大象传媒

DISPATCH RIDER, D-DAY AND AFTER

ERNEST BROWN

Firewatch, Dispatch Rider, D-Day and on

This is an edited version of an interview by Sylvia Burrows on 11th May 1004. The original recording and a full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 115, 116 and 117. 漏 Basingstoke Talking History.

Background.
I was born in Main Street Catliffe, 2nd May 1924 and from there we moved, still in the village to Frederick Street. My parents were Frederick and Annie Brown. I was one of four, being the middle son of three brothers, Freddie the oldest, myself Ernie and the youngest boy was Cyril. We also had a sister Valerie.

My father worked down the mines at that time and times was really hard, if there was no work they used to send him home, it could be for two, three or five days. She had a hard life bringing us up, which you don鈥檛 realise until you鈥檙e really getting on in life. My mother was a very disciplined woman, although she was fair.

I was the sick one of the family. I was always going down with some problem of sickness, which did lose me a lot of time at school. I liked school but I lost out a lot and of course then my Mother was trying to educate me at home. I went to Catliffe Council Primary School, not a very big one and from there they progressed to Grammar School at Swallow Nest, in the next village, but it was a job for parents to send them to Grammar School, you had uniform and books to buy and people couldn鈥檛 afford that. So consequently in our family, it was only my youngest brother Cyril that got that far.

I liked school, my main subject that developed was art and geography. When I was about 10 or 12, competitions used to come round from firms. One came round from Hovis about drawing a loaf of bread on a breadboard with a knife for publicity. Because I was good, school entered my work, it took a bit of time but it won equipment for the school.

Mother used to push me on the things I was loosing out on, arithmetic and things of that nature. I used to have to go to a Friendly Society, you could pay a nominal fee of I think about tu鈥檖ence a week, so I used to have to go there at night-time. It were like a night school but in them day鈥檚 it wasn鈥檛 under the education system. Labour in actual fact was doing the promoting.

We left school at 14 years of age and I wanted to go into the motor trade. When my mother went down to see if she could get me into the motor trade they wanted 拢50 apprenticeship money. You bought your apprenticeship. And of course, times being hard as they were, she couldn鈥檛 afford that so I had to go into the Steel Works for about three or four months to earn that money and then I started in the garage in Rotherham, the Ford Motor Company. I earned about 拢1, 拢1.20 something of that nature and I had to give it to Mother. She doled out top-pocket money as and when you required it but she thought I鈥檇 lost out on education due to illness so she said I had to go to the evening classes at the Technical School. That had to be paid for and I used to go four nights a week to that appertaining to the motor trade.

Firewatch
The war started in 1939 and another mechanic, Alan Holmes, and I had to do Fire Watch and that was voluntary. We had to go in at night times and sleep at the firm in case they came over with raids, which they did do, and dropped incendiary bombs. So we had to do our part in looking after the firm and of course by that time we was also tutoring people that was brought into the motor trade, taxi driving and things of that nature which was a lot older than us and teaching them how to be mechanics. That was a sore point with Mr green the manager, but eventually we, Mr Holmes and I was both conscripted into the Army.

My Mother was very annoyed because the eldest son was already being called up into the Navy, it looked like she was going to loose another one to the Forces. At this point she was a Councillor and sat on Catliffe council.

Bevin Boy
My youngest brother went as a Bevin Boy, that was down the mines. The manager at Teeton Colliery lived next door to us so he said to my Mother, because he was a very clever lad, I鈥檒l push him and he鈥檒l go on surveying so he went as a surveyor for tutoring.

Basic Training
Because I was son advanced at technical School, Mr Bond, who was our teacher put me sown for an entrance exam for Polytechnic but on the day I should have gone I was conscripted in and had to report to Blackpool. Before that incidentally, I did go up to Sheffield, I went to enrol at Sheffield drill hall, there were a lot of people there and fifty percent of them stood to one side and I was going through, passing the table, they check you鈥檙e this and they check you鈥檙e that and so on and I was told the others were rejects. And of course in talking to them I learnt that a lot of them suffered from TB. That鈥檚 the first time I came up against the position of how bad and how sick in actual fact the nation were. I was fine I was passed A1.

Then next thing is that I was sent to Lytham St Anne鈥檚 for my first six weeks training. During that basic training they did trade tests to see what you were capable of doing and what they was going to send you to do. I passed with flying colours and they put me in the REME, the Royal electrical Mechanical Engineers.

When I finished my training I was sent to Croydon to work on diesel and things of that nature and this was to get your ticket as a tradesman, craftsman in the Army. After I got this I was designated to a garage in Catford in London. This was repairing military vehicles and from there I was transferred up to Stirling, that was a big, big camp, a REME camp in fact, where they did all the vehicles, tanks of any description. During the days that we were there they were posting people out to abroad, they was going to Africa, they was going all over the place and this old soldier says to me 鈥漌hatever you do, you shouldn鈥檛 volunteer in the Army, don鈥檛 try to go to Africa, don鈥檛 try to go abroad鈥�. So I said, 鈥淲ell how the hell do you get out of that?鈥� He said, 鈥淲ell what you want is to volunteer for something that鈥檚 hard鈥�. So I volunteered to go on a DR Course, a Dispatch Rider and went to Bulford barracks in Edinburgh to learn. Eventually my number came up and I was to report to Withernsea in Yorkshire to the 75th Anti tank regiment and from there we got the position to move down South in convoy. The whole 11th Armoured Division coming from the Yorkshire area down to Aldershot.

