大象传媒

This is an edited version of an interview by Victor Douglas Bulpitt on March 16 2004. The original recording and full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 103and 102 Copyright Basingstoke Talking History

I was born in Sherfield on Loddon, Hampshire and when I was 19 I was called up and went to the Isle of Wight to do my training with the Hampshire Regiment. I had never been out of the village before.
We had to put straw inside a palliasse for a bed and the same with pillows. We learnt drill and all that, but I could already shoot, I was a country lad. Whilst I was going to school I used to have an air gun, then a 102,410 and then a 12 bore. I was good at shooting. I love shooting. I was a marksman. In the Army I had an Enfield 303, which was very heavy.
When we had done our training we went down to Frome in Somerset and joined the llth Battalion, Hampshire Regiment and used to go out on manoeuvres. There were twenty-mile route marches but I was pretty fit at the time. We stopped at a farm one night and the farmer put some new straw in the pigsty and we slept in the pigsty! We moved on the next morning.
Then we were sent to Dover. The Germans used to shell us from the other side of the Channel. It frightened me to death because you didn鈥檛 know where the next shell was going to land. The Germans had a spotter plane up which told them where the shells were landing.
When D-Day arrived we went to Tilbury then along the Channel. The Navy put up a smokescreen but they were shelling us all the way down the Channel. We were lucky not be hit. We landed just outside Caen and were lucky there were flat beaches. The poor old yanks took a pasting. They had to go up cliffs and they said the Channel was red with blood. When we got off the barge we were up to our waist in water and we had a full pack on which was pretty heavy. Once on the beach we dug a hole and got in it.
Later we went up through France, Belgium and Holland marching most of the way. There was a lot of dust in the air. I didn鈥檛 like going over the pontoon bridges because they were all wobbly and ever so high.
There was quite a lot of fighting and we took a hell of a lot of prisoners. I was at Nijmegen and Arnhem which they called a 鈥淏ridge Too Far鈥� They were shooting the parachutists in the air, but that is war. A Panza division was already waiting for them, so somebody in intelligence slipped up. Some of my friends were killed then.
I got as far as Hamburg and was demobbed from there. I have forgotten a lot of things, it was years ago and sometimes there are things you would rather forget.

Victor returned to Sherfield on Loddon and was still living in the house he was born in when he gave the interview.

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