大象传媒

I was called up in 1939 august. stationed in dock lands I was there all through 1939 while the authorities were preparing gun sites - one at Marchwood and one at Beaulieu. At the beginning of 1940 we were in action against enemy air craft bombing Southampton & Portsmouth & the area around the south coast during the Battle of Britain. All the airfields and the oil refinery at Fawley. This continued throughout 1940 especially at night. We were called out all night. The reason for anti aircraft was to keep enemy aircraft at a height. This went on until beginning of 1941. After this the terratorials were reorganised and I was sent to Newcastle under Lyme on a course, and to Southampton University to train as a fitter. I got through the course & as there were no vacancies for anti aircraft personnel at the time I was transferred to the Field Artillery based at Broadstairs, Kent. The unit I joined was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940 & stationed in Yorkshire for a time & then to Martinstown in Dorset & Lytton Cheney near Burton Bradstock during the invasion scare. From Broadstairs we were transferred to West Wycombe in Kent in early 1942 in civilian billets. From there , 3 months later, we were kitted out with tropical kit and joined a train at midnight and travelled to Liverpool where we embarked on a ship called the Mexico City which went all round the Cape, the med being under German domination, up through the Red Sea to Port Tewfik near Suez. We were taken across land in cattle trucks to a transit camp at El Katatba which was close to the front. Rommel had landed in N Affrica and pushed the British forces back to Tobbruk. The seige went on there. The front line on the border of Egypt & Libya was being prepared with mock ups of military equipment - you couldn't tell the difference unless you were up close. We were brought to the front line at Bear Ridge ready for the main battle. The battle took place in early 1942, the enemy were pushed back past Tobruk which was relieved, on through Libya with more battles on the way - Mareth - took ben Gazzy and Tripoli and battled on to Tunis. Here we were joined by the American 5th Army then after a quiet spell we prepared for the invasion of Italy. We were set off after loading equipment on landing craft across Med to Italy landing at Salerno. Then the battles up through Italy into Croatia - battle of Casino, Angio, Rome and on to keep Marshall Tito quiet who wanted Trieste back from the Italians. Thats were I finished the war - in Croatia in 1945. I was demobbed in 1946.
I met my wife in 1942 at West Wycombe - she was visiting her friends aunt. we had a few months together before I had to leave. We corresponded during the war and got married in 1946. She was evacuated at the beginning of the war to Surrey but then returned home and spent the rest of the war at home in Streatham. She remembers the bombing of London, spending much time in an air raid shelter in the back garden. The outline is till there, and the concrete base remains. I had 3 brothers - Ted was in the Hampshire Regiment and was sent to France in the Expeditionary force and was evacuated at Dunkirk, then was sent to North Africa. He was with General Alexander with the 8th Army when they were pushed back to Alamein. I hadn't seen him for 2 years when we met in a gun pit!! Then we met again in Tripoli, but not again until the end of the war. Frank was in the Engineers in the Terretorials - he was on search lights at the beginning of the war & was in retrieval of the mock up bouncing Bomb before they used the actual thing for breeching the dam. He ended up in Germany.
My sister Edna was a Land army girl. My older brother George was a driver in the Tank corps - he worked on the railways in Southampton before that. I was an apprentice joiner at Southampton docks before the war.

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