大象传媒

Owing to being under age I was not called up until 1942 for what was to become my five years service with the King's Royal Rifle Corps.
In the three battalions I served in I made many friends, some of which weren't so fortunate to surive the war. Before going over to Normanydy in 1944 I saw many areas of the United Kingdom chiefly the most remote as being motorised infantry we operated with the tanks so it was Northumberland, Yorkshire and South Wales etc. wHere there was plenty of room!!
On receiving my calling up papers for the K.R.R.C. I found that a pal of mine was reporting to Winchester also and to a sister Regiment - the Rifle Brigade. We were supposed to report at 4p.m. but we in our innocence thought we would go earlier and have a look round the town - some hope! At Winchester Station we never got outside but were bundled into our respective trucks and driven straight to the barracks!!
Our battalion was broken up to provide reinforcements for the battalion already in France. I with another of my pals Johnny were Ante Tank Gunners and it is quite amusing now to recall going up to the front to be dropped to all intents in an empty field amid a hell of a racket from shell fire and mortars, ours and theirs! and there meeting our new platoon officer. Then heads popped up out of the slit trenches that the rest of the platoon were sheltering in - we very quickly dug our own personal ones by the six pounder anti tank gun team we were assigned to. In the U.K. our regiment had a reputation for one of the most smartly turned out, but our officer was the scruffiest and most dirty individual one count meet!! I'll always remember his greeting when he said 'War is 90% noise and frightfulness and the remaining 10% was a threat to you personally' - he knew - he had been there some time!
One memory stays with me just before going over to France. On joining up and not wishing to appear different, and although a Methodist, everyone else was saying C of E as their religion and I said the same. This worried me later so I got in touch with my old officer in the Boys Brigade and to my surprise at Aldershot before sailing for Normandy the Padre came along the ranks to me and gave me a fresh set of Identity Discs - METHODIST. This to some folks might seem trivial but it meant such a lot to me.
Not very long after the British and American forces broke out from the bridgehead in Normandy (it couldn't have just been because of Johnny and I) and the chase through France, Belgium and Holland and into Germany began with many sticky moments on the way. V.E. day found us just outside Bremehaven and from there Hanover as Army of Occupation. Sometime afterwards two of our battalions merged into the older servicemen and the younger, the older ones now the 12th Battlion stayed and we the younger the 2nd Battlion came home to England to retrain for the Far East.
During my disembarkation and then embarkation leaves the Atom Bomb brought Japan to surrender. I spent V.J. day in England and married Joan.
Instead of the Far East we went out to Tripoli in Libya to garrison and police the Arab-Jew troubles. Nearing demob sadly all my friends sailed to Palestine a year later while I was left behind at the Brigadier's Mess supervising the German and Italian POW's employed there. I would have loved the opportunity to visit the Holy Land.
Demob - a weird sensation parting company with all the lads I knew and entering the Demob Centre after five years of service life to take up and catch up with my civy job in the print and joyfully rejoin my wife Joan. I was proud to be in company with thousands of others with memories by the hundred, a small cog in a very big wheel that brought peace and victory over evil, but with that strange empty feeling nevertheless to leave all those that I had known. I'm also proud to be able (with my son) to give tribute at the cenetaph to those who didn't make it. THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD AS WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD. AGE SHALL NOT WEARY THEM NOR THE YEARS CONDEMN. AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN AND IN THE MORNING, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

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