´óÏó´«Ã½

I was fifteen when the war started and living in Weymouth, Dorset.

We used to watch these dog fights, that was the bombers going over, of course we were on what they used to call first aid repairs, repairing the houses that were bombed in different places. I was working up here at Belle Vue road and the siren went so I thought I would wander off up to the Nothe and looking down I saw this Messerschmitt 110, flying round, I could see the pilots, it was the only one I ever saw, it was the twin engined one with 2 crew.

My brother used to keep 400 pigs down at Wyke for the war effort, we were down there feeding them one Sunday morning we’d just finished when I said to my brother look at them lot, it was the Germans, there were some bombs went down by what looked like down by Brewers Quay. It was about 10.30 — 11.00 in the morning. They were on there way back home to France and as we watched we saw a little Spitfire going up, I thought he must be firing at them and sure enough we saw it tip over and the crew baled out, down in the sea probably.

I was going down the road with my brother one day at Wyke, we were on the building site and we were going down to the builders yard and this was 8.40 in the morning and I heard a plane I looked up and said to my brother ‘hey look’ pointing at Wyke Church I said ‘there’s a German bomber up there most likely a decoy J.U. 88’. All of a sudden we heard the roar of planes and that was when they dive bombed the Foylebank in Portland harbour. It was a quite nice morning and that was facing East so they came down with the sun behind them. First thing we knew was when they dived down then as they came up it was the rear gunners turn to shoot up everything. That was it when we were near there. That was the dive bombers Junkers 87 I think they were.

Going down that same road at Wyke, I was going back to the yard cause I just been home to dinner, must have been about 12.50. I was walking down when at eye level facing Weymouth bay I saw this German plane going across, I recognised it as a Heinkel, it was over in a matter of seconds but I saw a bomb leaving the plane, he was probably over the brow of Wyke road and could see all Weymouth. What was unique was that my wife who was only 12 at the time and she lived up the other side of Weymouth and from their house they could see all the docks and she saw that plane and she saw the bomb come down. That was the Edward Street raid when they bombed the bus places.

I was only 16 at the time but I was in the rescue squad, if a bomb hit a house they got the builders out because they had more knowledge of the building so it would be easier for them to know what to take away to get the people out. There was the one raid when they dropped the bombs on the houses at Greenhill , the last ones on the right before you get to the children’s bathing pool, those three. There were soldiers billeted there at the time and we had to get some people out of there.
Now some bombs dropped at Shrubbery Lane, Wyke, we went out, that was about 1 am, and there was a public house there got bombed. The landlord was in the rubble and somehow he had a whole stair carpet wrapped round his legs, my brother who was in charged said for me to cut the carpet off him, you could not unwind it, it was all tangled up with the rubbish we had to cut it off a bit at a time until we got him out.
The next job was four people mother, father, son and daughter, they had gone into the air raid shelter. When the bomb dropped its queer how things happen, the floor split lifted up and there feet dropped into the crack it went back a bit and trapped them, we had to chop the concrete up to get them out, it took about two hours. The next morning we went up to have a look at the shelter, it had collapsed, it could have gone while we were working in it.

My brother was in charge and we had the old builders lorry, my brother had to go somewhere, he said to me take the men up to Greenhill, he taught me to drive when I was 14, I was 16 I got into the lorry, no lights or nothing. I drove all through Weymouth along the front, when we got there, there was a policeman who just waved me on, never asked me anything, but there you are that’s war for you!

When we were working in the carpenters shop and it was dinner time, my mate wanted a smoke so we went out the end of the shop. In front of us was Whiteheads torpedo shop about 300 to 400 yds, I was just looking out the door I said to my mate ‘look at him’ it was a German bomber crossing from right to left towards Portland, all this happens in seconds, as he crossed over just before he got to use he opened up with his mid gunner, some of the bullets went through the roof of the shop, we dived behind a stack of timber. When he’d gone I went out in the road you could see the bullets in the hot tarmac. What I didn’t know at that time, I found out afterwards, the young lad had gone in to the post office, in Portland Road about 800 yds away, to get some cigarettes when he came out he was in the middle of the road when the machine gun fired, it killed him.

