大象传媒

The Wartime Memories of Wilfred (Bill) Fraser

This story will be submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Jan Barrett (volunteer) on behalf of Bill Fraser and will be added to the site with his permission. Bill fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
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I was 14 when the second World War broke out and I was working at a butcher鈥檚 in Drayton. I was too young to sign up but I joined the Homeguard when I was 15. We were issued with uniforms , (mine hung on me like a sack) rifles and five rounds of ammunition. I lived in Freshwater Road, Cosham; there were about 100 houses in the road and when the sirens went I would make sure my neighbours got to the shelters. I was the oldest man there, the others were all old enough to be in the services or in the dockyards.

Once I remember, my mother came running in shouting that we were being gassed 鈥� all the windows were reflecting blue flames. There had been a lightning strike on a barrage balloon and it had fallen down and landed on our roof and the roof next door. We were rushing backwards and forwards with buckets of water from the kitchen to put the flames out.

The Council put some Anderson shelters in for us, but they were always very cold and damp. To keep warm and get a little bit of light we used to stand two terracotta pots upright, with their rims together, and a candle in the middle. The sides got hot and we could warm our hands, and get a glimmer of light coming out of the hole at the top.

Being so near to Portsmouth, we had a lot of bombing. On one raid I heard that the Carlton Picture House at Cosham had been hit. I went down to see what I could do but a big burly army sergeant told me to clear off (although it was not quite so polite the way he put it!). I think about 12 people were killed in that raid on the cinema; one of them was a family friend who was the projectionist. The bomb had a direct hit on the projection tower and the balcony.

The Home Guard were always thinking up ideas to stop the Germans if they landed. One thing was called the Bombard. It was made of tubing about 8 or 9 feet long and stood on a couple of legs. There was a charger in the bottom and it was filled with bricks, nails etc. The idea was that when you set the fuse off, it would fire at the German tanks. Well, we took it up to Fort Purbrook on Portsdown Hill to try it out. They gave a warning and set it off 鈥� all the bricks and nails sort of flopped out of the front but the Bombard itself shot back about 40 feet! Luckily no one was hurt, but we didn鈥檛 hear any more about the Bombard after that.

My Mum evacuated herself to Scotland but I stayed in Drayton with my Gran, in Leyland Road. At that time it was mainly fields around us. And once a bomber came in very low rat-tat-tat, and I quickly jumped into a shelter. It was shot down over Portsdown Hill.

When I was 18 in January 1943 I joined the Royal Navy, Fleet Arm, 848 Squadron, and trained at Melksham, which was actually an airfield base. At the base there were about 123 sailors and 2000 WAAFS, who were mainly there for driving and radio training. The camp was built on a slope with huts in rows and all the windows lined up precisely. The women were in the lower huts so, unbeknown to them, we sometimes had a bit of a peep-show when they were getting ready for bed!

After Melksham, I was at Lee-on-the 鈥擲olent for a while, and then drafted to Manston Aerodrome in Kent. This would have been in May 1944 and I was there for D-Day. Manston was an emergency landing place for bombers and we used to see Spitfires taking off like flocks of sparrows. After this I went over to Thorney Island, we traveled there on long lorries big enough to take whole aeroplanes, so we called the lorries 鈥淨ueen Mary鈥檚鈥�.

One day we were all marshaled on to trains at Fareham and woke up the next day alongside an aircraft carrier in Rosyth, Scotland, from where we sailed for the Middle East. But the ship broke down just outside Gibraltar and my squadron were flown to Alexandria where the ship eventually picked us up and we went on 鈥� destination Australia. We became known as the Forgotten Fleet (British Pacific).

On the day after VE Day a Kamikaze Pilot hit our ship, which was an aircraft carrier called 鈥淭he Formidable鈥�. I was an Electrician looking after three planes. The Kamikaze pilot landed on the deck just behind one of our planes and the young man in there was terribly burned. They took him down into the wardroom. The poor chap was bandaged up like a mummy. They took him off on a hospital ship the following day and at the time I didn鈥檛 know what had happened to him. But years later (1995) I met someone who said he had died two days later and was buried at sea.

I don鈥檛 really remember being scared during the War, we just got on with it. But I remember on moonlight nights out there in the Pacific we sometimes got a bit jittery. Once it came over the tannoy that Japanese torpedo ships were heading our way and our hellcats took off to intercept them.

Our ship headed for Sydney and from there on towards Japan 鈥� but 30 miles off we had the order to turn and head the other way. Later we learned that the atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima that day.

There were some clever inventions in the War, like the Mulberry Harbours. These were giant hollow concrete structures that were floated across the Channel to make our own ports 鈥� one for the British and one for the Americans. Once in place, Bailey bridges were erected to join them up and then we had a port from where supplies could be ferried in closer to the beaches. (One of the Mulberry Harbours now sits in Langstone Harbour: you can see it from the Ferry Inn at Hayling).

There was also a Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO) 鈥� big drums with the pipe coiled around them were floated across and uncoiled as they went.

Mainly we just got on with life, everyone pulled together, and we did our best. Nobody went around moaning.

Wilfred (Bill) Fraser
August 2005.

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