大象传媒

Transcription of a taped reminiscence session at Chatham Library, 9th May 2005

(George grew up in Flintshire, North Wales.)

At 15, when the war broke out we heard it on the radio 11 o鈥檆lock, a September day, it was a Sunday, and we all rushed to the school to see what we could do to help, but we were too young. Most of the older boys in the school were leaving to join the forces and were coming back as pilots and in the navy and in the army and all we wanted to do was join them. Needless to say our parents, particularly my father suffered in the First World War, he wasn鈥檛 keen on me going, so I volunteered, but you couldn鈥檛 join then. You couldn鈥檛 join until you were eighteen and a half I took my turn and we were called up in the November 1942 and went to the training camp in High Green outside of Sheffield? We had six weeks of hell being trained night and day and we took various exams and so on. I was sent the Royal Engineers. I was then posted, to what was a senior post in the engineers for a young man, and I landed up in 2nd Corps HQ in Felsted in Essex. We went on manoeuvres to the North of England, that meant that our 2nd Corps Headquarters which was in charge of two whole Divisions, went around Northumberland in something called Sparta and it was in the middle of the snow for some weeks and it was a very hard time.

After that various training at our depot in Halifax in North Yorkshire. I was in the works section of the Royal Engineers and basically we were trained on bridges to put them across rivers and dykes or to repair them. So we then went to the marshalling area at Fareham, between Southampton and Poole. Night after night we took the engineering equipment down to the docks. We had some air raids but nothing to bother much about. I think one of the most interesting things to happen to me then, we were in this hall outside of Fareham, Southwark Park, which was the HQ , and we did see the big bugs there: Montgomery and Eisenhower and Churchill on one occasion. We were very dirty doing work the work that we were doing, and Montgomery gave us a very hard look, or so we thought. Some of the wags said 鈥淧ity he鈥檚 not working with us. Sits like a toff in a car.鈥�

Then the time came for us to go to Normandy, and we went down to the beaches. But I didn鈥檛 go in the first wave because we had to put all this equipment on the ships. So we landed at Arromanches and then we had our main depot at a place called Luc-sur-Mer on the beach and we worked very hard.

Once when I was in charge of a section, we were in a ruined farm house and there were long range German guns but the thing that bothered me most, and I鈥檝e always hated them ever since, were the rats. I didn鈥檛 mind the bang, bangs so much as these rats. My Major asked me to look after this fellow and it was one of the tragedies of life. He鈥檇 gone home to Croydon and because of the bombing and everything, his wife had hung herself and he found her upstairs and it prayed on his nerves. He was going through this night after night, so I just had to listen to it every night.

Then we moved out and we went over the Belgium border, and we stopped overnight. We had given our rations to them at the farmhouse and they gave us fresh eggs and chickens. We slept in the open, then the heavens opened. Then we got to Brussels on the 3rd. Then we went to Antwerp and my section had to help clear the docks at Antwerp. I had to learn a little Flemish then. We were going backwards and forwards and sometimes we had to go all the way back to Arromanches to the beaches to get the equipment. During the Battle of the Bulge, the 6th Airborne landed on the left hand side, the Germans broke through hoping to take Antwerp and everyone was in a rush. We rushed up there and although we had been back for the second time, I cannot remember, because if you are under trees, and in the snow and under bushes, and rain and bang, bang, one place is just the same as another. That was one of the times of best luck in my life.

After the 16th December, our Colonel for reasons I鈥檒l never work out (he like me was Welsh, Colonel Roberts 鈥� he got killed later when we went up to Germany), he sent us back to the depot in Brussels. So we had a lovely Christmas, but we worked night and day. After that we went backwards and forwards and we broke into Eindhoven in Holland and we were there building bridges most of the time, but there were other jobs. Then we landed as you know in Arnhem. We were going along there to relieve them, but our tanks were blown off the dykes all the time. My unit got transferred to the Reinsweldt in Germany and that wasn鈥檛 very nice, it was awful. I got leave because I was very young and I went home so I missed VE day, I was in North Wales with my mother. I thought it would be good idea to and have a drink, but coming from a Nonconformist background, no-one drank. In the end I ended up in a workingmen鈥檚 club and everyone bought me drinks, prior to that I鈥檇 never touched anything.

My brother, he was desperate to get into forces, and he was offered a commission in the REME. He was working on aircraft at Broughton. Back home, people were evacuated to our part of Wales. We weren鈥檛 that far from Liverpool, on the north west coast, there was the Dee River, the Wirral, the Mersey and we saw the bombing of Liverpool. There wasn鈥檛 much damage where we were in the country, just the noise. We lived in an ordinary semi-detached house. They were bringing these young children from Liverpool. There were three of us, two boys and my sister and three bedrooms. My mother she saw this lad coming along the road, and she went out crying and brought him in. He came from the depths of Liverpool. Danny was his name, and he had never seen jelly or anything like that. I think he had lived entirely on fish and chips. He did suffer from rickets, but children did in those days.

The war in Europe came to an end and I was getting on a plane to go to Burma, as the war was not over with Japan. I was going as a senior warrant officer at the age of 22/23 and I was off to Burma when the bombs dropped and so they changed their minds and so I dropped off in the Middle East for two years. As I was a specialist on bridges, I was flown here, there and everywhere. Although I had been desperate to join the Army, at this stage I was now desperate to get out.

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