When they used to go over at night time to bomb up country my brother and I went out into the garden, you could nearly set your watch by the bombers going over, they used Portland for a landmark and of course we used to see some of ours go over as well.

I don’t know if many people know about this in Weymouth, I’ve never seen it in any books about the war. Its funny really but that plane that went and bombed Edwards St and the ones that bombed the Foylebank I saw from almost the same spot. I was stood there one day with my carpenter mate, we were just finishing off a few things on a bungalow he was stood down by the end of the bungalow and I was by the roadside fixing a gate and it was nearly lunch time about 10 o-clock from there you could look right across and see the area over Weymouth Bay, it was a lovely sunny morning about the end of May, I said to my mate ‘come here quick — have a look at this. It’s a German plane making smoke’. He had gone along level some way then turned right angles up over the centre of the bay, like you see the Red Arrows do, he was making a swastika in the sky he was finishing the long down stroke when I said to my mate look there’s a little plane over there coming, it was a Spitfire, the German must have seen him at the same time, he made off and came over between us and Wyke Church and the spitfire was behind him. I said to my mate give him 3 minutes he’s going to take him out over the sea. Back came the Spitfire, it was a lovely sight to see this because he did a victory roll right across Weymouth and us, to the Bay. (A victory roll is their way to tell us that they had shot him down.)

Then as the war went on I got called up at Christmas 1942. I did 6 weeks training then I specialised in mortars which was another 6 months training, then we were sent to our battalions. We had a little talk one morning from the battalion we joined and he said your going to be train for an interesting thing that’s going to go on later on, they don’t tell you exactly what but that was the D Day landing. After we had been training 6 months we had some other troops join us, I said to a mate of mine ‘those troops are graded, their B not A1, that means we’re not an A1 unit any more and I don’t think we’re going to go as told.’ And that’s what happened. We were sent on various things like we were sent to Folkestone on Coastal Patrol. Then we went to Hore Belisha barracks, that was a modern barracks in Dover. They would call the Company in every week or so and pick 20 — 30 names to replenish units that lost troops as they were fighting. Well I went in there 12 times but never got called, some of the mates of mine were called and were dead within a few weeks.
A few months before D-Day we had to go to Great Yarmouth, we had to build dummy landing craft, 210 feet long made from scaffolding tubes and canvas. We had to go down through the day and do all the scaffolding up and all that was put on was 8 40 gallon drums, we’d finish about 2 o-clock in the afternoon then we’d go on back to our billets and then about 9 o-clock we’d go back down to put the canvas on, that was so the Germans wouldn’t be able to see what was going on, it took about 4 hours to tie all the canvass onto the frame. In the morning we had to go down to give them a hand, the wrens used to come down with a boat with the Naval officers and that and they’d take them down the Norfolk Broads and tied them up, we made about 16, they reckoned that kept 6 Divisions of German troops in Belgium. After we made ‘em we had to man ‘em, three or four of us on each one so that if the Germans came over they would see somebody on board, but we never did see anybody. If they did come over and machine gunned us there was nowhere go just the water! We were still there on D—Day , we stayed there at Great Yarmouth for a while then we move to Houghton, now that’s right across from one side of England to the other, all coastal places I went to. I said to my mate ‘that’s a long way to go’, I was on the advanced party so we got on the truck and went down to Cornwall to a place called St Germains, about 3 or 4 miles from Plymouth, we did some training there for this and that. I said to one of my mates ‘you know what we’re on don’t you’, the unit I was in was the North Hants Regiment, I said ‘don’t you know were we are going?’ ‘No’ he said , I said ‘I’ll bet you a pound that we are going over to the Channel Islands’. Well 2 or 3 days later the CO called the whole battalion together and said ‘Somebody has been spreading rumours, and they might hit on the right thing’ I thought to myself, ‘I got it right’. He said ‘So stop this rumour mongering’. That’s what we trained for but with all the fortifications we wouldn’t have stood a chance, I don’t know why they wanted to invade we only had to starve them out. Anyway we had been doing that until about January 1945 when we were sent home on embarkation leave. That ends my story in this country.

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