大象传媒

SERVICE FOR KING AND COUNTRY.
Following the death of my father in January 1941, and my mother in September 1941, I decided to apply to the Royal Marines, to enlist in the Corps for a period of 21 years.
After the strict medical, which was usual for a long term engagement, I was posted to the Royal Marine Training Establishment at Lympstone near Exmouth in Devon, where I began a six week initial training period. After I had been in training for a couple of weeks, the Board of the Admiralty decided there would be no more long term engagements, until after all hostilities had ceased. As a result most of the recruits then transfered to Hostilities Only engagement.
The priority for enlistment and continuation of service in the Royal Marines has always been superb fitness. Training possed me no problems. I used to run, cycle, and roller skate in competition before I enlisted. Six to ten mile runs or a 150 - 200 mile cycle ride, at a weekend was no problem. I used to ride my cycle to work 11 miles for months, making it a 22 miles round trip six days a week. So there was no problem with my fitness.
I ran in a cross-country competition at the trainig establishment, every week, and was out of the first three only once in six races. We had 35 mile route marches on a Thursday, and I found I could do the assault course so fast I was often sent round again, under observation, to make sure I completed all the obsticules on the course. In fact up till 1944 I held the fastest time for that obsticule course.
At the end of my initial training on 8th December 1941, I was transfered to the H.B.L.R.M.Division, stationed under canvas in an orchard at Emsworth in Hampshire, where we spent a severe winter of hardship in 1941-42. We were packed in 13-16 to a bell tent, we had field kitchen meals, whilst we had continual training in laying wire mesh roadways in readiness for a proposed invasion of Europe. As you will realise this training and the unloading of ships on the landing beaches would be crucial to any invasion plans, so we would train in all weathers, sometimes on land, but mainly on beaches until all our movements were automatic day or night. We were considered to be expendable material, and casualties in my action were expect -ed to be very high.
The winter of 1942-43 was spent mainly in Inverary on Loch Fyne, in Scotland. Again during the most servere weather in February and March we were under canvas, on a war footing. Cold food, no fires, with wet clothes and bedding. We were engaged in unloading landing craft, we were trainig Scot`s Bren Carriers, and tank crews in the skills of boarding and leaving landing craft, and the handling of all supplies needed in the invasion. Bulldozers were used every day to break the ice on the Loch Fyne beaches, before the landing craft could come in. The Marine Group would wade into the water up to chest high to keep the boats square onto the beach, for the landing craft coxwains were all trainees. We had to spend long times in the water every day or night depending of the times of the exercises, as we had to stop the boats from going broadside on.
The summers were spent building Nissen Huts on our campsite in Emsworth, Hampshire, because it was rumoured at head quarters, that the Army had come up with track laying tanks, and vehicles, which could do the job we had been practising, faster and with fewer men, and therefore with less casualties. We spent weeks removing bomb rubble from the Portsmouth area, to make roadways in and around the camp, and we continually painted our Nissen Huts. We also spent a month`s long exercises, acting as the`enemy`for all kinds of Army commando units, and Parras etc, and even for the Americans.
On 13th September 1943, it was decided that the R.M.Coastal Batteries in Sicily could do with some reinforcements, and I found myself on the way to Algiers, enroute for Syracuse and Augusta in Sicily, where I joined the W Battery, whose guns had been sunk prior to the invasion. Instead they had gone ashore with the commando`s and captured every coastal battery from the Italians intact. The greatest problem was interpreting the code markings on the ammunition. The only time I was ill out there, was when watching an inter-service football match.(I had already played in two games for the Marines that day, one in goal and the next match at centre-half ). I had bought about twenty tangerines off a native fruit seller, and hadn`t washed them, hence I got dysentry and had a most uncomfortable week.
Back in England in 1944, on the 16th March 1944 I became a member of a Flotila of assault landing craft, as a trainee coxwain. We trained along the coast of Wales, and it was a change to be billeted in huts. By the 3rd of June we were sufficiently skilled to join a flotila en-route for India.

NOW THE MIX UP BEGINS.....JUNE 1944.
I was posted to HMS Copra in India to train Indian troops in the art of landing craft. We arrived at the King George V Dock in Glasgow, after stops for food at Manchester, and then at Carlisle. Royal Marines those days carried all their equipment, as it was not known from one day to the next, which part of the world they would be posted to next. Arctic, Temperate, and Tropical kit were needed in individual bags, plus a hammack, and of course your weapons.
