大象传媒

I'm 83 years old and was born in South Bersted near Chichester, West Sussex. I joined the Home Guard when I was seventeen, did duty at night and returned to work in the morning, which was very tough. We were at Crockerhill and you could see over Tangmere Aerodrome. We were always ready for the alert; we were told that the Germans might drop parachutes. I remember planes crashing Hurricanes and Spitfires caught fire when they landed and some of the pilots were killed. When you're young you take much of it in your stride and it doesn't affect you that much.

On 16th August 1940, when the Germans raided Tangmere I was working at Elbridge Farm and was on my way back to work when I saw planes flying along the coast towards Bognor Regis. I got off my bike and stopped to watch as they went over Ford Aerodrome and back to Tangmere. The sky was partly cloudy, but I had a clear view and soon realised that the planes were Stukas. They dived down one after the other, dropping their bombs on the hangars, obliterating them. They came back again in the evening when I was standing outside my parents' home in Oving looking towards Shopwyke. A German bomber flew just above the trees towards Tangmere aerodrome. At the western end of the runway was a battery of anti-aircraft guns and they opened up on the bomber. The plane was hit right in the middle and blown to pieces. Everyone watching rushed to the scene to find the airmen hanging in pieces from the trees. It was a horrible sight. The police were soon there and we were all sent away.

I stayed in the Home Guard because I was an agricultural worker. I tried to join the army when I was nineteen and they said, 'Sorry, you can't. You're in a reserved occupation'. But I was insistent that I wanted to join up, so they sent me to Brighton for a medical. I had to wait about a month until the harvest had finished and then I was allowed to join up. I did my training with the Royal Sussex and was then transferred to the Duke of Cornwall's. The training was much harder. On one of the toughest courses we had to march with full pack and rifle up Woolacombe Hill out of the town for two miles before breakfast. There was rock climbing and training with live ammunition. While we were lying in the firing position, we were sprayed with animal blood to make it more real. It was during this training that one of our group was shot dead. It wasn't all bad though. We had first class accommodation in one of the best hotels, which was something I could never have afforded! Most of my fellow soldiers were older than me and I was desperate to be with the lads. When I asked if I could be transferred, it was agreed to send me to the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Cornwall's in Scotland. I sailed from the Scilly Isles to Dumfries and within two weeks I was on a boat to North Africa.

I don't have good memories of the trip. We had no idea where the liners were taking us. There were plenty of U-boats and we were easy targets. When liners were sunk, whole regiments could be lost. Today, I can still see men in the water after a sinking; we couldn't do anything to help and the poor sods were left to drown crying out for help. I landed at Algiers and went up to Medjez-el-Bab and on to Tunis. We moved the Germans out of the area and they fled to Italy.

After some time I was on a boat again, and again, did not know what was happening. It was an LCI going across to Italy. On the landing craft we were told that we were now attached to the American 5th Army, but in a completely different regiment, the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry! Many of us were resentful at being transferred to other regiments and found we were with men we didn't know. Originally, we were going to land in Sicily, but because the Italians had already surrendered there, plans were changed. We went straight on to land at Salerno on the toe of Italy. From the landing boats we jumped into the water and tried to make our way up the beach. The German tanks were lined up above the beach and were pinning us down. The Royal Navy was called upon to dislodge them by firing shells with great precision over our heads. As we gained a foothold, the Germans moved back. The soldiers we came in to contact with were very young; some could not have been more than 16 years old. Several houses and the hospital were hit. Luckily the hospital wasn't badly damaged, as it was full of people. It wasn't until I came home that I was told that a friend of mine, Basil Shepherd lay wounded in one of the wards. He saw me when I went through checking for Germans later in the day.

We moved on as fast as we could to the River Volturno. We crossed the river at night. I remember the riverbed was very slippery and the water was deep. We held our rifles above our heads and made it safely across. When it was daylight we saw that we were behind the German positions. We were near a railway bridge and once the Germans spotted us, we were given hell. We fired back, but they pinned us down and it was becoming clear that we were cut off by the river and getting across in daylight to rejoin our side was impossible. Loads of machine guns all around the bridge were trained on us and some of our boys were killed by shells. They came after us and we could do nothing but surrender and were taken prisoner.

