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Doreen Partridge- The disclaimer
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Doreen Partridge of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of Edmund Cross, and has been added to the site with the author鈥檚 permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Don鈥檛 look back - (Its not there any more) - Part 1
by
Edmund Cross

It was early in 1944 when down in the dockyard, things began to change. For one thing we were being given different jobs. We had been seeing strange barges, can you believe it, made from concrete of all things? They would never float, we thought, as we saw them being towed around the harbour, but we were proved wrong; they did.

There were other types of craft too. They looked like landing craft but from stem to stern were rows of what looked like stool slides, set at an acute angle. They were thick with grease, so it was pretty sure that something had to slide on them, but what?

Finally we found out. One Monday morning we were marched down to the Marshall Sault as usual, but when we were given our duties it was the same for all of us. Marching into a warehouse, we saw a huge stockpile of rockets. They were about five feet long and about a foot across. There were large tail fins on the rear. They looked formidable when stacked in their thousands.

Our task was to load them on to a low bogey and transport them two at a time, and wheel them to the first of these landing craft.

With two men to a rocket we had to hoist them to the top of a slide and carefully allow them to slide to the bottom. They were quite safe, we were told. They could only be detonated by an electrical charge. Each one was filled with high explosives.

Our group was at it for months. There didn鈥檛 seem to be anyone else with this task. At the end of each day we would be aching all over and would have loved to have laid in a nice hot bath. Alas that wasn't to be. A shower was all we were allowed. Baths were at a premium because of the need to conserve fuel.

This operation went on until the middle of May 1944,then stopped and we didn鈥檛 go down to the dockyard again for any type of work. We were in the doldrums wondering why. We did feel that it was odd, after all the work we had put in. We weren鈥檛 stupid not to realise that something very big was being prepared.

John and I had discussed this at length and came to the conclusion that whatever it was, we would not be involved with it unless we were drafted, because we were in transit waiting for a posting.

Because it is on record, I can say this with certainty that the morning of the sixth of June that year, we woks up to a violent rainstorm. The officers were rushing around and the morning muster for duty failed to be sounded. We couldn鈥檛 think what could he wrong but it wasn't long before we knew.

That morning the invasion of the continent had begun. All the months of work we hoped would pay off. The term used in the future was 鈥楧鈥� Day. D for Deliverance.

The operation was mainly army and marines with aircraft carriers and warships. In fact that day there were a total of 700 warships of all types, including 23 cruisers and 5 battleships.
There were also 2,727 merchant ships, 2,500 assault crafts and would you believe it.. 12,,000 aircraft and 3,000 servicemen. This operation was called operation Overlord.

We were hardly told anything. Our dockyard duties were suspended for about four days. We just hung around not knowing what was going to happen. Eventually the whole story came out over the wireless.
The invasion of the continent had begun.

With nothing better to do some of the higher officers thought that it might be a good idea if we experienced the gas chamber. Sounds awful, and it was.

We were taken to a remote spot in the barracks where we were told about this clever idea.
They had a room with no windows and only a dim electric light inside. It had a door at each end. It was more like a corridor than a room, it was about twenty feet long.

One by one we were sent inside to make our way to the other end as best we could, whilst experiencing the effects of poison gas. The first one I remember was tear gas. We emerged eyes streaming as we hit the fresh air again. We had to feel our way out because we had lost our vision owing to our watery eyes.

When everyone had been through, we had a lecture about poison gas in general. When we had finally recovered, we were taken back for another taste. This time we had to endure another gas. I think that it was mustard. I don鈥� t think that it was phosgene, that was deadly.

Then we were sent in with a gas mask on and told to remove it and count to ten before replacing it again. We were a very unhappy crew I can tell you. I found out much later that it was a common practice to do this exercise for every recruit in the navy.

Because of the invasion, we thought that the war would soon be over but really it was only just starting. As Churchill put it,
鈥淚t was not the end of the beginning but the beginning of the end.鈥�

Things did seem to be happening though. For a start many of the men were being sent on a week's leave. This was because they were going to be drafted somewhere when they returned. Of course they were not told where they would be going until then. The authorities didn't want us to tell our kinfolk.

