大象传媒

This story has been added to the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Kate Langdon on behalf of the author Tony Deller. They understand the terms and conditions of the site.

My family moved to Walton-on-Thames in 1937 having lived in St Austell from 1920-26 and Shropshire from 1926-37. At the start of WW2 my father and eldest brother were building Hawker Hurricanes inside Brooklands Car Racing Circuit. My other two brothers and I were still at school.

The war was comparatively quiet, the odd plane dropping leaflets. My mother was in the bath when the first air raid siren sounded - my dad said he'd never seen her move so quick. Everybody was busy with blackout curtains, digging holes to put Anderson shelters in and listening to the radio to see what was happening.

Early in 1940 the news wasn't good. The Germans were advancing through Western Europe like wildfire and it wasn't long before the authorities were asking any small boat owners on the Thames, or around the SE coast, to stand-by to evacuate the army from Dunkirk. Not long after that the raids on the SE corner of England started and then the night raids started on London and got worse as the year went on.

We spent every night in the shelter and had many narrow escapes. The rumour was the planes were beaten back from London by ack-ack fire and dropped their bombs anywhere to go home. We were very lucky one night; a string of bombs was dropped and our house was right in line. Luckily we were inbetween the bombs and only lost a few windows!

I didn't get much schooling in those days because we had to get there between air raid sirens. I also had a paper round to do and they were always late. One day we were running to the shelters at school because we were being machine gunned in the playground and one night the school was hit by incendiary bombs which put three classes out of action.

Early in October my dad and brother came home in a dreadful state - the factory had been heavily bombed and they were shattered. That night mum and dad and the two elder sons had a get together and dad decided to write to some friends in St Austell who he'd known in the '20s. They must have received a positive answer because instead of being in the shelter that night we were packing up all our stuff with the planes droning over. We were lucky, nothing dropped that night.

I was still in the dark about what was happening but I soon found out when we all got our bikes out 'yes, all six of us' and rode to the station. After putting our bikes in the guard's van we set off. I could have been going to Timbuctoo for all I knew. We had to change at Exeter and the Westcountry brogue amused me a bit. We arrived at St Austell in the dark and what with the blackout only dad knew where we were going - having been on the buses here in the '20s.

When we arrived at our destination, what a welcome, you would have thought we were royalty. Dear Mrs Papworth in South Street had arranged with a neighbour, Mrs Truran, to put us boys up at night. What a dear that lady was, she ended up feeding us as well. Widowed in 1938 she lived to a grand old age of 96. We lived there for about a month and then dad got us a tiny cottage at Brays Row, Mount Charles, near St Austell and then got himself a job as a long distance driver. He went to Walton to fetch the furniture, hoping the house was still there. Luckily it was and he arrived home safely.

We were a bit cramped in the cottage; four boys in one room, but it wasn't long before my eldest brother volunteered for the RAF. That made a bit more room and shortly after that my brother John volunteered and was accepted by the navy. Harry, who was the second son, and I were very much alike and didn't want to volunteer for anything. I was too young anyway.

By this time dad was back on the buses, which he'd left in 1926, and was driving workmen to the aerodromes they were building around the county. I started work in January 1941 as an apprentice in a local garage for 2/6d a week (that's twelve and a half pence in today's money). Joe Rowlands Fair was next door to the garage, all covered in with galvanize for the blackout, and unable to travel for the duration of the war. I got a job with them taking money on the dodgems - I was getting 拢3 for three nights a week.

I had several other jobs before I started driving in 1944. No lessons, no tests, 17 years old and straight onto lorries. I learnt from watching my dad over the years he had his own lorry in Shropshire.

My brother Harry was called up in 1942 and was involved in the D-Day Landings. My eldest brother came home from West Africa with the worst case of malaria you could ever see and my brother John was in the Malta Convoys running the gauntlet of German brombers. I had had the bedroom to myself since 1942. I didn't see my father for ages, he was working such long hours and I was either on the fair or in the pictures. When I got home he was in bed.

I haven't mentioned the Indian soldiers and their hundreds of mules stationed at Duporth Camp, where sadly three soldiers were killed during a storm. It was in 1942 and a tree blew down on their hut. The three soldiers are buried in Campdowns Cemetery at Charlestown. I also remember them unloading bales of hay into the old cinema in Truro Road, St Austell.

The Americans came to Duporth after the Indians had gone. They used to take their 'ducks' down to Crinnis Beach and practice landings. Their gigantic tank transporters came through Fore Street - St Austell's narrow streets were not made for them. Shopkeepers used to rush out and close the blinds when they heard them coming and St Austell was two-way traffic then. I got to know quite a few of them in the old Mount Charles chip shop; they loved to go to the Capitol Cinema, drop into The Duke of Cornwall for a pint of beer, then to 'the chippy' for supper. I've often wondered how many of them survived the D-Day Landings and the war as a whole.

