´óÏó´«Ã½

Part two of an edited oral history interview with Mr. Donald Robert Church conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

From L.D.V. to the Home Guard
"But anyway by this time - Dad’s Army was typical at first — but after a few months it became very, very efficient and I’m sure they would have given a very good account of themselves because they did become very good, they were real military men in the end. But we still kept getting ammunition and stuff in dribs and drabs. And once again we had instructions that we’d got to defend Bedford, the Home Guard had got to defend Bedford against the military and this was against the regular soldiers. They were going to attack Bedford and they didn’t know which way they were going to come. So as far as I remember all the Home Guards attached to Bedford defended Bedford from all angles. By this time we were getting more ammunition, we’d got our guns and we’d got what they called a Northover projector. Now what it was, they couldn’t give us real equipment but somebody had invented this and what you did you made a Molotov cocktail, put it in the top and fired it like a mortar gun. It would fire the bottle, it would hit the tank and it would explode and we’d got one. Now we had to defend Cardington Road this time and I think by then we were living at 147 Cardington Road. But coming out from Bedford a little bit past 147 up to Fenlake Anchor it was all country and near the Fenlake Anchor there was a big mound and that was in a field. We were stood along that road near the Fenlake Anchor where there wasn’t much at all except fields and there were I think three or four of us going to defend that road there. And what they put was the Northover projector on the side of the road and that was pointing outwards you see and that was supposed to defend against any tanks or anything else. Two of us would be relieved and two of us would stay and we’d both got our guns. Now this was an all night and all day operation, it was a weekend if I remember correctly and we were both standing there and now by this time I was about 16½ and I had learnt to fire the gun. I was quite well equipped and we’d got these guns and we’d got to stop anybody trying to get into Bedford. We stood by the Northover projector, I stood on one side of the road and my mate stood on the other. In the distance there was a motor bike coming, tearing down and when he got nearer we could see that he was a Despatch Rider. So, we stepped out in the road when he got near and the usual thing, ‘HALT, who goes there?’ As if you didn’t know! He could see us and he pulled up and he was standing, straddling the bike and we said, ‘Would you get off your bike please?’ And he said, ‘No!’ We asked him questions, I forget what the questions were, he said ‘Will you stand aside?’ He said, ‘I’m not on manoeuvres’ I said, ‘yes you are, the Army is attacking Bedford and we have not got to let anybody in’. He said, ‘I’m telling you, I’m nothing to do with manoeuvres, I’ve got a despatch here for so and so’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t let you by until we have informed our Commanding Officer’ and I said, ‘if you move I’ll shoot!’ I hadn’t got any bullets! And he just stepped on the bike and shot through the two of us, nearly knocked me over and off he went and that was the end of that, he got through! We found out afterwards that he wasn’t in on the manoeuvres but he got very angry. But we couldn’t have done anything. Well, you couldn’t imagine a 16 year old boy with a gun, I hadn’t got any bullets I couldn’t use any bullets, they didn’t give them to you on manoeuvres. I mean I daren’t hit him or anything. In fact it happened so quickly I thought what am I going to do? I want my Mum! And he’d gone.

We had, during the time that I was with them - it must have been at least two years — I admired them so much because they were all sorts. I mean you’d got youngsters and I don’t think I met anybody as young as me and I’m sure I was the youngest ever to be in the Home Guard. We had old men but they were determined and they were prepared to do anything and they became very, very efficient. Although the Dad’s Army was typical right from the start but eventually they became a very professional force and they served their purpose.

Joining the Navy
I used to see pictures because we’d got old war books of the First World War and I used to read these books. They used to show pictures of British soldiers advancing on the Germans with bayonets and great big German soldiers coming at the English with bayonets. I thought to myself — remember I was 8 stones 6 lbs and I used to think soon I will have to go in the Army - because at 18 they were taking us in the Army. I thought if they put me, a puny little chap in the front line and I have to go for a German I wouldn’t stand much of a chance. So I thought I’ll join the Navy. I never thought I could be turned down but I joined the Navy. And once again they didn’t take my birth — they were accepting at 17½ years old in the Navy and I was 17 and three months (in June 1942) — and I applied and I was very lucky they didn’t take my birth date, not then.

I volunteered and I was accepted but I had to go to Northampton and Cambridge because you couldn’t get in the Navy, even in the war, unless you had passed written exams. In the Army they took you whatever but in the Navy you still had to have one and so I had to go to both Northampton and Cambridge. One for the medical and one for the written exams. I don’t know which one but I passed both which surprised me and they still didn’t ask me (when I was born) and I was sent to HMS Ganges, well there you are, I’d got in. At that time I was 17 and three months so at that time I must have been 17 and four months or something like that when I finally went.

Food rationing
It was unbelievable! You can’t really describe to anybody what the rations were like. I mean you got one rasher of bacon a week and if you were lucky you got an egg. Although the diet was very sparse people were healthier because they only ate what was absolutely necessary. I don’t know how much bread you got. We never saw, I think I only ever saw a banana once in twelve months, an orange was much the same. You didn’t get much imported stuff and it was very difficult. You were encouraged to grow what you could wherever you could. I mean people were growing stuff wherever they lived. If you’d got window boxes they gave you seeds. They gave you free packets of seeds to grow.

