大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jenny Zmroczek of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Reg Plumb and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I married Joan, my ambulance driver wife, in June 1942 and then I went off to OCTU where I spent six busy months coming out as a Second Lieutenant in January 1943. I was quite confident that I could do better at this than I had done as acting chief clerk for G Branch in Oxford prior to June 1942. I thought if I volunteered for the Royal Artillery, it would be a life I could learn to live with. I had first volunteered for the Indian army thinking that I would love to go to India, but at interview they had asked me what was wrong with the British army and I鈥檇 had to say 鈥淣othing Sir鈥�. So I ended up with the British Army as a 2nd Lieutenant.

I spent several months with the 84th LAA Regiment at Stanmore. Things went rather well and I was picked with my troop of about sixty men to move to St Margaret鈥檚 Bay near Dover in March 1943, where I found myself looking after the two cross channel 15鈥� railway guns, known as Winnie and Pooh. The Germans used to try and bring ships into Calais Harbour and we had to try and stop them. The guns could shoot right across the 20 mile channel. I was told one day that the Commander in Chief was coming to visit. When he arrived he tried out the gun and was delighted with it. At the end of the visit the Sergeant and I both got a Commendation.

In May I was posted to Folkestone with my troops. After moving there I had a bit of leave and when I came back there was quite a to-do on 25th May as 6 German planes tried to bomb Folkestone. One of my guns shot down a FW190 while the RAF downed the other five. The detachment who shot the plane down were given 拢5 by the Battery Commander!

From Folkestone we went on exercise, and I was carting the troop all round the south-west of England. I was then promoted to Battery Lieutenant, based at BHQ until October 1943 when I joined 127LAA Regiment at Leeds. There was always something to do there 鈥� lots of dances and hotels. I went to Scunthorpe and then was posted on a Regimental convoy ending up at Hull. I was moved from there, with my troop, to Spurn Point, which was a military community all on its own. It was a lovely little community.

In the January I was called to a conference where I was told we were going to a practice camp. After that we went down to Clacton and apparently we did extremely well there because the next thing we heard was that we had been picked to man the guns on Mulberry Harbour. (See my separate entry to People鈥檚 War site 鈥� 鈥淢emories of Mulberry Harbour鈥�).

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