大象传媒

My name is Peter Davis and in 1938 I was at Highgate Boarding School in London, although I was a day boy. I lived at the time in North West London with my parents and two brothers, one was older than me the other younger. My eldest brother went to Highgate School aswell, although my younger brother only went there for a short time as the whole school was then evacuated in 1939 to Westward Ho in North Devon. It was an excellent School.

The Sergeant Major of the Cadet Force, which our School had at the time came with us and he was a Royal Marine, so that is why I joined the Royal Marines.

We heard about the war from newspapers and radio and I was sure we were going to win.

I stayed at School in North Devon until I joined up around October 1942 and went into the Royal Marines and did my Cadet training somewhere in Devon.

I was commissioned in September 1943 and qualified as a Landing Craft Officer in February 1944 as a member of 561 LCA Flotilla which left England to service in North Africa, Italy, and Yugoslavia. We were on an island just off of Yugoslavia called Bis. There was a lot of trouble there with the Germans. It was our job to get the Army Commandoes to shore in the landing crafts, there were about 12 landing craft in all and each landing craft carried about 30 men, we were fired on quite often, but we had a job to do and got on with it. We use to take men from Italy to fight in Yugoslavia.

As a result of operations in the Adriatic with the Royal Marines and the Army Commandoes I was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery and devotion to duty on the 6th June 1944. I was presented with this by King George.

I returned to England in January 1945 and was selected for service in the Royal Marines Special Duty Unit HMS Mount Stewart, which was in Devon. There I qualified as an underwater swimmer, canooist and later in parachuting.

In 1946 I was granted a permanent commission and after courses rejoined the Special Duty Unit in North Devon.

In 1948 and 1949 I served at Porstmouth as an Instructer in the newly formed Amphibious School Royal Marines.

In 1950 I was OC of No 2 and No 3 Special Boat Section at HMS Royal Prince in Germany.

I trained at Portsmouth in September 1951 to command No 1 Special Boat Section.

In 1952 I joined 42 Commando in Malta and was promoted to Captain. In July of the same year I served in the canal zone with my unit up until 1953/1954. On my return to the UK I rejoined the Amphibious School at Poole Dorset as 2IC of the Special Boat Company. Two years later I joined HMS Eagle as OCRM, an Aircraft Carrier. This was a large ship to sail with a large Royal Marine detachment of over 100 ranks. During two and a half years commission the ship spent most of its time in the Mediterranean. During the Lebanon crisis of 1958, I along with Sergeant Stafford were resposible for staving off a mutiny in a Royal Fleet Auxilliary.

In July 1959 I went to Poole and joined the Royal Amphibious Centre and commanded a Special Boat Company. I took part in a special service exercise in England, Norway, Sweden and the USA Marine Corps called Quantico USA in the rank of Local Lieutenant Colonel and attended the senior course.

I reverted in 1962 to Senior Company Commander where I served at Borneo Confrontation Campaign.

In April 1964 I took up the appointment of GSA2 to Major General Royal Marines Plymouth and in 1965 took up duties as the Amphibious Operations Officer HMS Albion.

I retired from the Royal Marines in 1971.

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My name is Mrs Davis and I lived in North West London before the war and then evacuated for the first six months of the war to Canford Cliffs in Poole where my aunt lived. I start my story with my mother who was already in the WAF and in those days it was just one parade a week. She was actually the first person in the family to be called up. I had two brothers, one was abroad and was postponed at being called up, the other one was called up into the Army, RASC (Royal Army Service Co). I was not 18 at that time and was in Poole for six months, so to pass the time I went to Parkstone Secretarial College which isn't there now and I learnt shorthand, typing and book-keeping.

One day my mother phoned me up and said the WAF are advertising for Clerks Special Duty, where she said I would be able to use my shorthand and typing and they were not demanding very high speeds, so why don't I apply. I was a couple of weeks from being 18 (18 was the minimum age for girls joining up at that time) and thought by the time I filled the application form in and everything else I would be 18. I got called up and joined up ten days before my eighteenth birthday and went to square bashing camp at West Drayton. Where I got into terrible trouble, because I was just in a hut with 20 other girls and the chores included to black-leaden the grate, I didn't have the fogiest idea how to black-leaden a grate, so they did it for me and also we had to pumistone the bath, and to keep the honour up of the hut they did it for me. We then got divided up and I was asked if I was Clerk Special Duty, I said, "Yes," and he said your next appointment will be at RAF Borgee, near Felixstowe, Suffolk, and would be trained as a Radar Operator. We had all the TV people there training us, because Radar is TV, it was early days in television. We did about a months training there it was to do with all the pilons at the radio stations around the coast. I thought that was a far cry from shorthand and typing, but it was secret in those days, very very secret. That was why it was called Clerk Special Duty.

Going back to being called up. At West Drayton, just outside London where the WAF square bashing place was in those days. I was sitting on my bed when a WAF Officer came in and said, "Can anybody here read music?" I said, "Yes I can." She said, "We are going to have a pipe and drum band can you read this?" I said, "Yes," and she said, "Can you play this?" it was a flute, I managed to play it and so I was put in the band. For the rest of the 2 weeks there we marched up and down, and I never managed to get one more note out of the flute at all, I was just lucky the first time!

