大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by Rod Sutton on behalf of Maurice Treloar. the author.and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I signed up in 1942 and did an armament course in Hereford and then got posted to Portreath servicing echelon 136 and we served there for about four months. While there, one day a Flying Fortress came in and a NAAFI van went up to the Flying Fortress so my mate and myself went up to the NAAFI van thinking we鈥檇 beat the queue down at the echelon and when we turned the back of the echelon there was Lord Montgomery standing there with another officer, well, without saluting or recognising him in anyway we just asked for a cup of tea and stood back. Eventually a crowd got around and a lady standing up with a piece of paper in her hand wanted his autograph. She never had the courage to ask so I said I鈥檒l tear your paper in half and I鈥檒l ask him, with that she tore the paper in half and I went and asked him for his autograph. He took his horned rimmed glasses out from his pocket, put the paper on the bar and wrote B L Montgomery, General, 8th Army. So with that the service at echelon got posted into the Second Tactical Air force in preparation for the second front.

We went to Gravesend and got re-equipped with transport to make the unit mobile and we spent the summer on Romney Marshes under canvas with three squadrons of Spitfires practicing the work of temporary airfield. The June of the following year when the second front came along we got posted over into the bridge head at D+8 and we followed the army then, covering the back of the army, from the bridge head right through to Antwerp, went up to cover the Arnhem and when Arnhem fell we came back to Ugen, just outside of Iendhoven. The Germans had more or less ruined, so it was just ruined. The engineering officer said we鈥檙e here for the winter any of you boys want to make yourselves as comfortable as you like. A mate of mine was a bricklayer in civvy street so he said let鈥檚 build ourselves a house. We took our time off the squadron and built ourselves a house for three of us.

Another Sergeant got posted to our unit from Blighty and he wanted to hoist us out and take over our house but our engineering officer wouldn鈥檛 allow it. We were under a bit of pressure from then on.

On the convoy from Antwerp to Arnhem we passed all the tanks and again we saw Montgomery doing the necessary in the hedge. Just imagine the hoot that went up from the boys!

When the spring came we went straight over one of the Bailey Bridges and right into Germany and then we went up to Copenhagen for six weeks. They wanted the RAF to pick us, we got selected for that. The RAF had bombed the Nazi headquarters there.

Because I was a carpenter before I went in the RAF when I got back I got my release and that was the end of my war.

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