大象传媒

Jack鈥檚 War

Jack was five years old when the second world war started. He attended St Peter鈥檚 School in Burnham which used to be near the Church. He remembers the air raids and having to go into the air raid shelters. He remembers his gas mask and how you could hardly breathe when you put it on.

Jack can remember seeing the sky glowing at night from the fires when London was being bombed in 1941. He remembers a rumour that the Germans were trying to trick people by dropping 鈥渟weets鈥� that were really butterfly bombs.

During the war bread was scarce because of the shortage of flour but he remembers the baker sold lovely baked potatoes. Tea was also very scarce and there were lots of types of fruit that Jack only saw for the first time after the war ended.

Jack remembers the war ending and the celebrations at the pub with the barrel of beer 鈥� he remembers having his first drink of beer there. He was 11 years old.

When Jack was 18 he was called up for National Service and he volunteered to join the Korean War which was a war fought by the United Nations.

He had to get up at 6am and run at least a mile before breakfast. Food wasn鈥檛 rationed but it helped if you were in with the cook! He remembers when they were first issued with their uniforms 鈥� how they all looked so funny until the tailor made some alterations. The uniforms were very itchy and didn鈥檛 get washed.

Jack received parcels and letters from home but when he wrote back he wasn鈥檛 able to say much about what was happening because they didn鈥檛 know themselves. It was a very uncertain time.

It took Jack 6 weeks to sail from England to Japan on the troop ship the Empire Orwell. The Black Watch sailed out on the same ship. In Japan there were transit camps and from there you were sent to Korea. Jack joined 57 Company RASC near Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Jack was close to the Imjin river and a bridge over the river called Teal Bridge which the Americans had built for getting their supplies across.

The only time that Jack remembers being really frightened was in Korea when they were going to make a delivery to a petrol storage depot. Everyone was very nervous because the fighting hadn鈥檛 stopped and there were about two thousand 50 gallon drums of petrol in the depot. Jack remembers being told that the North Koreans and Chinese had broken through. They were issued with 5 rounds of ammunition each and told to stand to. Sometime later they were reinforced by another regiment. They were VERY pleased because they had no idea what was happening elsewhere and were very scared.

In 1953 the North and South Koreans stopped fighting and exchanged prisoners who were sent home. Some had been prisoners for nearly 2 years having gone to Korea on National Service.

Jack said the Korean War was very near to becoming World War 3. All the people who were there wished they were back home. Jack returned home just before Christmas in 1954. He sailed home on the Empire Pride which took about six weeks.

Jack鈥檚 time in the Army was an experience with some very frightening episodes but if he had his time again he would not hesitate to join up.

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