大象传媒

Memories of Captain Harry Rawkins Part One 鈥� 70th Battalion Beds. & Herts. Regiment in the Shetlands

Part One of an oral history interview with Mr. Harry Rawkins conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

鈥淚 was born in a place called Dagnall which is in Buckinghamshire in January 1913. Well in 1917 I lost my father and my mother tried to carry on the work that he was doing. He was something to do with a brewery. I鈥檓 not sure I suppose you鈥檇 call it a Commercial and Housing Manager sort of job. When my father died my mother tried to carry on but it was impossible with three small children. So my two sisters were sent to various relatives and I being the only boy and the youngest - and I鈥檓 told that I was very similar to my father - mother decided that she would look after me.

We lived in Renhold and I attended Bedford Modern School. Sometimes I used to cycle and sometimes I went in my step-father, mother re-married after father鈥檚 death and sometimes my step-father took me in his motor cycle and side car. He had a very, very powerful Indian motor cycle, long before your days, my dear.

Well I couldn鈥檛 make up my mind what I wanted to do when I left school in 1929. I thought that I would try something in the brewery line so I went to work for Charles Wells as it was in those days. But that didn鈥檛 last very long as I found that I had to get up very early and it didn鈥檛 suit me. I had to cycle in from Renhold in the small hours of the morning. After a time a local insurance man from Park Road North in Bedford by the name of Mr. Hyde, he came and spoke to mother and said, 鈥榃hy don鈥檛 you let your son do something in the insurance line?鈥� So I was apprenticed to the Prudential Insurance Company where I served three years as an apprentice and then I was made, I suppose you鈥檇 call it, an apprentice agent.

I worked with them for some several years and then of course along came the War and I was called into the Forces. But having served in the O.T.C. at the Modern School I was placed in what they called a P.O. Squad, which was a Potential Officers鈥� Squad. So very early on I was rather earmarked for, I suppose for future promotion, I hoped. I eventually went to the 163 O.C.T.U. It probably doesn鈥檛 mean much to you but it was an Officer Cadet Training Unit. We started off in the South of England but the raids began to get too bad so we were moved to Pwllheli. They moved the O.C.T.U to there where I did my training. I then was eventually Commissioned, a brand new Second Lieutenant and I came back to Nook Camp in Kempston. I鈥檓 sure it doesn鈥檛 exist now but it was there that I started off my Army Career. I was Commissioned in 1941. Eventually I was posted to the 70th Battalion of the Bedfordshire and the Hertfordshire Regiment that was commanded by a gentleman by the name of Colonel Nicholas who was a very fine sportsman and he gathered around him all the people who were sportsmen.

By that time I had been chosen to play Rugby for Bedford. I was Captain of the Athletic, you know the Bedford Athletic Rugby Club? Well I was Captain of that Club for about three years. And then I decided that I would come for the big time and a gentleman by the name, well I say gentleman, a boy, by the name of Jack Rogers of Great Barford, he sort of held my hand. I turned out for Bedford and I well remember the very first match was against the Metropolitan Police which was a pretty good start to my rugby career because the Metropolitan Police were no angels and certainly not on the rugby field.

Colonel Nicholas was himself an Olympic athlete. He was an extremely fine sportsman in every respects, hockey, cricket, rugby, athletics and he gathered around him all the sportsmen that he could find. And I happened to be one of them. Amongst the other people who were in the Battalion were Stanley Blinko, whose father was the RSM at Bedford School and this particular friend of mine Duncan Brown from Cardiff, he was the stand in for Vivian Jenkins, the great Welsh and Lions full back. Duncan and I set up a very great friendship.

After a time I was posted to Bury St.Edmunds and we were then formed into an Independent Brigade which was sent off to the Shetlands. Because the War Office - they decided that the distance from Scandinavia to the Shetlands was very much shorter than from England to the Shetlands and they were afraid that probably the Germans would make a base in the Shetlands so hence the Independent Brigade was sent there. I spent oh, I should think about three years in the Shetlands which I can assure you (have you ever been?) was pretty grim. Oh, it鈥檚 a barren place because of the wind and as you probably know there is about three hours daylight in the winter and three hours of night in the summer.

Well having been in the Shetlands for a time we were told we were going to move. When we moved we moved from the Shetlands to the Orkneys! Which was a bit of a sort of - well it was no change! I don鈥檛 know what the Hindustani was but it was something like Operation Woppersgee which means 鈥榬eturn鈥�. I鈥檓 not a Hindustani speaker. We came back and we were in the Orkneys and Scapa Flow and all around there.

We were occupying the Shetlands and the Orkneys so that the Germans couldn鈥檛 come over from Scandinavia and make a base there because as you can appreciate a base in the Shetlands would have been a great advantage to the Germans. This is why we as an Independent Brigade went there but it was a pretty grim station. I got no home leave at all. The only occasion that I got away from there was - being a very enthusiastic sportsman I developed some terrible chest pains, and as the medical services in the Shetlands was a little bit limited they decided to send me down to Edinburgh to see what was wrong with me. A very amusing incident, they sent a nurse to accompany me, she was supposed to be looking after me but the poor girl got so sea sick that in the end I was looking after her! Because I was a fairly seasoned sort of traveller. Anyhow they found there was nothing wrong with me and so I was sent back to the Shetlands.

I won鈥檛 go into the formation of the Army but I had what was known as the 鈥楥arrier Platoon鈥� which was a part of the Army in those days. These little armoured vehicles, they were Bren gun carriers, that鈥檚 the sort of thing that were used in the Shetlands but they were not very convenient because they invariably got bogged down in the peat bogs - which the Shetlands is famous for. The Head Quarters, of which I was the Head Quarters Commander, a Platoon Commander only, I was a very junior officer and we trained up there. We had to do a certain amount of training. But invariably the carriers got bogged down in the peat because they run on tracks, they are not wheeled vehicles.

But it was very grim. The difficulty was keeping the troops amused. We had ENSA there and we had some of the nurses up from the local hospital if we had any sort of a dance and things like that but it was one hell of a job keeping the troops happy under those conditions. We lived in a Nissen hut that was heated by a central stove in the middle with the chimney going out through the roof and it was our only form of heating. We had an Officer鈥檚 Mess in Lerwick itself which is the capital of the Shetlands. Lerwick was then the Battalion Head Quarters and we were Commanded by a chap called 鈥楽queaker鈥� Thompson and I think Freddy Weld was the Second in Command. I can remember these odd names but they may not be terribly accurate.鈥�

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