I embarked onto the boat in darkness, and was directed to a mess-deck, which would be our living quarters during the journey. My gear was stowed away, and we were having regualation cocoa, thick and sweet, when I became faint and shivery.
The mess corporal helped me to the pursers office, so we could find the whereabouts of the sick bay. I collapsed in the pursers office, but still conscious, I well remember the purser telling the sick bay orderly on the phone that he should get his `arse`down to his office, at the double. The RAF orderly took my temperature and pulse, and then for some reason took them again. He said I wasn`t to be moved till he came back, at which point I lost consciousness.
The next thing I remembered was being aware of a lot of activity around me. I was in bed and outside the ship I could hear loud explosions in our vicinity. It seems we were near Gibraltar, and a U-Boat had other idea`s about our trying to get to India. Six RAF men in Mae-West vests surrounded my bed, while a Navy Surgeon Lt Pugh, was besides me, reassuring me that everything would be O.K. Within another half hour I was unconscious again. This time I didn`t regain consciousness until we were only a few days out of Bombay. I was told that I had not been put ashore in Glasgow because of the security risk. I already knew the ships destination, and so they had thought to put me ashore in Cairo or Port Said, but as I had still been unconscious, the medical staff had decided against it.
In Bombay I spent a few days in Hospital, getting my balance and leg co-ordination before I rejoined my Flotilla, who had been posted to a hill station to acclimatize to the conditions. I was still so weak that even in the lazy life,(for us), of a hill station, I fell ill again. I spent some time in the Hospital at the hill station before being sent to Bombay again for further investigation. I found that Lt Pugh was again looking after me, in Bombay. He had looked after me on the journey, and was best placed to help in the decision making about me. After a couple of days in Bombay Hospital, I and four other Naval personnel, were sent to a small house apon a hillside, where we were nursed by the Sister`s of Mercy. We were there for six weeks while we had our convalescence.
When I eventually returned to my Flotilla, I had a lot of
training to catch up on. I had passed a Combined Operations Physical Training course in Dover early in 1944, so I was responsible for PT, weapons training, and close combat training for the Flotilla along with three other coxwains. After a time of training Indian Troops on landings I was posted to a boat that ferried mechanics and crews up and down the anchorage. I was able to relax a little from the harder training programmes. I still had to be involved in all the night exercises, and was also responsible for bringing in broken down or damaged craft for testing or repair. The job finished in Bombay and so we were posted to Cohchin, where we were to await shipment to Burma or wherever. Cohchin is a mass of channels fed by water from the swamps, and immediately my health began to deteriorate rapidly. I was in and out of Hospital so many times, that one Army Medical Corp officer actually charged me with malingering !
I had been sick even on light duties for a week, and I had been putin charge of sick parade morning and evening. At the end of that week, I was signed fit for duty, but within an hour I felt so ill, that my sergeant took me to sick bay in a vechicle commandeered from the Navy. The Medical Officer took one look, and recognised me, and made out another charge of malingering and gave it to the sergeant to give to my C.O. We went back, and the sergeant reported to the C.O. while I was ordered by the duty corporal to present myself at the C.O.`s office. As I opened the passanger door of the vechicle I collapsed in a heap at the corporals feet. Our own Medical Orderly said there was something drastically wrong, and suggested that I be transfered to Cohchin Naval Hospital.
I was now back to square one. I don`t remember much or for how long I was in Hospital, before it was decided to send me back to Bombay to face a Medical Board. I do remember the Ward Orderly of the Hospital who made us all smoke a`Woodbine` every moring to help clear our chests. The Medical Board was a chapter of errors. Most of the officers were Army Medical Corps, as indeed was the Chairman. There were about fourteen naval ratings, and one Royal Marine, me. The Officers had obviously been briefed as to the Naval Medical Grades, but not the Grades of the Royal Marines. In the RN the Medical Grades go down from F3 which was a discharge on a pension to A1, fit for duty.
