´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Arnold Stone, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Stone fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Other parts to this story are at:
Part One: A7748238

Part Three: A7748472

===============================================
With material for the Russian convoys this often meant that some 25 or 30 vehicles would arrive within a very short space of time and it was also an easy task to always fit in the return facility, but we did quite well in this direction. I stayed in this particular job for some 18 months or so, and then one day, in conversation with the Squadron Leader, I did indicate that I could perhaps do a little more to further the war effort having regarding to my experience in transport, and he immediately suggested that I should go forward with an application for a commission. I agreed to this and he put the wheels in motion. I very quickly found myself involved in a series of interviews and medical examinations, the end result was that I passed all these and I was sent on a 5 week training course to the R.A.F. Officer’s School at Cosford Nr. Wolverhampton. This was an interesting experience as it covered not only the administrative side of the R.A.F., but also that so far as drill etc. was concerned.

I could deal with the administrative side of the ceremonial drill in particular was something which I found difficult and I well remember the Drill Sergeant saying that were I in charge of a group of men marching towards a cliff they would be over it before I gave the command. It certainly was something that I did not take to fairly easily but I did pass the course and at the end of this 5 weeks, Corporal A. Stone 1075203 became ......... 0156221.

During the whole of this period I had been attached to 6 Personnel Transit Centre which was the unit controlling all R.A.F. movement. Staff headquarters were in the Endsleigh Hotel, Endsleigh Gardens, Euston. On the completion of my services at Corsford I had to return there and then found that I had to go to the Army Headquarters at Western Command at Chester for further instructions.

A ’Q’ movements unit of the Royal Engineers was concerned with the movement of all people and goods and the turning of convoys etc. The R.A.F. movement staff were always linked with them and they had to fit in with army movements and the like to ensure that there was no clash of interests, thus ‘Q’ movements in the Army and movement Officers within the R.A.F. were always to be found next door to each other. After senior staff at Western Command, I was posted to the R.A.F. movements office at the Lancashire border district of the Army, which was situated at Deepdale in Preston, next to the Northend Football Ground.

As I was billeted out with our lovely family, this gave me a good start so far as my career in a senior rank was concerned; coupled with this the other movements people were very friendly and I developed quite a close relationship with Reginald Dixon who was one of our organists at Blackpool Tower.

We were expected to share duties with the ‘Q’ movement staff at night etc. and I frequently found myself doing night duty officers’ work. I know on one occasion, we had to monitor through the movement of a special train which contained an entire fleet of tanks destined for the South. Normally this was monitored through the area by the Railway Transport Officers’ Staff, liasing with British Railways, but this particular train load which was moving from Scotland down to the South Coast suddenly disappeared after it had been reported as passing safely through Carlisle. I know I was besieged by Colonels and Brigadiers who wanted to know where their particular train had gone and they didn’t appreciate being told by a junior R.A.F. officer that we didn’t know what had happened. We did eventually find out that the train had been put into a siding at Cawnforth, due to one of the trucks developing a hot axle and not being able to move until it had been replaced, and things did work out in the end but I think that I can proclaim that I was the only R.A.F. officer during the entire war who lost a train load of tanks, albeit only for a period of 12 hours or so. One of the interesting tasks that we had at Preston was to arrange for the transport of personnel from Canada and other places in North America to their base units. Generally these people came across the Atlantic in either the Queen Mary or the Queen Elizabeth and we had to arrange trains from the pier head at Liverpool to places such as RCAF train centre at Romwood. Officers were given the job of acting as train conducting officers to see that these people from overseas received the right type of training and that they were duly fed and well cared for before they arrived at their base units.

There were some occasional problems when women of the Royal Canadian Women’s Air Force were involved, and one had some difficulty in segregating the sexes on the train to ensure that all the people arrived in a fit condition, but by variety of means. I always managed to achieve this on those trains where I was given the conducting officer’s job. I always remember however, being told by a very senior officer in the women’s service, that she had brought these 200 girls safely across the Atlantic, over 3,000miles, and that she did not want anything to befall them in the 250 — 300 miles that they were likely to travel to the south coast. I assured her that this would not happen, but there are stories about it which I could tell if I wanted, and I doubt whether she would be happy if she knew the result.

My stay at Preston was most enjoyable but I knew that it was not going to last and in April of 1944, I found myself posted to 83 group, which was the R.A.F. unit giving the fighter support to the 2nd Army and I was told I was being posted to their rear headquarters in the south of England. This meant returning to my base unit at Endsleigh Gardens. When I arrived there, they would not tell me where 83 group was based because it was in a secret location. I was only told to report to the railway transport officers at a particular place and I would be re-directed.

