大象传媒

This contribution to WW2 People鈥檚 War was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk. The story has been written and submitted to the website by Rosalie Davis Gibb (Volunteer Story Gatherer) with the full permission and on behalf of Thomas E Ginn.

I was conscripted in December 1942 when I was 18 years old and enlisted for the Royal Artillery. I was sent to Bury St Edmunds for Primary training. From there I was sent to Blackpool for training as a driver. While in Blackpool I was posted AOL as I hadn鈥檛 written to my parents for several weeks. Mum approached the Army to enquire as to my whereabouts. Eventually they realised what had happened and re-posted me to Cleveleys.

From Blackpool I was posted to a gun site on the cliffs at Whitehaven, then to Aberdeen, Scotland. I was then stationed on a gun site, Torry, just outside the city. Then I was on the move again, to a village called Beauly near Inverness. Whilst we were there we lived in Beaufort Castle, the ancestral home of Lord Lovatt. From Scotland I moved to England and was stationed at Market Harborough. Then to Kingston-upon-Thames on a 2 week wireless operator course in King Farouk of Egypt鈥檚 London home where I attained a speed of 22 words a minute. It was very luxurious. A large picture of the King was at the top of the stairs and each floor had a bathroom with gold fittings. The very large garden was filled with Nissan huts. Then I was on a Troops Clerk course at Aldershot, driving a Royal Enfield motorcycle, where I contracted measles and was quarantined for 2 weeks. Returning to Market Harborough it was yet another move, to Usk in Wales. The intention was to fit us out with tropical uniforms before sending us to the Middle East. This fell through and we were posted to Romney Marshes, Kent, a very dangerous place to be in 1943, with the bombing of London by the V1 and V2 and the Doodlebugs as they were called. Our duty was to shoot as many as we could to stop them getting through to London. The guns were heavy ack ack anti-aircraft. The shells were quite large. This was a serious problem as when they exploded the shrapnel fell on the tents.

Eventually D Day came and I found myself on a landing craft at Calais. From there it was on to cattle trucks following the advance of the infantry. By this time I was promoted to Lance Bombardier. My first real involvement in the war was to take a squad of approximately 20 guys on a cattle wagon train to the front line, at the extreme end of the Maginot Line. Our mission was to transport prisoners from a barbed wire concentration compound back to Ostend where the Belgian army took over. Eventually my squad, mainly wireless operators, carried on through the advance installing wireless communications between the various Regiments. The names of the towns and cities I remember are Osnabr眉ck, Cologne, Cuxhaven, Brunswick, Hanover, Sandbostel, Hertzberg Mountains, Nuremburg, Hamburg, Berlin, The Hague, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Brussels, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Genepp and Dortmund.

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