In the Royal Marines the grades went from B3 to A1. Most B3 personnel would find themselves transfered to the Army or Navy, not being thought fit for the rigorous life in the Royal Marines. I along with the rest of the men at the Board were given F3 ratings (all of us not being thought very fit). All the Board Members then retired for lunch, we were sent off with a packed lunch to the NAAFI, where the Petty Officer in charge of us, bought us all a cup of tea. He told us we were all likely to be put on the next available transport back to the U.K, and most likely receive an auto- matic discharge on a pension.
I asked the Petty Officer if in my case a mistake had not been made. I said that as a Royal Marine I could not get a rating lower than B3. After much deliberation in the Officers Mess, I was summoned back to the Medical Boardroom. An Officer in dress suit and a glass in hand said they had made of a bit of a mess of my case. He wanted to know why I could only be given a B3 rating. I explained the Royal Marine rules about a B3 rating, and after a while he took the document and changed my rating from F3 to B3. After all this, I returned to the other Naval ratings, with there F3 rating, as in there opinion I was no fitter than them anyway, even though my grade had been highered.
We boarded a ship, and landed at the King George V Dock in Glasgow on the 14th August 1945, this being V.J.Day. In the morning we disembarked first being in the sick draft, and made our way to the railway station. We could get no sense out of the Railway Transport Office, so we marched onto the first train going south. We eventually arrived at Chatham Naval Base at around 8.30 that night. The guard wasn`t bothered about us, and sent the Naval ratings off to the base HQ, and sent me off to the Royal Marine Office in the centre of the Base. This office in normal times dealt with Marines under the Naval Discipline Act, providing orderlies for the Admiral, or esc- ourting Marines to and from ships, after going up in front of a Disciplinary Board. It also looked after the Royal Marine Band for the Admiral of the Nore.
On V.J. night at about 9pm the colour sergeant in charge, the gas instructor sergeant and the Band corporal, had all been celebrating for most of the day. Their rum had been liberally supplied and for the most part had been drunk neat, from around 11am onwards. All the other spare personnel had been given a days leave. The three stalwarts in the office couldn`t believe there ears or eyes, when I reported that I had just arrived back from Bombay After about ten minutes, and another tot of rum later the Band corporal, came up with the idea that I should be due some leave. He filled out a pass for one months leave, and gave me a chit to draw a months pay, and I was out of there on the Midnight train from Euston back to Glasgow. My wife was in the ATS near here home in Irvine in Ayrshire, and thats where I spent my months leave.
Returning from leave, no-one had any idea, what to do with me.
Had it not been for my signature on the leave pass, and my pay chit receipt, I think I would have put into the cells for messing them about. Having eventually convinced them as to who I was, an Officer not really knowing what to do with me, finally decided I hadn`t had all the leave I was probably entitled to. So I was off again, this time for another six weeks. On my second return to the Base Office after leave, I was intergrated in the office routine. I acted as an orderly goffer, and an odd job man. No one seemed to know where my Medical Reports were, or any other documents relating to me being invalided to the U.K. All I would get as an answer was`well your alright here, nobody bothers you here and you`ll soon be demobbed anyway`. So there I stayed till the 6th March 1946, when I was posted to the Royal Marine Barracks at Chatham, which was just half a mile up the hill.
On the 12th May 1946, I was discharged Class A release on my papers, which was another glaring mistake on my records. I pointed this out at the time, and noted that my papers also stated that I had remained with my Flotilla from the 4th June 1944 to the 5th March 1946. This was the date that the Flotilla had been returned home to be demobbed. I had actually met some of the lads on the 7th March 1946 when we had been posted to the Royal Marine Barracks. Most of them thought that I was dead, having supposedly died in Cohchin. They were both shocked and very happy to see me. I reported to the duty officer that there was a discrepancy in my records. After glancing at them he asked me what was wrong. I told him that I had been invalided back to the U.K. from Bombay in August of 1945, and my records stated that I was still at HMS Copra during this time and that I had only arrived in the U.K. in March 1946. These months after I had been invalided back to the U.K. did not even appear on the records. He said`what are you worrying about, as your going home soon anyway`. With that he dismissed me from his office, conver- sation closed. Those missing seven months on my records, cost me my war disability pension. Each time I claimed it was dismissed by the remark in my statement to the Medical Board in Bombay that I may have had Bronchitis as a chid, and it was never considered that the deterioration of my health while in service, was caused by being in India. I was superbly fit when I enlisted, and now I had cronic Bronchitis and Emphysemia when I was invalided back from Bombay.

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