大象传媒

38 鈥� Pip Troughton served with Jack Hall (see elsewhere) in 鈥榃aldron鈥檚 Warriors鈥�, the local Stratford volunteers:

鈥淲e had to join up and sign on at the Hippodrome in Wood Street. Did (Jack) tell you about Sir Oswald Mosley coming down through the town? We were stood outside the Hippodrome one day, and who should come down in the middle of the road but Sir Oswald Mosley and the Brown Shirts, each side of the road. I was too young then to exchange words with them, but I thought, evil lot of people. They said they are re-forming up at the cattle market before going off again 鈥� that was the place for them as well, wasn鈥檛 it? Cattle market!

Later of course we marched through the town and up to the station (to go to war).
Well I got wounded in Normandy, and when I finally recovered after going to a number of hospitals, I always remember going to a convalescent depot just outside Manchester Royal Infirmary where I鈥檇 been for a while, to the Girls鈥� School, or Girls鈥� College, at Didsbury, and I was asked if I would edit the local magazine , which I did for a while.

When I had to move on again, I went to Trentham Gardens where I sort of improved a bit more, and then from there I went down to Richmond in Surrey, and I then got temporary transfer to the Education Corps, where I was instructed to give two three-quarter hour lectures a day to people that had returned from the war because of their age, or one thing and another, and these two lectures were on the Army Bureau Current Affairs, and the British Way and Purpose, so as to rehabilitate them gradually into normal activities.

From there I was transferred to the 22 Holding Battalion because I was a qualified Instructor on all infantry weapons, and modern warfare, so that I was one of the Head Instructors, out at the site at Moreton Morrell. And we used Moreton Morrell Hall as our dining room and all that sort of thing, that鈥檚 where the agricultural place is now.
Then we moved up to, oh, I can鈥檛 remember the name, top of the road where there was a parade ground and where a lot of the Nissan huts were where people were billeted. We used to carry out arms drill there, bring 鈥榚m up to scratch and so on, and also weapon training, and from there we used to go to Walton Hall - there was a short firing range there - we used to give them firing at targets and things of that sort. And then from there we used to go out on exercises, and I do remember some of the Chindits who came back from Burma, who had not been demobbed, they were in fact brought back for retraining in modern open warfare, and so on. Another favourite place for us to attack, we would do a platoon attack from the bottom of Compton Verney Hill there, up the hillside, and our main target was the farmhouse that had the hayricks at Combrook Farm.
(It livened up the area somewhat because) we were using live ammunition of course in those days. Compton Verney House wasn鈥檛 derelict then, it was actually the preparation building for export of troops when they were getting all ready to go abroad 鈥� the Army had it.

Oh yes, we did quite a lot of jobs: one job I did was to go out clearing a range at Tettenhall the other side of Wolverhampton. I had to take 3 Polish mining detector companies, well teams, six or seven men in each one, and of course the previous lot had just left, not cleared up the unexploded bombs, 2鈥� mortars and grenades, and smoke bombs, so we cleared all that.

I was demobbed shortly after, fairly early, around the end of 鈥�46, something like that.鈥�

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