大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site at Surrey History Centre on behalf of Mr Luke Toft. It has been added to the site with the author's permission, and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

There are some years of one's life which stand out and, if there has been a war during that lifetime, those years usually occur then. 1944 is my special year, even though the previous year was a turning point in my life. It was in 1943 that I obtained my Higher National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering and, as a direct consequence of this, my life changed from that of a factory floor worker into a technical Civil Servant attached to the RAF Torpedo Development Unit at Fort Grange Aerodrome, Gosport. The RAF Development Unit was made up of an armed services section who maintained and flew the various Torpedo launching aircraft, a civilian section of scientists and engineers of which I was one, plus our own workshops. The civilian offices were wooden huts on the old parade ground within the Victorian fort which gave its name to the air station. It is now part of HMS Sultan.

1944 opened as any "normal" year during the Second World War in southern England, with a complete 'blackout' after dark and the occasional air raid. Air raids were an accepted fact of life and my Civil Defence duty took place at the Gosport HQ. In order to complete my professional studies, I had to attend classes in Portsmouth several nights a week, which meant travelling back to Gosport in the blackout and crossing Portsmouth Harbour in the dark. In wartime, stationary vessels did not carry lights and occasionally the ferries did not switch on their navigation lights until they had left the floating landing stage, which meant that there was an unseen gap between the landing stage and the boat as it moved away. The Gosport ferry of the 1940s was quite different from that in use today, being a small low flat-decked boat, making it possible to jump onto it from the landing stage as gang planks were not required. There were times on very dark nights when, rushing down the ramp to the landing stage, I would find that it was impossible to stop and, as there were no guard rails to stop one going over the edge, there was no alternative but to jump the gap carrying the all-important bicycle.

The first indication that 1944 would be an unusual year was the way all the TDU personnel were called to the station concert hangar for the station commander to address us. The Group Captain ordered us to mislead anyone, including girlfriends, family and others, who asked questions about the area and instructed us how to do it. An obvious sign the 'second front' was on the way was the resurfacing of every road junction and road corner in concrete ready for tank movements, which I blame for my hay fever which began that summer. A further indicator was the way our access to Stokes Bay was restricted because parts of the 'Mulberry Harbour' were being built there. It was from the pier in Stokes Bay that we boarded the Naval target boats taking us to the torpedo dropping zone. To get to the boat necessitated descending a flexible rope ladder hanging under the pier and boarding the boat as it went past. Torpedos did not always remain in the sea after dropping into it and, on the one occasion when I was an observer on a target boat, the approaching torpedo suddenly broke surface and 'porpoised' over us.

Shortly before 'D' Day, the whole area filled up with tanks and soldiers, the tanks lining the roads and road verges for miles. Much to our surprise, however, there was no bombing of the assembled troops or fighting vehicles, although German aircraft came over at times. Immediately prior to 'D' Day, the tanks moved to their landing craft, raising clouds of concrete dust as they turned corners. On 4th June, the soldiers marched through Gosport on their way to the landing craft with pipe bands in full Highland dress at their head. The following day (the intended invasion day), Gosport was almost a ghost town, as all military personnel were confined to their quarters to keep the secret. That night, the invasion fleet sailed and only a few days later the V1s arrived to mark another phase in the war. These ram jet missiles came over day and night and ceased only when their launch sites were captured. The V1s, or "doodlebugs" as they were generally known, were sheer terror weapons of which some 10,000 were launched, falling out of the sky in a silent and unpredictable way when their fuel ran out.

It was during this "doodlebug" period that I had my first promotion board in London. The only thing I can remember about that board was the arrival of a "doodlebug" in the middle of it. Naturally the interview carried on until the missile's engine cut out, at which point we all froze while awaiting the inevitable explosion. That over, the interview resumed. I have never been able to find out how that interview figured on an interview stress scale! That board gave me my first promotion, which could have been because I did not dive under the table - nobody did. During the Battle of Britain, the TDU workshops were bombed and they moved to a temporary workshop beneath the Ashley Wallpaper factory. The compressed air system in the temporary workshop used a torpedo air vessel as a storage cylinder instead of one designed for civilian use - after all, it was wartime! While I was at TDU, the civilian section of the factory went on fire and, because of the torpedo air vessel being present, no-one was allowed to approach the burning building. The air vessel duly burst and the local population thought we had stored bombs in the factory - a demonstration that the warhead was not the only part of a torpedo to be feared.

There were pleasant memories of that time as well, and one of them is musical, which has become an enduring memory as far as I am concerned. On a fine still evening, while waiting to cross Portsmouth Harbour, a lone destroyer was making its way to the harbour entrance when a trumpet call floated across the harbour and continued as the ship progressed. That occasion was more moving than the sound of 'sundown' on the capital ships with full band performing the ceremony.

1944 was the year of my coming of age (21) and, having successfully completed the professional examinations, I was elected a Graduate Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in December, thus making progression to Chartered Engineer status a possibility for the future. At the time, 1944 seemed a fairly normal year but looking back shows just how unusual a year it was and why I cannot forget it.

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