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BILL WILLIAMS

My name is Bill and I am 84 years old. Now then, I was employed by Eric Lambert as a trainee architectural craftsman for a partner C K Jupp who in the First World War was a pilot. On the top shelf of the catalogue library there was a six foot run of RAC training manuals dated 1912. I closed down the office and I should have pinched them! I imagine that they ended up being pulped for the War effort - a bit of history lost..... Anyway, I joined the TA in April 1939 in St Michael's Lane. An Artilleryman's joke at the time was "Why did you join the Artillery?" "To avoid being conscripted into the Infantry". True. Our fathers, uncles and possibly our elder brothers had spent four years in the trenches, and we were told tales of horror, and determined not to spend four years up to our hindquarters in mud and filth if it could be avoided. We paraded once a week and drilled on an old 4.5 inch Howitzer went for a week's camp in the Okehampton Ranges in July. A few of us were called up a week or two before the War started.

Where was your TA depot?

St Michael's Lane, Bridport.

Anyway, we went to the Okehampton Ranges in July. We were split up into troops, about 30 or 40, three abreast, and we were marched from drill to drill, to lectures, and out on to the firing ranges, and so on; and we were led by a subaltern and we had a rather poncy little chap, 30 or 40-ish, with his brand-new uniform, brand-new Sam (Browne) belt, and we used to march behind this chap, and discreetly change step, and poor sod was always looking over his shoulder to see what the hell was going on! (laughs) Anyway, his name was on the wall by the War Memorial in South Street. It makes me sad to see it there. Shame. Nice chap - we took the H2 out of him, but he was a nice fellow. A few of us were called up a week or so before the War started. We prepared the paperwork and all sorts of quartermasterly odds and ends. We were marched, on the day War broke out, we were marched defiantly down to West Bay and back, and the Artillery were a sort of private affair — very poor marchers with perverse pride; and we must have looked a shambles, but not as bad as it could have been because doing the marching drill at Okehampton Camp Our drill sergeant was puzzled, there was something going on, and eventually he whittled it down to me. I was marching with my legs and arms swinging together.

Difficult to do....

Well, it's difficult to do now it's been corrected. (laughs) This was corrected and we got on with the preparations for War. Anyway, after a few days we were bussed off to Wilton, a nice little town, six of us were billeted above an old smithy. I especially remember Frank Bugler who worked at Lloyds Bank, and Donald Raite. Donald managed and subsequently owned Smith and Smith in West Street - good fellows. We lived a pretty aimless existence, we had no guns and no transport. We requisitioned vehicles from local dealers, and paraded once a day round the town square, and that was our day's work. One of the Pembroke sons was of a theatrical bent, nudge, nudge, and he bought down a load of his West End friends and they put on a show.

Bea Lilley was the star, her monologue was "I wonder what Hitler's weapon is really like?" and from then on it was downhill. But it was a good evening of camp humour, totally lost on us, we didn't know what was going on half the time! (laughs) But anyway, we joined the Southern Command Church Parade at Salisbury Cathedral. We formed a long three-abreast queue, coiled round the Close and we were joined by Sergeant Major Tuppy Britain. Tuppy suddenly appeared - he was a noisy presence in a couple of films - do you remember him?

Yes

And he introduced us to the Liverpool dialect. "Am I hurting you, soldier? I should be, I'm standing on your hurr. Get your hurr cut!" Post War he was commissionaire, on the door, at the Head Office of the oil firm for which I worked! Tuppy was six foot tall and about five foot eleven round the middle, and he wore a corset, and his avoirdupois was pushed northwards, and he looked like a ruddy pigeon!

After some months I was transferred to a London anti-aircraft battery as I was deemed too young to go overseas. Our guns were on Primrose Hill and we were billeted in large gentlemen's residences in Elsworthy Road. My house had belonged to Mrs Simpson. I had bathed in the same marble bath as HRH, subsequently Edward VIII. Anyway, nothing of note: it was the Phoney War. We were inoculated, preparing to go to France, but we were turned back a couple of days before the Dunkirk evacuation. We went to various sites in London I remember, and a Battle of Britain pilot force-landed on our guns. We got him wrapped in blankets and he was taken to the officer's tent. I imagine he was given a drink and he was taken away in a police car. The RAF hoisted the Hurricane on to a pick-up.

Anyway we were shunted around East London for a while, eventually ending up on the Isle of Dogs. We were set up on the football pitch and surrounded on three sides by large creosoted timber drying sheds. These were ignited by fire bombs and we were blitzed on from a great height. We were there for two weeks and suffered not a scratch! Unbelievable! One day I was detailed to assist the bomb disposal team. My job was to keep the crowds away. In the event, they very wisely took their entertainment elsewhere; and the bomb went through the roof of the house, through the floor, ended up down in the foundations. The Engineers moved in, took up residence in the front room. They got the bomb out in two days, and up it went on an open truck, with chaps sitting outside, stopping it rolling around with their feet. It was exploded on the Essex marshes

A half of us, two guns, were posted to Hyde Park. We were attached to the Regimental Headquarters. Because of the high buildings, radar was ineffective. Our guns were First World War naval guns, originally mounted on merchant ships. These fired at 20 rounds per minute, were pointed vaguely heavenwards and made a devil of a racket. It was later, after the War that we read in the newspapers that we were a PR operation for the benefit of the Spanish Ambassador, who was living at the Dorchester. And we lost four blokes, just keeping that bugger entertained.

