deal and my stubborn pride would not allow me to admit failure to ascend this first rung of the ladder, especially as my brother was now in Canada on the overseas training scheme on a course which would result in his promotion to flight sergeant if he passed.

Anyway, things got a bit easier after the first fortnight, we were even allowed a bit of shore leave at weekends and were able to go into Deal itself for a bit of much needed recreation. I survived the six week course (reduced from 12 weeks because of the war), and emerged a fully fledged corporal.

I was sent to join a unit which was guarding a Royal Naval Installation in St. Meryn in Cornwall. It was very routine stuff, consisting mainly of guarding crashed aircraft which had either failed to take off, or had crashed on their return.

Despite the fact that I was now nearer my home at Plymouth than I had been so far, I was unable to get home on leave, mainly I think because of the jealousy of an 鈥極ld Sweat鈥� long service N.C.O. who resented the young H.O. (Hostilities Only) N.C.O. with whom he was now forced to share duties and privileges, and because he couldn鈥檛 get home he made sure that I didn鈥檛 get the chance either.

Relief from this boredom came when rumours began to circulate that Lord Louis Mountbatten was in charge of a completely new service known as Combined Operations which was intended to take up a more offensive role than the purely defensive tactics that the powers that be had so far employed.

Units such as ours were an obvious choice as the threat of invasion receded and the outcome was that I found myself, together with some of the others of my former unit, transferred to the mountains of Mid Wales to undergo yet more rigorous training, which included chasing all over the mountain range of Cadair Idris neighbouring on Snowdonia.

It seems that Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had a high regard for the Royal Marines, had persuaded his superiors, including Winston Churchill, that the Royal Marines should form an integral part of any future invasion force, and that they were a natural choice in view of the Corps motto 鈥淧er Mer Per Terram鈥�, 鈥淏y Sea and by Land鈥�.

A particular role he had in mind was that they be trained to form the crews of the small landing craft which would be used to ferry invading forces to the enemy鈥檚 shores, and he was determined to show that the Marines could provide the high degree of discipline, efficiency and initiative that would be required. Some lack in these areas had been evident in the high casualty rate, and only partial success of the limited operations of this kind where landings and subsequent withdrawal from enemy territory were made and where the Royal Navy had been called upon to provide the crews of the landing craft. Our superior officers were of course eager to prove that the confidence placed in the corps was justified and they showed it by submitting us to a regime which would not have seemed out of place in the French Foreign Leigon!

Having decided that we had been brought up to the required degree of toughness and efficiency (I admit that I had never felt fitter in my life), we were transferred to the Royal Navy College for Officers in training at Dartmouth, Devon. Officer training had been suspended, at least from there, but the College provided a good base to begin our sea training and introduction to our assault landing craft (L.C.A鈥檚).

We began by taking trips in the craft up and down the River Dart which flowed into the sea, but was protected from it by a boom across the harbour entrance. We were also taken under the wing of 鈥榦ld salts鈥�, recalled Naval Pensioners who showed us the rudiments of seamanship, navigation, slicing and knotting, and the use of naval expressions, some of which would not bear being seen in print if things went wrong as they often did with us landlubbers. To their credit, they did realise how vital our training was and did their best to cram into us as much theoretical knowledge as possible in the limited time available. However, there is no substitute for practical experience, and the day came when we had to take over and crew the craft which were to be the tools of our trade.

As an N.C.O. I was a natural choice for coxswain (driver) and the rest of the crew consisted of a stoker who was responsible for controlling and generally maintaining the twin Ford petrol engines which were situated aft (the back end!) of the craft. The rest of the crew was made up of two deckhands.

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