大象传媒

Dad鈥檚 war started on the day when war was declared. He and his friend 鈥楤enjie鈥� Penberthy had been due to join a private yacht in Plymouth as crew for the winter season in the Mediterranean. They had tickets supplied by the owner of the yacht for the journey from St.Ives to Plymouth; instead they ended up in the recruiting office in Redruth. A local man told them as they were walking to the rail station that war had been declared and they decided there and then to volunteer. His war started in a West Country training camp learning all about field guns in the Royal artillery.
He never talked much about the things he and the others went through, but occasional snippets of recollections came through, like when some old friends came to call when I was about 9 or 10 and much to his embarrassment Mother was told that he as a lance corporal was in charge of an anti aircraft squad, on top of Woolworth鈥檚 with machine guns in Southampton! The next thing we heard was he was in the invasion of Iceland and the unit he was with set up heavy shore batteries in case of an attempt by the enemy to invade that country. Iceland was important to the convoy routes and a German occupied Iceland would have been deadly for the ships.
He was sent back to the UK because of the Blitz, and was stationed at Plymouth and fought all through that cities destruction by the Luftwaffe. One day after serving the guns all night his unit was sent into the city to help with the clear up and he found himself picking up bodies after the sailors home 鈥� Aggie Weston鈥檚鈥� had received a direct hit. He did talk about that, I guess them being sailors was close to home. He vividly remembered bodies and bits of bodies all over the place.
The next thing I can remember being told about him was the D day thing, when he (now a sergeant) and his crew were manning a 75mm gun in an anti tank role, and they had orders to protect a crossroads, I don鈥檛 know where.
A German tank took them on and told me the gunner must have been too excited because he fired short and the shell hit the road some yards in front of their position and screamed overhead, that was his words not mine. 鈥淭hat shell screamed like a devil boy鈥� were his exact words.
Their gun fired and hit the tank and set it on fire and they shot the men trying to get out of the tank. I was excited by this tale of course, being a young boy and at that time so close to the war ending and was starry eyed at what he was saying, but his next words brought me down to earth.
鈥淲e shot them boy because they was men, and they were burning child, all on fire they was and screaming. So we shot them with the rifles, they had no hope see?鈥�

He finished the war in Germany, but never told us a lot more. All his medals were stolen some 20 years back now from my sister鈥檚 house in St.Ives.
He fought, he served and he came home and that bit of it all he was grateful for.

CLIES STEVENS,
IN FOND MEMORY OF SEARGENT ROBERT WORTH STEVENS, R.A.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.