大象传媒

INVERARAY

Sometime during the spring it was wagons roll for Inveraray, one of the Army Commando鈥檚 training centres. Our first nights stop after refuelling the trucks at R.A.F. Doncaster was the racecourse, which now served as a staging post. We slept on palliasses on the grandstand terraces, needless to say we visited the pubs in the evening.
The next morning we set off up the A1, then via Scotch Corner, the A66/A6 to Hadrian鈥檚 camp near Carlisle, another staging post, and refuelled the convoy. That evening, with a friend called Dave from Edinburgh, we visited Carlisle, where we met up with two girls and accompanied them to a Cinema, walking part of the way home with them afterwards as we were all going in the same direction. We met them again on the return journey. I also met Ellen on a leave and she took me home to tea to meet her family, and we corresponded during my service overseas. Incidentally, the girl at home in Dunbar and I had parted.
Next day saw us on the A74 for Glasgow; Loch Lomond; the hilly road called 鈥楻est and be thankful鈥� with a nasty hairpin bend at the top, which caused some over heating to the engines and so past Inveraray Castle to a camp along the northern shore of Loch Fyne. Naturally, we other ranks in the convoy had no maps and as all the signposts had been removed because of the invasion scare, most of the time we had little idea of where we were whilst on route.

It was then that I had a rather frightening experience travelling in the back of one of the trucks; the mud at the side made it go out of control and down a steep bank coming to rest on its side against a tree and a telegraph pole. After I had extricated myself from the equipment, which included a trolley accumulator, rubbed my bruises, I clambered out and round the front to see what had happened to the driver and the passenger; they were sitting there quite dazed with the engine still running but otherwise unharmed. Shortly afterwards a worried man and woman in kilts appeared. This man鈥檚 main concern was the drains in his field down below in case they would get damaged during the recovery operation. The kilted pair were the Duke and Duchess of Argyll !
Our training at Inveraray consisted of field craft, cliff climbing, and practice loading our trucks onto invasion barges. We also spent a night aboard a transport ship and in the early hours of the morning were roused and made to disembark down scrambling nets into landing craft infantry, and put ashore at the head of Loch Fyne, we then marched along the road which skirts the shore for the rest of the morning, taking turns at scouting in advance on the high ground.
At the lectures on field craft, the lecturer, an army officer said: 鈥淚n conclusion; remember if you are taken prisoner; when rape is inevitable lie back and enjoy it鈥�. I don鈥檛 know how our commando status would have stood with the Germans, but I have since learned that Hitler had given orders that army commando prisoners were to be shot. On completion of the course we set off back south via Carlisle and Scotch Corner with usual stops on the way.
The next part of our itinerary was to the R.A.F. Regiment at Grantham, for another spell of training, especially dismantling, assembling and firing the Bren gun. We encountered quite a lot of bull-shit. The army sergeant taking us on parade said we looked like a lot of monkeys with our combined operations badges sewn on our sleeves at different heights, and made us move them all to standard height. A high polish was also required on our boots.
I was one of about thirty detailed for an Inlying Piquet ceremony, something the army apparently indulged in at Easter time. We had to specially blanco our webbing equipment for this parade and drill, which was accompanied by a band. Actually one felt quite proud to be well turned out and to take part and the band played some very nice music for the occasion.
It was now back to Sawbridgeworth, for a few days, before on the road again this time to West Malling, in Kent. They were flying Beaufighters to counter the German night bombing. We did not spend long there but did have our injections and vaccinations so surmised our time for action must not be far off.

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