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The following is an excerpt from the memoirs of my father, Richard Daniel Johnson:-

Whilst I was in France in the Army, we took over a 'displaced persons' camp. (Displaced persons were people who had been released from labour camps.) Going into dinner one day we saw this pup trying to get into the swill bin. I picked him up and dropped him in it. When I came back again, he was so fat he could not get out so I lifted him out. After a few days, we moved on and I decided to take the pup with us. It was a smooth coated mongrel terrier. The trouble was, now as the 'displaced persons' were all around so it was decided that 'Jock' would hold her, it was a bitch, and as the lorries started off, he would throw her to me in the lorry then get on himself. She became the unofficial regimental pet. She slept at the bottom of my bed under my jerkin. She was ideal to have on patrol at night as the 'displaced persons' would try to siphon the petrol out of the lorries lined up under the trees. She'd been 'naughty' in Brussels and she was well 'advanced' as we moved into Germany when the lorry pitched and tossed as we moved across the brick covered roads I thought we would lose the pups. She laid in the Tate's sugar box on its side for a few days. After we made camp she had her pups. I had to get up early to see to the boilers to get hot water for breakfast etc. and 'Maqui', as we called her,
(this was the name of the 'French Resistance') was in the marquee so I went and had a look at her. There was a pup lying dead outside the box. I lifted the piece of canvas and there seemed to be pups all over the place. I counted them and there were 8 and they were as pretty as a picture. 'Maqui' was a smooth coated, black and white and the father was a rough coated brown and white so the litter composed of some of two colours and others with three colours. I put a notice on the cookhouse wall announcing the number of pups, for as usual there had been a sweepstake on it. There was great disbelief so I had to make special times for the pups to be viewed. Being RMQ of course the colonel downwards had to see them. The doctor asked me what she had been fed on and I told him we had been given here dehydrated meat and to make the vitamins up there were tins on the tables containing tablets. Some of the men used to chew the meat and place a couple of tablets in it and give it to her. Alas I was injured and sent home, but I got a letter from the 'Pay Sargeant’ saying 'Jock' was looking after 'Maqui' and the pups had been found various homes.

During the war most of the park was cultivated for potatoes and vegetables. The night of the ‘Battle of Britain’, I was on home guard at the Town Hall. The young lads acting a messengers would cycle out in their tin hats, bombs or no bombs to where the incidents were, then cycle back with the information. They relished it. The Home Guard at the Town Hall were a poor lot. One rifle between three men on duty at the front gate. We never saw a cartridge let alone fire one. Our drilling was a sight for sore eyes with a broomstick for a rifle.
When I got home the following morning I found the wife and child being evacuated to Norfolk so I was on my own and if I was not on duty at the Town Hall, I would sleep in the shelter in the garden. One day a single spotter plane came over and dropped two bombs, one in the docks and one in my road. I did not know until I got home from work at dusk to find a rope across the road and all my windows blown out and I was still boarding up my windows when ‘Jerry’ made his nightly call.
The wife and daughter arrived home from Norfolk as it was quiet and the raids had ceased. Then ‘Jerry’ started again and after a few nights a land mine was dropped at the bottom of the road, the house was demolished. We were in an air raid shelter in the garden and when we got out at daybreak we had to crawl over the debris to get to the front of the house. The wife and daughter were evacuated again and I had nowhere to go so I had my meals in the coffee shops and slept in an air raid shelter near the gas works. One night there was a very bad raid on the works a bomb was dropped opposite the shelter. It blew us out of our bunks. Two men had come in during the raid and left a car outside. Then it was over we went outside. There was about a three foot high lump of clay on the top of the car, the framework was crumpled and the wheels flattened. The poor owner was nearly crying.

It was my turn to open the park, so I cycled away, but was stopped by a policeman, who said there was an unexploded bomb. I told him I had cooked half my meat ration the day before (Saturday) in park’s mess room and I wanted the other half. He said keep inside the park as the bomb was on the outside of the park on some waste ground. On the Monday morning I was told to mark the football pitch out at the bottom end of the park so a match between the fireman and the police. I had just started to mark the sidelines neat the railings when the bomb went off, I looked up and saw hundred of pieces of clay mushrooming above my head, I rushed up the park only to be met by my mates laughing at my ‘four minute mile’.