I spent a full three days travelling backwards and forwards across the south of England before I found someone who knew where they were, and promised to take me there, although he wouldn’t give me the name of the location. The headquarters where I eventually arrived after this mystery trip turned out to be in woodland near the hamlet of Hinton Daubney, near to Horndean in Hampshire, where the unit was on the canvas waiting to be called forward, because the invasion of France was becoming imminent. We were fully briefed, we had an idea where we were going, but had no specific instruction, and we knew when we were going and when we were likely to be moving forward. The training and preparation that formed the invasion of Normandy was always said to have been meticulous and planned to the last detail, but this didn’t happen so far as we were concerned. Two days before D-day, the 4th of June, someone realised that there was a number of drivers in our particular unit, myself included, who had no training in driving a vehicle off a landing craft onto a beach, and it was desirable that this should happen before the due day.

On the evening of the 5th of June, I saw a group of 20 or so officers from this new headquarters was taken do to the bathing pool, near to Shoreham, which had been adapted so that one could simulate the driving of vehicles off a landing craft onto the shore. The instructor paired us off and unfortunately, put me with a person whom I didn’t particularly like, and I indicated that he was to drive and I was to act as passenger. The idea was that the vehicle was to coast along to this ramp, which simulated the landing craft, and that as soon as the wheels topped the ramp, one accelerated and then took off into the sea or the paddling pool, as it was under this simulated exercise.

The fellow officer who was driving the vehicle, apparently didn’t fully absorb the instructions, and when we were fifteen yards from the top of the ramp, this was the time to accelerate, with the result that we took off and were airborne for about fifty yards, and finished up in the middle of this paddling pool. My head went through the canvas machine gun turret at the side of the driver’s cab. There I stood with my neck fringed like a pierrot’s collar, precisely the same movement as the first of the glider force that went overhead on its way to Normandy. Fortunately, when the moment came to repeat the exercise, there was no problem. There were several R.A.F. officers who landed in Normandy with no previous experience of driving off landing craft. Fortunately things worked out properly and there were no undue mishaps.

At this particular stage, I think I should explain that 83 group was a fighter group and its main intention was to give close support to the second army troops whenever this was wanted. It was obvious therefore that some of the people in 83 group who were on the ground, had to move to Normandy as soon as possible and I happened to be one of those people. We had the usual process, which has been well documented, and moving forward into the appropriate areas before embarking. We actually sailed form Gosport and I can recall that I was among those who were sick before the landing craft left Gosport Harbour. I was more fortunate than one of my colleagues who suffered from the same malaise, but unfortunately in the process, lost his dentures. How he coped toothless with the hard biscuits and the like that we lived on for the period, I shall never know as I lost touch with him.

Then our arrival off the coast of Normandy was momentous. We landed on the British sector.

I remember we landed off the shores of Normandy in the late evening and we had to lay off for quite a few hours to wait for a suitable tide. The night itself was a little noisy and there was a fair amount of activity, but we had no problems. Our base was quite close at hand and 83 group was under canvas in the grounds of a chateau in a small village named Cruelly, which is roughly midway between Bayou and Caen.

We were there for some little time, but after a few days, I was told I was being posted to the 2nd army, to take over the duties of a liaison officer on the movements side, so that all that was taking place between the army and the Royal Air Force could be properly co-ordinated. From that point onwards, I was with the hue movements people of the second army and stayed with them right through to the end of the war and for a period following that.

For a short time, we were bogged down and it was not until Falaise had been liberated; the Falaise gap closed that we began to move forward, in fact, we moved so often, so quickly, but life over this period tends to be something of a blur. To try to detail it is beyond my memory, but if one reads Field Marshall Montgomery’s book, about the campaign, entitled, ‘From Normandy to the Baltic’, it gives the general idea of the path that I followed. My footsteps, as far as I know, didn’t follow his, nor did his follow mine and our paths never crossed, but we were always not very far apart, but now, being with the second army, my allegiance was initially to General Dempsey who was the commander in chief of this unit.

One thing that stands out in my mind during our period of constant movement forward is a pitching tent on windy ridges, digging vehicles out of orchards, and generally doing everything to keep moving. In the midst of all this, I was persuaded to become one of the mess secretaries. The headquarters were divided into several different officers’ messes, based mainly on activity and rank and although I pointed out that I couldn’t see an R.A.F. Officer, supervising an army officers’ mess. I was told there was nothing in King’s regulations that prevented this, and I reluctantly accepted the job. Unfortunately, I did so at the wrong time. All the accounts for officer’ messes were kept in the currency of the country of occupation and very shortly, after I’d taken over, we moved from France into Belgium, and I well remember the rate of exchange was listed as 176 and five eighths Francs to the pound, so I had to do the conversion of all the accounts into this new configuration. At that time there were no calculators, and if I had any spare time, I had plenty to keep me occupied. I’d barely completed this task, and I found myself in Holland, and I had to convert from Francs, into Guilders.

Part Three is at:
A7748472

Pr-BR

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