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By Geoff Rogers of Isleworth

In September 1939 I was a pupil at Isleworth Town School. I was chosen for the School Football Team that year but I never got to play for my school because all the matches that season were cancelled. The authorities were afraid that if crowds of people gathered they would be at risk from enemy action.
I soon transferred to the new Senior School at Smallberry Green; I left there when I was 14 years old. I was very keen to do some war work so I joined the Civil Defence when I was 15-and—a-half, in 1943. I was six months too young to be taken on really; but they needed Messengers and they were not particular about my age. They kitted me out with a uniform and a ‘tin’ helmet and sent me to Hounslow Council Depot, where I was based in a Nissen hut, which we all slept in (fully clothed) on 2 or 3 duty-nights each week.
When there was a raid on I was usually sent to South Middlesex Hospital ARP post in Mogden Lane, Isleworth. I was there to carry messages on my bike when the phone lines went down.
One night I was carrying a message from the hospital to the Depot and I had just crossed the railway bridge in Bridge Road. I heard the whistling noise a bomb makes when it’s going to fall quite close by. There was a ditch beside the hedge on the left hand side of the road and I threw myself into it. The bomb fell on Greenham’s field not far away and I was showered with dirt and stones from the explosion. I made it back to the Depot, but my bike wheel caught a piece of Anti-Aircraft shrapnel on the road and that damaged the wheel and broke a spoke or two. Shrapnel was all over the place in those days, children used to collect pieces of it.
We were always told to get down and get flat on the ground, if you heard a bomb coming down. That was the safest thing to do. Another time I heard one I threw myself into a puddle on the road and got very wet. That was all for nothing because the bomb fell much further away than I’d expected — over towards Whitton.
I volunteered to join the Army as soon as I was 17 and they turned me down the first time because I was a year too young. I was keen to joint the Parachute Regiment and unwilling to wait until I was called up at 18 to be something else. So I tried again three or four months later and went to the Recruiting Office in Bell Road, Hounslow. They weren’t so fussy about my age the second time; but they did explain that I couldn’t go straight into the Paras; I had to join another Regiment first and then apply for a transfer later. So I picked the Royal Armoured Corps from a poster on the wall and within a fortnight I was at Bodmin Camp for my 6 weeks basic training. After that I went to Catterick in Yorkshire, where the Royal Armoured Corps had a camp, for 3 or 4 months to learn about gunnery. It was there that my chance to transfer into the Paras came through. But my Commanding Officer talked me out of the idea. He said I’d made a good start with the artillery and I could do without having to start all over again learning a different type of soldiering. I let him persuade me to stay in the Hussars as a Trooper/Gunner Op.
It was my job to load the big gun when required, to fire the heavy machine gun too and to operate the radio at other times.
I was still finishing my training when the war ended. Then I was posted to Northern Italy where the Yugoslavs and the Italians were scrapping over who would get the port of Trieste. After that, I was sent to Soltau in Germany as part of the Allied Occupation Forces and I was there until 1948 when my service ended. But I had quite a dull time of it there; I enjoyed the time I’d spent training much more because they kept us busy then.

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