I was now a prisoner of war. We were first taken to a small place called Frosinone. From there we were put on cattle wagons with the windows wired up and the doors secured. We went up through the Brenner Pass into Austria, but on the way the Americans bombed us while we were in a station and some of our boys were killed. When we arrived in Austria you could see the mountains covered with snow. There was a lot of snow on the ground too; when the Germans opened the wagons we were made to take off our boots and walk in the snow across the station so that we wouldn't escape. It was darned cold and some of us got frostbite.

I then went to a German POW camp. I think it was Stalag 7B. I was a corporal by now and so I was fortunate to be moved to an officer's camp where we were to act as batmen to the British officers. It was Offlag 8F in Czechoslovakia and we were treated much better. We were there with Spanish and Indian POWs too. There were a lot of officers who escaped. As a POW you had to do as the officers told you. The officers did all the escaping, but the boys had to do all the digging! In the tunnels you took turns: it wasn't very nice to go under the ground and not know whether it is all going to fall in on your head. We'd take the beds to pieces and use the timbers to hold the roofs of the tunnels up. Marvellous things would happen, organised by the officers. German sentries were bribed with chocolate and cigarettes from our Red Cross parcels, to bring in all sorts of bits and pieces, which were used to build radios. We would tune in and know what was going on all the time.

One of the things that I remember most about the camp was when an actual escape took place. We did all sorts of things to divert the German's attention from what was going on. Plays were put on in a small area used for exercise and the officers would be very crafty and invite the German Commandant to watch the play. All the boys were clapping away, making lots of noise as officers made their way out through the tunnels. One of the occasions I remember very clearly was when ten officers were detailed to escape and make their way to Prague. Unfortunately they were all caught and shot on sight. It didn't deter them though and some were successful and made it back home. We had a lot of different officers brought to the camp including RAF officers who had been transferred from a castle; it may well have been the famous Colditz. When officers were recaptured and lucky not to be shot, they were split up round different camps and were soon in with our officers and trying to get out. To escape into Germany with any real chance you needed to speak fluent German and many of the officers had learnt German at school or at university. From the early days in my first Stalag I learnt German too. You just picked it up from the guards as you went along; you had to understand what they were saying to you.

When the Russian front moved forward the Germans moved us back into Germany. I first went with the officers to Brunswick where we were put into german army barracks. It was at that time the RAF obliterated Brunswick and we feared we would be bombed again. Fortunately they didn't hit us. The Spitfires flew low in broad daylight right over the camp and we would wave to them as we did our exercises and pilots would wave back to us from their cockpits. The RAF really flattened cities and towns and now many people say they shouldn't have done it, but I didn't have any pity for them whatsoever.

We were moved again. This time the Germans took all the ordinary ranks, corporals and sergeants out of the officer's camp and sent us to another Stalag. Here some of us were picked out and sent to factories. I was with about 20 men. They said, 'You are in charge. You look after them'. We were taken to a factory on the Elbe near Brunswick where they manufactured synthetic rubber. Old car tyres and rubber boots were chewed up in big machines, melted down and turned into sheets of rubber. In the camp, one of the German guards was quite friendly. We gave him some fags and chocolate and he brought us in a wireless. We had all the news, so knew how the war was going. It was getting near to D-Day and we heard it all when the allies invaded France, but were worried about being bombed in the factory, as it must have been a target. The Germans plastered posters all round the walls saying 'You're not winning the war. The German soldiers are winning the war'. All the lads came in when we had finished work and ripped them all down. When the guards came in the next morning, they went berserk! They wanted to know who was responsible, but no one said a word. I said, 'Just keep quiet'. 'All outside', they shouted. We were lined up in this compound and asked again, 'Who did it?' There was no reply, so they said they would take me away as their corporal and shoot me. I said, 'You can do what you like. They still won't tell you who took them down. I know, but I won't tell you'. I was then hit with the butt of a rifle hard across the back of my neck. But we all stood firm and called their bluff. They let us go.

