大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Jack Parkinson and added to the site with his permission.

I was a Railway booking clerk based in Clitheroe when War broke out. I was only sixteen and to begin with I was in the Home Guard 鈥� the LDV 鈥� we nicknamed it Look Duck and Vanish. We had sticks and armbands 鈥� the rifles came later.

I was called up in 1942. I joined the 5th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment but took some exams and transferred into the Ordnance Corps. Eventually I was posted as a clerk to the 78th Division in North Africa. We were in a convoy of two cruisers, ten liners and two destroyers and it took us a fortnight to get over there. We went way out into the mid Atlantic and then turned for the Mediterranean. It was winter and I was sick for the whole of the two weeks. We slept in hammocks and it was very crowded below decks. At night you could hear whistles and depth charges but we weren鈥檛 attacked.

North Africa was nice but we were worried about what was going to happen next. Eventually we sailed for Italy 鈥� a fleet of landing craft and one American destroyer 鈥� we were just like a lot of ducks.

At one stage we went back to Egypt to re-equip. We went to the Pyramids 鈥� I had thought they鈥檇 be miles out in the desert but our camp was practically next door to them. An Egyptian guide took us up inside one of them.

After we arrived in Italy we travelled every second day. I saw the seamy side of life 鈥� there was a lot of poverty. Once I remember being camped on top of a bank by the road and the tanks all passed by my bivvy 鈥� they went on and on , one after the other, for about half an hour. I also watched a 1000 bomb raid on Monte Cassino. We could hear the bombs and see them dropping. Fifty planes would fly over at once and there were up to 150 in the sky at any one moment. The raid lasted for three hours. We were only two miles away. We used to play football at our camp and we found out later from German reports that they had been observing the British troops playing football!

In 1943 I was in a small village called Castel del Rio north of Rome. The Advance was on and we were near Route Six which was the main supply route for our troops on the Front Line. The village is built on the side of a cliff with a castle at the top of the street and the river at the bottom of the cliff, thousands of feet below. It was the Rear Head Quarters of the 78th British Division. It was so packed that we had to park all the trucks side by side on the village street.

We were given some leave and I took six days in Rome. When I arrived I bought a copy of The Union Jack, the Forces newspaper. In it I noticed a picture of our Division and all the trucks on the village street.

When our leave was over we went back to Castel del Rio and I remember sitting in a building which overlooked the precipice. All of a sudden there was a terrific bang. I thought, 鈥淲e鈥檙e being shelled.鈥� We rushed down to the cellar - It was actually underneath the road and above our heads all our trucks were on fire. We were ordered to make for the Castle and we all had to run up the street past the flaming trucks. For me this was the most frightening moment of the War.

When I got back to my quarters I found that the shutters were all burnt and my washing, which I had left hanging on a line in my bedroom, was completely black.! It turned out that the Germans had read the newspaper report and they were shelling us from 30 miles away. When we realized what was happening the RAF went and blew them up.

One night in Castel del Rio I remember I was on duty waiting for the arrival of some winter warfare equipment. There was a knock at the door and a voice announced 鈥淚鈥檝e come with the winter warfare equipment from the First Division.鈥� 鈥淕ood Grief,鈥� I replied because it was Archie Marsh 鈥� the postman from Clitheroe.!

After Italy I was posted to Austria for a year. We were the occupying forces and administered the area around Villach, Velden and Klagenfurt. After four years in the Forces I got home in 1946 鈥� I was glad to be home.

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