We were taught quite a lot about the technical side of television basically how it worked as well as to operate it. I never thought this television experience would ever be of any use to me afterwards, but much later in life I was researching into ballet on early television about which I read quite a lot later and there it all was. In the very early days and I mean when John Logi-Baird had his studios and laboritories in Long Acre, there was a ballet programme of a sort on the television with just the feet up on a table doing exercises. Television was so primitive then. I followed it and I could understand it because I had done this basic training and had learnt some information about it. I followed the development of television right up to when ITV came in and then colour television, very interesting.

I went from West Drayton where I was stationed to a place called RAF Powling which was a satellite station at RAF Tangmere where we worked in shifts because we had to have a 24 hour watch. We were operating picking up aircraft coming in, you got a bleep on the screen and then had to follow it if you could. I was then posted to Worthing. With radar you use to get big gaps on the screen as underneath the beam of the searchlight it left a gap on the screen and at Worthing there was a type of radar that would fill the gaps and I went on that for a bit. I had put in for a commission at that time, but I didn't get it which upset me, but I was very young. Then I went to RAF Sockley where they had even more advanced sort of television equipment which was carried in an aircraft which could get on the tail of other aircraft which might still be secret actually. I did get commissioned from there and I realised a lot later that I didn't get my first commission as they were so short of radar operators. We went from 4 shifts a day to 3 shifts a day they were so short of people. One of the funny things that happened to me before I was commissioned was that my mother was made an Officer and I didn't know whether to salute her first, or kiss her first, which amused people. My father was a lot older than my mother, he wasn't in the second World War. I met him in London when I was newly commissioned and very self-conscious about it. My father was walking along with a heavy walking stick on his arm because he was never without his stick and he didn't know whether to take his hat off to me or hit me with his stick.

I then became an Equipment Officer dealing with supplies at several Aircraft stations, there was always a shortage of everything and it was very difficult to get supplies such as aircraft spares and petrol. I finished up at Tangmere, near Chichester, through the Battle of Britain and as they advanced prisoners of war were sent back and they came into our camp. They all wanted to pay us and they would bring beautiful watches out to give to us, but we wouldn't take them it was very embarrasing, so I use to pass the situation on to my Senior Officer to deal with. At this time I was an Assistant Section Officer, then went on to be a Flight Officer and then on to be a Flight Lieutenant.

We were very busy during the Battle of Britain. The sky was always full of aircraft. All the train stations and radar stations were in the thick of it as the Germans wanted to knock them down and put them out of operation. I don't recall hearing about any of the radar stations being put out of commission at any time, there were always a lot of alarms. Our camp was in the woods outside Arundel.

If the alarm went you had to get out of your hut, obviously if you were operating you had to stay where you were. One time in the very early days we had to get out of our hut and go into the woods. We all went out about 20 or 30 girls and were all talking non stop and the RAF Warrant Officer said, "Stop that noise, don't you know that sound rises!" so we all kept very quiet.

In those days you could hitch-hike to whereever you wanted to, it was perfectly safe. We got four passes a year to go home and when we were on a four shift system you use to come off one morning and you didn't go on until midnight the next night. We use to hitch all over the place, go and see our families or see a show in London, it was perfectly safe and all the drivers were pleased to help. Although there wasn't much traffic at that time, and because of the rationing it was only essential vehicles that had it. Aircraft petrol was no good for cars. We weren't paid very much at first possibly 1s a day and it went up to 1s 6p, we were looked after with food, uniform etc so didn't really require much else.

D-day was postponed for a day because of the weather.

When VE day came of course there was still a war on in the Far East.

When I came out of the RAF I had a ration book for the first time, I didn't have a clue what to do with it. I was living on my own by then and you got these awful recipes about reconstituiting an egg. We got egg powder in those days which was your ration for the month, which was equivalent to 12 eggs. Clothes and fabric were rationed aswell.

Rationing finished in about 1952 round about the time we got married as we got married in 1952.

We met up after the war as we tried to re-estalish our family life with everyone. We then got engaged in Malta as I had been abroad and I got Peter to stop off in Malta. We had known each other since we were children, we use to go to each others parties and our parents knew each other. I then came back to England and could then buy clothes here, although I did buy some clothes in Malta.

I remember my 21st birthday which was in the officers mess at RAF Wing which was near Leighton Buzzard and it was to do with Bomber Command Headquarters and my father sent me a cake from Buzzards, which was a very posh shop in the West End on a par with Fortnum & Masons and looking back it was a beautiful dark cake, it must have been a carrot cake as that was the only thing you could get, and the icing on the top was a circle of paper. My party was held in the mess and the Mess Sergeant gave me some grated cheddar cheese which was yellow and some grated cheshire cheese which was red and that was put onto biscuits and that was our big feast. That was about 1942.

I remember the Americans did the day time raids, I think that must have been around about the time of the attack on Europe. We use to watch the planes going over, hundreds of them.

The Bomber Commands use to be mainly in the South of England as it was flatter there and not so far to go in land. The English and Commonwealth Countries, Canadians etc use to mainly fly at night.

I think Tangmere Camp is still there, I think it is a museum now.

During the last part of the war I was in a place called Aberporth in Wales, it was an Army Co-op Command and I was still an Equipment Officer. I was demobed from there about a year after the war as we all had to take our turn as it was first in first out so to speak. I got my discharge from there and the week I was going out they asked if I would like a posting to France, I spoke French then, I turned them down as I had arranged a place in London to go to as my mother had died in the war and my father died shortly afterwards. On looking back perhaps I should have taken the position offered as the experience would have been useful. I had been in the WAF for six years and wanted to get on with my life.

I trained as a Medico Social Worker after the war they don't have them now.

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