´óÏó´«Ã½

This contribution was submitted by Jeff Bright to the People's War team in Wales and is added to the site with his permission.

I was 17 when war broke out and I was called up the day war broke out because I was in the Territorial Army. That was in Carshalton in Surrey. We went to a drill hall …and on that day the Croydon airfield nearby was where the first German bomb dropped, on a scent factory where two ladies were killed! As I was under 18 I wasn’t send out on the British Expeditionary Force, I was transferred as a driver down to the Isle of Grain in Kent, a fort, and I was there driver, with that company for about a year. I was then sent up to the Midlands, near Stratford on Avon, and I was then driving Brigadier Temple, who happened to be the brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, and I spent about six months driving him around the country. I was then on various placements then the 11th Armoured Division was formed. We went to Yorkshire and were trained for two years for landing purposes and also to waterproof the engines on all the vehicles, so that when you landed off the ramps on the LCTs you managed to get ashore without stopping.
We were then put in a sealed camp for many weeks and the next thing we were on our way over the Channel. You could walk from England to France with all the boats. One interesting point was the Navy was behind us and as they were shelling with these big heavy shells you could hear them whistling over your head. Very frightening at the time ..but if you hear them you’re alright!

We then pushed our way forward we were held up at the Falaise gap we eventually kept on moving we got up to Neimagen which was the other side of the bridge where the paratroops were dropping the other side. While we were there…we were in a village square the people were very good to us. And a little boy about seven or eight years old, with two fingers on one hand came out and I fed him for the full ten days we were there, mess tin dangling on his two fingers and he had to line up with the men, take his turn in the queue and we fed him. We think we could have helped to save his life. The local people were very good…no food, they were starving…but we did have a couple of nights in a bed. They let us go in their houses and have a night in a bed which was most unusual.

Then you had the Battle of the Bulge and we had to move back down into Belgium. It was snowing, cold. We had to dig in. But there was a Convent there and the nuns were good enough to take our washing…do all our washing for us. It was the first time they were really clean for years because we didn’t have a bath. (Later on we did have mobile baths and if you think of being in a field not very nice weather, just a canvas, having a shower…it was better to stay dirty. We had that about once a fortnight!) Anyway, when we got to Antwerp, after driving more or less for five days and five nights. We stopped and all the people came out they gave you wine that they’d been hiding, everything. The 11th Armoured Division we do have the Freedom of Antwerp which I do have a letter still confirming that. We just moved on from there….the supply lines got longer…there was less sleep. We eventually got to Schleswig Holstein. The day war finished we were in a place called Schleswig …in a gravel pit at the time. After that when all the men started to come home…being as I was younger, even though I’d been in longer, I could not come home. So I was then sent to Flensberg, took over a coal depot — I had my own house, interpreter, corporal and eight lads and a lot of ex prisoners of war to do the work. And I just stayed there until about July and then I came home. And I came from Flensberg to Aldershot on one train all the way.

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