I was a signaller. I spent my shifts at the post, in telecommunication with RAF Uxbridge and the gun operations at Brompton Road. We had wires strung across the gun emplacements at about eight to ten feet high. These were power lines and signal lines etcetera. On one of these lines ten feet about our heads perched a little owl, a screech owl (inaudible). It was there for three nights and then very wisely disappeared. There was also in the park, a flock of sheep.
These were quickly moved to safety). We were relieved and went to Coventry, Wolverhampton and various sites in North and South Wales. Abergavenny, Barry Island, Cardiff, Maesteg and Pembroke Dock. A few weeks at each. I imagine they did not want us to put down roots and get too comfortable. One day a message came through asking for the services of a civil engineering draughtsman. I felt it was near enough for me, so I applied. After an interview I got the job and was attached to the Royal Engineers and posted to the DCRE Gloucester. There were four of us in a little office and it was a nice little number. I was there for some months. There were only four of us in the office - two of those went home to their mums, they were local; Bob, another chap, his wife stayed at a local hotel, and she got a job so he stayed at the hotel.

I was billeted at a pub. The publican's son was a pilot and he got badly burned and he had his face rebuilt by McIndoe at East Grinstead. And his mother used to take him round the bar and his face was a sight.... red lines everywhere, stitch marks and they borrowed bits of skin from various parts of the body and it was different texture. Some bits had hairs, some didn't and so on. And she was sort of tearfully proud of the boy, and he was acutely embarrassed. I was very sorry for him. Anyway, this went on for some months, we were doing all sorts of things, mostly huts and drainage and that sort of thing.

Then I received my war wound. I was stung by a bee in the Forest of Dean, went into a trance and it was touch and go for a day or two, but I did recover - but was from time to time laid low by urticaria, which is a form of nettle rash, A trifling matter, you would say. My leg would swell up, so much so that I couldn't put on my trousers. So I was on the sick list. Another time my fingers swelled up like a bunch of bananas. Then my eyes closed.... Then I had a huge goitre hanging down . And this sort of thing went on regularly. I was in the hospital a few times, and eventually the Army could bear it no longer and we parted company. After a couple of months holiday with my parents I went back to London and the Labour Exchange sent me for an interview with firm in Victoria, doing the exact same job as I had been as a soldier , but unfortunately for less money! I had been getting sergeant's pay. Women were being deployed on gun sites and one of my jobs was to go round sorting out the huts to segregate the sexes. Unsporting no doubt, but who knows I may have prevented a few shotgun weddings, you never know.

I also reported on fire damage to a NAAFI canteen - according to the fireman a not unusual incidence of a hairpin being pressed into service as a fuse. Another job was an incinerator for the destruction of paperwork, in triplicate, under which the country was submerged at the time.

After the War in Europe I joined a firm of consultants doing War damage surveys, and we experimented with development of prefabricated construction systems. We, or people in this field, probably did more lasting damage than the Luftwaffe did under Adolf Hitler. (laughs) There were many courageous men and women who performed astonishing acts of bravery, and there were thousands of squaddies who stoically, unrecorded and unrewarded, went about the everyday nasty and dangerous business of warfare. We and generations to come owe them all a debt of gratitude.
There were probably thousands of people like me who drifted through the War in a state of pleasant somnambulance. We did however have one hero in the family: my cousin Jack. At his funeral, about 20 years ago, it came out, to the bewilderment of the family, that he had been awarded a small medal for gallantry. It was at the other end of the spectrum from the Victoria Cross and it was MM or an MBE or something similar.

The BEM, the British Empire Medal?

That is what he was awarded. And I'd been told about this by his father. His father took the Scottish tonic from time to time and he told me about this. I think he was bursting to tell someone. Jack reluctantly confirmed this eventually, after 40 years. He still felt constrained by the Official Secrets Act. Anyway, in the golden pre-text days documents considered to be too sensitive to be entrusted to the Royal Mail were physically delivered by the King's Messengers. These were a corps of distinguished elderly ex-military gentlemen, majors and the like. Jack was a splendid fellow, a man of total integrity and unbelievably dull. He was not a distinguished old buffer, he was a sergeant in the Pay Corps - what else? He was attached to the Kings Messenger Service Second Class. He carried the documentation between Montgomery and General Eisenhower at Bushey Park in relation to the D-Day landings. A likely story I hear you say..... Just so, but who more suited to the task than a drab young man in civvies, clutching a shopping bag, commuting between Waterloo and Hampton Court. So, three cheers for Jack! A lovely story I quite like about Eisenhower: Arthur Marshall was a major in the Intelligence and he was attached to the Headquarters of General Eisenhower in Bushey Park, and they had an air raid and everybody took to the shelters. And he dived down into the dug out, at Bushey Park and sitting there was Eisenhower. He said "As long as we're here I don't have to sign anything!" So Generals clearly spend their time signing things!

I understand there are well-heeled young men who spend their leisure time Davy Crocketting around woods shooting one another with paint balls. Some might feel cheated out of their major thrills. Relax fellows, peace cannot be all that bad. Good day.

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