And then when I went into the Navy I mean it was a big change for me, apart from anything else I had food in the Navy that I hadn’t seen for two years. I mean the military come first, they had to be well fed. In the end, unofficially when I came home on leave from the Navy I used to bring tinned food and stuff that they hadn’t seen for ages. In the Navy you got plenty of veg and stuff but you had to have a lot of dried potatoes. I remember that you used to have dried apples and dried peaches, if you had got dried peaches you were doing marvellous. And baked beans, God if I never eat another baked bean in my life — it was baked beans all the time you know! But the Navy compared with civilian life as regards food was fantastic.

We had six weeks at HMS Ganges, that’s where I did my basic training. We used to have very good meals at Ganges, it’s not a ship it’s a shore base, they are all named as ships even if it’s on shore, it was at Shotley (Suffolk). We used to have our meals and one day I had my meal and I found a great big black beetle in the meal and it turned me off. I was friendly with a chef who cooked the meals and I told him and he said, ‘You’ve seen nothing’ he said, ‘you come with me one night after lights out!’ He said ‘I’ll arrange it. You come into the galley. We shut the galley for a couple of hours in the night. You come with me and I’ll show you something.’ I went to him, we got together and he took me to the galley and he opened the door in the galley he said, ‘Don’t put the light on, just step inside.’ So I opened the door and stepped inside and I felt CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH! He said, ‘Now put the light on.’ I put the light on and I’d stood in black beetles all over the place, hundreds of ‘em. They used to try and kill them, get rid of them but they couldn’t. You know wherever you went in those days if you’d got a galley you always got these beetles. Anyway from then onwards I used to go the NAAFI Canteen and eat apple pies that we could get on one or two mornings and I ate most of my food there whilst I did the training. Anyway I finished the six weeks training and I was lucky as I was in the top ten because it was all exams even then.

The top ten got a choice of what they would like to be in the Navy and they gave you about six or seven choices. One was ASDIC, one was Semaphore, one was Stoker, oh there were several and I took ASDIC. ASDIC, I don’t know whether you know what ASDIC was? It was like radar but underwater. You’d have an oscillator under the ship and it would PING, send a PING, an echo and if it hit a submarine the PING would rebound and come back. You had to learn to work out which was a submarine PING. If it hit a shoal of fish, a big shoal of fish had got an echo and you had to learn which was the one you’d got - if it was a submarine. I applied for that and they sent me up to Campbeltown, Argyllshire which is a beautiful little county. I went up there and they had got a couple of little minesweepers that they used for training and they’d got oscillators underneath the minesweepers. They used to send us out and they’d got a submarine there, not based there but used to go out to sea, and we used to PING for this submarine. Now although I was OK when it was calm - you’d got a little box on the minesweeper that you sat in and you send out the signals in the small what’s-a-name — and you’d listen for the PING. I used to do it very well but when it was rough I used to be very, very sick. I had another, I think it was another six weeks training and before the training session was up the Commanding Officer sent for me and he said, ‘Church’ he said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve got to fail you.’ By this time I really loved it although I didn’t like the sickness. He said, ‘We’ve tried everything, we can’t get rid of your sea sickness’ he said, ‘and the one job we can’t have you do is this. You can’t sit listening for submarines when you are out at sea because you can’t come off if you are sea sick.’ He said, ‘And so we’ve got to fail you.’ I said, ‘Well, was I alright?’ He said, ‘You were top, you were perfect’ but he said, ‘that’s it!’ So they sent me back and I went to Chatham. Then after a few weeks there I joined HMS Meynell which was a Hunt Class Destroyer. I was on the ship as an Ordinary Seaman because I didn’t try for anything else, I settled for being a Seaman. I was on that ship right up until the end of the war.

You used to have your basic job. If you were trained as a Seaman you joined as Seaman, if you were trained as a Stoker you went below but you all had different jobs. As a Seaman you had shifts, you had Starboard and Port. But when you was on duty, you had Action Stations positions as well so I mean most of the time I was on Look-out. But if we were going into Action I used to supply the shells to the gun, the 4.7 gun and that was my position. But on normal Watch — if we were at sea and my Watch was on duty for four hours I used to go on Starboard Watch. You used to go on near the Bridge and you used your binoculars and watched for anything that might be enemy at sea. But if it was Action Stations I then changed my position. Somebody down below decks used to send up the shell and I used to lift the shell and give it to the breech man on a 4.7 gun. He used to put the shell in the gun and that was my Action Stations position the whole time I was in the Navy.

But because my writing at that time was excellent (my teacher used to keep all my books because he used to use them with his pupils to show them what writing should be like) I don’t usually boast about them things, but! So when I was on board ship as an Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman eventually, you used to write letters home and they were always vetted. There was always an Officer that vetted your letters because I mean if you inadvertently put something in somebody could — and because they used to read my letters one day the Duty Officer sent for me. He said, ‘Church, would you like to be a ‘writer’ on the ship.’ Now a writer is a clerk in the office on the ship who looks after all the correspondence because all ships have correspondence. So I said to him, ‘Excuse me, Sir’ I said ‘but we are not allowed writers on small ships only on Cruisers and Battleships.’ ‘Ah’, he said ‘well of course your Commander is the Second in Command of the Flotilla at Sheerness and because he is Second in Command he has other responsibilities and we are allowed to have a writer.’ So I said, ‘Well what would it entail?’ He said, ‘Well your writing is legible and we would like you do all the ship’s correspondence.’ And I took that on and I had that until I was demobbed but I still had to do the Seaman’s work. And I got 6d a week for being a writer on board ship and it went up to 19 shillings and 6d, that was my wages per week. So before that it was 19 shillings and that 6d made a difference!"

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.