I had still been having the occasional long weekend at home. The journey was free; we were given a travel warrant for the railway, but had to pay when using the underground. To get from Waterloo to Kings Cross meant a change of trains and none of us fancied paying. We soon solved the problem. As we went through the barriers passing the ticket collector, we would wave our ticket and say "Navy, travel warrant." We were never stopped. In fact, the ticket collectors who were either women or elderly men, had plenty of sympathy for the service personnel and often let them through without even a ticket.

I recall one of the journeys home on the Leeds train that someone had one of the new fangled portable wirelesses, it was really heavy. Nowadays we are back again to the heavy ghetto blasters. There had been some quite dinky ones in the interim period.

This wireless was on for the whole of the four hour journey, and one of the songs was the Andrews Sisters singing, 鈥淒rinking rum and Coca Cola鈥�. Another one was 鈥淏esame Mucho鈥�. Music often stirs the memory and whenever I hear either of those two songs I am suddenly back on that train again.

Once, all my messmates and myself were rounded up and taken to the armoury. There, we were issued with a 343 rifle apiece. We thought we were going to do a stint of drilling. After all they loved to keep us occupied.

Although we were billeted in the Convent and we still had to march to the main barracks.
With our rifles we were ordered onto open lorries. There was a convoy of them and we set off north. Later I found out that we were circling the huge harbour to the town of Gosport. This was on the opposite side of the harbour and only about half a mile across the water.

On the winding roads of those days it took some time. The distance would be about fourteen miles. We wondered why we didn't use the ferry.

Waiting for us was a sight I would not forget in a hurry. There stood a crowd of German prisoners of war.
With eight men to a lorry they were bundled on board and sat opposite each other, four on each side. There was one sailor to each lorry and I had to stand facing these pitiful men. I had my rifle, but we were not issued with any ammunition. l suppose it was just a sign of authority really.

I had plenty of time to look at them as we made our way in convoy back to Portsmouth again. They looked a sorry lot but at least the war was over for them and with luck, they would be able to return home when it was all over. They were all in their late teens or early twenties and at times, they would glance at me and give a wistful smile. I often wondered what was going through their minds as we drove along.

Ashore from QE Battleship in Trinlomalee Ceylon

More food, although it would have been mainly for a cool drink. Having said that, the word cool should be in apostrophes because there was no refrigeration available for the drinks. What was available would have been used for food. We did always seem to be hungry. Well we were growing lads weren't we?

The casual walk back to the jetty would have been about half a mile. The air was hot and the moon as bright as could be. It seemed so near in the clear sky. There was the sound of a thousand and one different noises, and yet it seemed so quiet, it was positively eerie. That smell I mentioned earlier drifted around and had it not been for the true reason that we were there, would have been positively romantic.

In the late evening the crowds of naval personnel would have started gathering at the jetty waiting for their appropriate liberty boat calling to take them back to their individual ships. The whole fleet was there which meant that there would have been hundreds of sailors waiting for a passage back. What a target, if the Japs could have got to us.
Everything was organised, even though many of the men were drunk, (on one pint of beer). I had since wondered if they had been drinking the local brew, even though we had been warned not to.

Barriers were on the jetty to enable the men to line up for individual ships.

As the various boats came alongside somebody would shout out the name of the ship they had come from, and there would be a sudden rush. Some of the ships there would have been identified by calls Sussex, KGV {King George the Fifth), Richeleu. As soon as the boat was filled, it would be away and another pull in. They would return if there was anyone adrift, as it was called.

Once aboard it would be out with the hammock and sleep. Personally I slept on a rush mat with my lifebelt blown up for a pillow. The hammock was too warm for me, and anyway it took too much effort tying it up each morning. It always had to be done in a special way. Seven turns round and had to be secure enough so that it could be thrown around when being stacked in the rack. Our blankets were always inside them.

The place where I slept was the projection room floor. It was cooler there than the mess deck. Although there was plenty of cool air blowing all the time, it still was inadequate. I preferred my own company and most of my few possessions were there. Even though I only had the rush mat between me and the steel deck. it was surprising how quickly I would fall asleep.

Pr-BR

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