I was a bit fed up with coffee shop food etc. and sleeping in air raid shelters and it seemed if ‘Jerry’ was after me and when my ‘call up’ papers came I was a bit relieved. I enjoyed life in the army, the long marches etc. did not worry me. My first destination after training was the Orkney Islands guarding the Scarpa Flow. I like it there, the solitude appealed to me. Owing to the high winds the Nissan huts had metal straps across to hold them down. Sometimes the parades were a farce; on one occasion we were on parade on the road outside the camp and the order to ‘about turn’ was given, The front half supposedly never hear it and kept on walking. ‘Let them go said the BSM and marched us back to camp. We never saw any action, now and again a spotter plane would fly over but he would be too high to hit. Once we had a ‘trail run barrage’ when every battery on the ground and on the ships in the ‘Flow’ would open up for a few minutes. It was an awe inspiring sight. If one was on guard in the gun pits on a frosty night and saw the brilliance of myriad of stars, the ‘Northern Lights’ and a full moon, one could not deny there was a ‘God’.

We were allowed to go into Kirkwood once a fortnight and that was how I got my first ‘junkets’. I was on leave in Kirkwall and ‘orders’ were that all troops on leave in Kirkwall should wear their gas masks at 11 o’clock for half an hour, and Ginger and I got caught by the ‘Redcaps without them on and the ‘jankers’ was to whitewash the cookhouse ceiling at the weekend. Ginger and I made friends with the local farmer and would go over to his craft house. This was like a stone built bungalow with paving stones on top because of the high winds. If we were not on duty at night we would go over there. It was so cosy inside with the peat first and the oil lamps. Sometimes we would manage to smuggle a few small bottles of beer up there. They were friendly homely people. Their two daughters, both with husbands in the navy, would be out in all weathers with sacks across their shoulders and around their waists. There were no ‘plastic macs’ in those days.

We were allowed a fortnight’s leave on the island. The first one I’ll never forget. We had ‘Bubble and Squeak’ for breakfast with fatty bacon then sailed straight away. Five minutes out of port and I felt sick and went in the toilet and stayed there for the whole trip ,despite the appeals outside. I was quite willing to go down with the boat if she had gone down. On the trip back I had an apple before boarding and sat on the side of the horse boxes on the deck and did this every trip and it was OK. After six months we left the Orkneys and travelled by boat to Inverness and thence by train the Isle of Wight, two days on the train. We camped under canvas on a wooded hillside as the rain would flood the camp and there were duckboards everywhere and the men were catching colds which was unheard of the in Orkneys.

The came ‘D’ Day and we left for Arromanches. As we left the boat prisoners of war moved on to it. We moved on to Caen and it was rumoured that we would be there for three months. I was attached to RHQ and the RSM decided that as there was a lot of prepared timber about we would build a canteen under his supervision. He decided that one foot would be quite deep enough for the upright posts to go to as it would hold itself up when assembled. It was nearly finished and Ginger, the lorry driver was detailed to get some window frames and doors and turning, backed his lorry into a corner of the shed and sent the whole lot leaning over. Making out he did not know what he had done he scooted off, but by the time he got back at night we had got orders to move off at 3 a.m. next morning.

Our next stop was just outside Brussels. Our headquarters was an old chateau. The only thing of note there was the ‘honeymoon of ‘Maqui’, the regimental pet (see page 3).

Our next destination was ‘Celle’ in Germany, but we stopped on the way at ‘Belsen’ for a fortnight as the ‘displaced persons’, people released from concentration camps, were causing trouble stealing and assaulting the local people and the troops were taking control of it. The sight of some of the inmates was unbelievable, their legs looked like broomsticks sticking out of Wellington boots. The ‘displaced persons’ were stealing all forms of transport especially mopeds so extra guards were put on our transport to stop them getting our petrol. That’s when ‘Maqui’ came in handy. To have her in the early hours of the morning patrolling the lorry lines under an avenue of trees was very assuring. She never took to civilians. If one came on the camp site she would bark at them. I think she had been ill treated in the camp where we picked her up. Once we were parading in a street and a civilian came along. She went for him so much that the RSM told me to keep her tied up whilst the parade was on so I tied her to the dining room table. One day I was late for parade so I just threw the leash around the leg and she was still there when I came back so I always just threw the leash around the leg.

At last we reached ‘Celle’ and being RMQ we were billeted in half an old chateau, the other half was out of bounds to the troops. Then came the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. Two o’clock in the morning we were ordered on parade in full fighting kit and rushed by lorry miles out into the country to a crossroad and dumped off, six of us, no shelter whatsoever. If ‘Jerry’ had approached our only shelter was down a shallow ditch half filled with water. The lorry came back for us six o’clock at night and a mug of tea was never so welcome.

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