大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Jenny Graham of the Lancs Home Guard on behalf of Raymond Bert Cole and has been added to the site with his permission

I am originally from Gloucestershire and was actually a builder before I joined the Army. I was initially given two years exemption from the building trade to work in an Aircraft factory, it was a factory where they did all the rigging and fixed up the aircrafts such as the Sterling Bombers. I worked there until 1942, when I got called up myself and commenced my army training.

We did all our training in Northern Ireland and then the Isle of Wight before going overseas and then on to Burma. It was whilst we were in Northern Ireland, in 1943 that I met my wife, although we weren't actually to be married until after the war was over. One night, a friend of ours who worked in the Cook House came over to the barracks with dance tickets for the Castle Rock Station Dance; he said his Sergeant had given him two tickets for the Air Force Dance at the Castle and did we want them. We jumped at the chance, anyone lucky enough to get tickets and be able to go would've done. We got ourselves smartened up and headed for the Castle, pronto.

On our way up to the castle grounds we would pass by a row of twelve cottages which we called the twelve apostles. On this night, there were two girls happened to be standing in the window of one of the cottages. We stopped briefly to have a quick chat with them as we passed by but we were eager to get to the dance so we didn't stay long. When we arrived at the great doors of the castle we proudly handed our tickets over to the doorman, who unfortunately, took one look at them and told us quite bluntly that last week's tickets would not be of any help if we wanted to gain entry into this week's dance. We were bitterly disappointed, but determined not to waste an evening off, so we thought perhaps we would head back down to the cottages and see if the two girls from earlier were still around. They were, and we chatted and arranged to see each other again; and again until eventually after three months of courting we got engaged.

I was, however, sent to Burma; that would be 1944 and I really didn't want to go. We did jungle training in India first. Cutting through the jungle and crawling through all sorts of things before we were eventually flown into North Burma. We moved up to the front on the jeep train; an extraordinary construction that combined an American jeep with railway wheels. It drove like a jeep, carrying a truck of ammunition but we had to push it from behind to get it started. The Americans were amazed as we joined forces with the American Air Force to push up to the front. There weren't many of the Air Force but we travelled right up to North Burma together on a hard journey that took days. The Japanese were in retreat at that time, after the battles of Infa and Coeama but it was still hard fighting. We were on patrols, pushing the Japanese back all the time and when we came into contact with them we had to try to move them on. All the time the track and railway was moving towards the front as the South Lancashire progressed.

At night, we would dig trenches to shelter in and protect ourselves. One night, I was lying on my stomach, "digging in" as a grenade landed and exploded very near to me. The shrapnel wounded both my legs and I was taken to an Indian hospital. I was to stay in hospital for five months in all: my legs healed and I had just left hospital when I contracted typhus from a flea or a rat bite, then I contracted Malaria. It wasn't until the end of July that I was able to rejoin the unit and then it was the following month, August 14th that the Americans dropped their bomb. We had previously been training for an invasion on Malaya but with the end of the war, our plans changed. We headed for Sumatra instead and we stayed there until we were sent home.

It was February 1947 when I eventually made it back to Ireland to see my girl; she had been nursing in Northern Ireland all that time and although we had communicated by air-mail it was difficult and irregular. But we'd managed it, kept in contact and after my initial visit in February, I returned in March and we were married. We are still together to this day.

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