D-Day.
We were to move to Tilbury Docks but the weather was so bad and all the ships wasn鈥檛 in that they anticipated so we had to mull around the Docks although we were not to leave them. Anyway the next thing is that they came in and of course it was an American boat, which was a tank landing craft. A largish vessel with big doors at the front and of course we had been drilled during this time what your duties were specifically if we was going on that boat. We went down the Channel and it was during the evening time, we passed the Needles, the sea was pretty rough and it looked very much as if we were on our way and of course then they said, 鈥淭his looks as we鈥檙e going down to Gibraltar鈥�. All sorts of rumours that was floating round, but the sea was pretty rough and the next thing they said that because it was so rough that we was turning round and that we鈥檇 probably be pulling back into Plymouth, anyway as we came back up the Channel, it was a sight to be seen, was the amount of boats that was on and a long line of battle ships and of course there was all this gunfire going off, there was gliders and planes, the sky was black. It was then early morning and of course we stood off a bit watching all that was going off and then it was really afternoon time, in fact more or less late evening before they turned in and we started heading for France. We knew what was on then, this was D-Day.

We were making into the shore, they opened the big doors at the front but the ramps hadn鈥檛 gone down, the next thing we came to a shudder and a big fountain of water came up in the bottom of the boat and they said we had hit a spike. They estimated that there were about eight feet of water so they asked us to move up onto the top deck where the ammunition trucks were and wait until it settled on the bottom and wait until the tide went out so that we could get them off. The tide did go out eventually and got down to about three feet of water and we had to make through white tapes up onto the shore.

There was so much armour and so much people, so much racket going off on the beach that we moved just off the beach onto the sand dunes and the REME personnel for hours, we had to start dismantling all the snorkels, the waterproof exhaust systems that goes up at the back, remove all the waterproofing from the lorries, so that it was full doings. And while this was going off mortars was coming over, he couldn鈥檛 help but hit, hit something when it came over because there was that many people and that much armour and of course when I saw it, we weren鈥檛 used to that, at firing back and I must admit that I got down At the side of the tank and, and wept. And some of the old people that came up and said 鈥淵ou鈥檒l get used to it, you鈥檒l get battle hardened in a bit so just get up and ignore it.鈥� And they got all these stories about that you didn鈥檛 see the ones that hit, you didn鈥檛 know anything about the ones that hit. All of them that you could hear whining, they were going over the top, so consequently you just lived with it.

We had our turn to move up and we moved into the hills, which was overlooking Caen, into the cornfields. We weren鈥檛 in action there at all we was just simply building up the armour. We saw the Typhoons coming in and the Jerries were pretty accurate with the shells and the mortars that were coming over, the gunnery officer thought there was somebody observing from the tower of the church in Caen so he called in the Typhoons to blow the top off. We saw the Typhoons coming in and rocket them, we had a grandstand view of what was taking place.

We were told we would go round Caen, they said that the Yanks were having trouble coming down the peninsula so we鈥檒l be pushing on to Bayeux. Monty believed in giving information, making sure the troops knew what they was doing, what they got to do, and what was expected of them, so you鈥檙e kept fully informed, you didn鈥檛 go blindly. He made sure, incidentally, that you was fed, so that everyone had rations, they called up the people with workshops for showers, change of clothing if necessary, change of bedding.

It was a fast war this, it was not going to be a trench war, it was going to be a fast war and of course that鈥檚 what the tanks were built for. But it still took three Sherman tanks to knock one Tiger out. They quickly learned when they was firing at the tanks the shells were ricocheting off and they wondered why this was and when we got to look at one that had been hit we found out that they were covered with concrete, half an inch of concrete. So the concrete exploded before it hit the metal and consequently it took three Sherman tanks to knock one out.

You got to sleep when you could and there were many times that you went 24 hours and you didn鈥檛 get any sleep at all. On our way down to Bayeux they were sending what we called 鈥渕oaning minnies鈥�, they were shells that was coming over and what you did is that you got down on the ground. We was slow moving we had a three ton truck that had a workshop bench and equipment in it and it had the camouflage nets in there and two of our personnel decided that they would try and get some kip on the three-toner in the back while we were waiting to move ahead, and me and the other fella said 鈥渨ell we鈥檙e gonna get down in the gutter鈥�, in the ditches in other words and the next thing a shell come over and hit the three-ton wagon and of course it were between the back and the cabin that we carried an oxygen and an acetylene bottle for welding, it blew that up and blew the truck up and of course that was the first two personnel that we lost.

Monty believed that you had two weeks in action, then you stopped static and then the next division took over from you to move up and that gave you the opportunity of two or three days of regrouping and that is replacing men, replacing armour, while you was waiting you had the NAFFI come. You had showers, you had in other words a holiday. And one thing that I really did admire at that time was the Salvation Army in the front line. They was following up all the time they was there with cups of tea, and a scone, or a bun, or anything like that, or if you wanted a cigarette, anyway that we can help and so on, it was a backup, a good service, that鈥檚 a charitable organisation and I take my hat off because they was always there.

The Push On
We didn鈥檛 relieve Paris, we went past Paris because they was trying to find out where the V2s was also the doodlebugs. So the 11th Armoured was sent back up, moved up the Division to try to find these things but of course they was mobiles. So the next thing is that we went round north of Paris with the Canadians in actual fact and then we made our way towards the Belgian border. By this time we鈥檇 got sufficiently established that people could start going on leave. We went out to enjoy, if you like, two or three days in Brussels, you know, liberating. When you got into Brussels the welcome was magnificent, magnificent. And of course you learnt a lot then, I mean, there were people with shaven heads, you鈥檇 get women and things of this nature and we learnt what that was about is that they鈥檇 fraternised with a German and they were taking their punishment out on them. But it was magnificent the reception especially in Brussels, really overwhelming. And with that it revitalises you and by that time you are really battle hardened.

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