It wasn't many days before we heard that the American Army was coming. Our barracks were high up and we could see right across the fields. We could here guns firing, but didn't know whether they were tank or artillery. We soon found out then an artillery shell hit the chimneystack in the factory, smashing it to the ground. The Germans made us go down an air raid shelter provided for the civilians working in the factory with two guards. We were there for just a short time, when the guards bolted and we ran for it too. I don't know what happened to everyone. Six of us headed out towards the guns. There were empty, looted shops where the Germans had taken everything. After moving across a field, we came on a row of farm cottages and people came running towards us. One woman shouted, 'Are you English?' I went over to her and discovered that she was American; she said she had been living in Germany when the war started and couldn't get back home. Our main interest was finding food and the only thing we could find to eat was raw beetroot, which we lived on for almost two weeks! When we did eventually arrive at the American line we were lucky not to be shot. The Americans had a reputation for shooting anything that moved!

The Americans took us back to a huge German barracks with loads of rooms. For days I lived between the bath and the toilet suffering from the beetroot diet. When I found that planes were taking POWs back to England, I said, 'How can I go back like this!' I was sent to an American doctor who gave me something to help so that I could travel. I still remember it very clearly. It was a paper cone full of powder that had to be taken dry. It is so hard to swallow dry powder, but swallow it I did. I didn't go to the toilet for three weeks and was on the plane flying home.

On the way back from Germany, there were still messerschmidts around. The pilot of our Dakota told us to be ready in case we were attacked, but we had no parachutes. We flew into Wing airport in Buckinghamshire and had the reception of our lives. We were carried off the plane by WAAFs and taken for baths and showers and fitted out with all new clothes. Then we had a meal where everything was laid on like a hotel, with white tablecloths and the loveliest food. We stayed the night and slept in beds with sheets and blankets, which we hadn't had for a long time. The next day we were issued with new documents and sent home on leave. I travelled back to Chichester by train and had two months leave at home with my parents in Oving. It must have been near VE Day because I remember that we went to the Nelson Arms in Colworth and got a bit tiddly!

After my leave, I received a letter from the King's Own Light Infantry asking me to report to Otley in Yorkshire where I spent a couple of months in a holding battalion. From there I joined another near Newcastle, the Durham Light Infantry and then, because I was a corporal, I was put to work with the local regimental police. One day I was walking down from the camp when several people came towards me. In the middle of this group of men and officers was one officer walking in the middle. I thought, 'I know that face.' It was the Lieutenant Colonel I looked after in Germany. 'Shall I salute him or shall I not? Should I speak to him?' He came across and said, 'Don't salute me, I want to salute you for the way you looked after me'. He asked if there was anything he could do for me and I told him that I would like to get back to my regiment, the Royal Sussex. He told me not to worry and that I'd be back there the next week.

Within a week I was posted from Northumberland back to the Duke of Cornwall's in Bodmin and was made up to sergeant. I became weapons training sergeant at the depot and from there was transferred back to the barracks in Chichester to do the same job. It was 1946 and I was finally back home.

Looking back, I found that many of the German soldiers seemed to have a respect for us. However I thought that some of them were swines, especially those we knew had returned to guard duty after serving on the Russian Front. Of course it is very personal and for me, I have a constant reminder of the sort of treatment dealt out to the enemy when I was hit with the butt of a rifle. My damaged back was probably a minor injury compared to what so many other men suffered, but it came to affect my life seriously as I got older and was the cause of my early retirement with spondolosis.

My days in the army are always with me and I loved the time I served. I was in for ten years and 283 days and never brought a soldier on charge in all that time. I came out in 1948 because I could no longer fulfil my physical duties. I was one of the few people who were paid the King's shilling when I went to Brighton to join up.

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