I've mentioned I started driving a lorry when I was seventeen. Well, I was on hire to the brewery four days a week and I must say having lived only three years in Cornwall, having no signposts because of the threat of invasion, it was a bit of a lottery where I ended up.

I passed lots of Yankee soldiers on the Roseland Peninsula. They used to ask if I had any 'Scotch', and I had to tell them no. Each pub was rationed to one bottle a week of rum, gin, brandy and whisky. I was unloading beer at The Cornish Arms, St Merryn, when the landlord came out and said the invasion was on. That night we were glued to the radio listening for news.

I haven't mentioned my stint as a firewatcher, back in 1941-42. I was 15 then, we used to patrol around Mount Charles. It was mainly very quiet but we could see the glow in the sky as Plymouth was being blitzed. We did have the odd bomb in our area - near the Capital Cinema, the Gover Valley and I believe a family were killed at Carpalla Foxhole.

On my 18th birthday my calling up papers came through the door. A week later, after a medical at Redruth where I met Dave Crowle from St Blazey, I caught the train at St Austell, waved to my mother in the garden at Bray's Row where the railway passed the bottom of the garden, picked up Dave at Par and settled down to a 24hr trip to Glasgow. After changing at Crewe we had to stand all the rest of the way. Poor Dave, I don't think he'd ever been out of the county. He couldn't get over the size of the mountains or the cold.

We had six weeks in Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. The change in life was incredible - marching, drilling with a rifle, the discipline was hard to get used to, but get used to it you did. Anything you did wrong the punishment was dreadful. Our first route march was 15 miles, followed by one of 30 miles, and when you are carrying full pack and a rifle it was tough.

I went to Shrewsbury afterwards to join the KSLI, presumably because I was born in Shropshire. I never saw Dave again. I believe he joined the Middlesex Regiment. I was halfway through my training in Shrewsbury when VE Day was declared but our training went on and then we went down to Abergavenny. If we thought we'd had a hard time so far, the mountains of South Wales made sure that life got tougher.

One thing I did enjoy was the shooting and I was a very good shot, having come top of the Regiment twice. We spent several weeks at various places in Wales - Llandilo, Llandovery. We started hearing rumours about the invasion of Japan, that's why we'd been training in landing craft. Anyway, we found ourselves in London, we thought to await orders to go to a troopship at Southampton. But all of a sudden news came through that the Yanks had dropped one bomb and destroyed a whole city and the Japs had surrendered.

I didn't know what was going to happen. We had a few weeks in London and then lo and behold we were given fourteen days embarkation leave, so I saw my mother again. She had news that my eldest brother had married a WAAF, John the sailor had married a Wren and Harry had survived the advance into Germany and was fit and well.

I must mention my mother, who had been such a brick, having four sons in uniform and managing to feed us early in the war with the rations we had and surviving that upheaval of the move to Cornwall. I must say I don't think to this day that the school I was at knew what happened to me; I was 13 years and 10 months old when we left. I often wonder if dad told his employers that he was going or even my three brothers, of whom two hadn't been working long. I left without any school reports or testimonials.

Anyway, to get back to my Army Service. I reported to London after my leave and within two weeks we were flying to Cairo in the bomb bays of a Liberator Bomber. They just took the bombs out and put seats in for us. I just hoped the lever for releasing bombs was locked. When we landed in Tripoli the heat was terrific. After refuelling we flew on to Cairo, then we made our way out to Tel-el-Kabeer, an outpost in the desert. This is where I started my army driving career, I volunteered and my first job was to drive an officer into Cairo - on the wrong side of the road. That was an education I shan't forget.

After about a month in the desert we boarded a train at Cairo and went all the way to Jerusalem where we joined the 2nd Battalion KSLI. After 9 months in the Holy City, dodging terrorist bullets, a visit to Bethlehem Christmas Eve 1945, swimming in the Dead Sea and digging 2ft of snow from around the tent (I didn't know Jerusalem was 14,000 ft above sea level) we packed our kit and started the long drive to Suez where we camped alongside the canal at Port Tewfik.

After a month's rest and re-fit some of us had to go to Cairo and board a Lancaster and fly to Cyprus. There we had to intercept ships carrying illegal immigrants trying to get into Palestine and put them into camps. Early in 1947 we were replaced by the DCLI and boarded a troopship at Port Said, landing at Liverpool during the coldest winter in living memory.

We immediately went on leave. I couldn't let mother know I was coming so I looked out as I passed the cottage hoping to see someone, but it was too dark. It was good to be home after two years abroad. I reported back to Halston Hall near Oswestry where I stayed until discharged from the Army in March 1948.

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