大象传媒

This contribution to WW2 People's War website was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk, with the permission and on behalf of Edward Lees and submitted to the website by the Wymondham Learning Centre.

On my eighteenth birthday, 19 December 1941, I volunteered for the army and took the King鈥檚 shilling. I should have kept it!!!

I reported to Invicta lines at Maidstone in March 1942 as a young soldier in the Queen鈥檚 Royal Regiment, living in a Nissen hut with thirty other young soldiers. They all seemed to come from Bethnal Green and Stepney and for the first time in my life I found out just how the other half lived.

The chap in the next bed had been ill with pneumonia. He was named Jack Whiteley, and he was six months older than I. We stayed together. I met his parents, and he met mine on their visits to Maidstone, always at the Star Hotel. Much later I met and married his sister Beryl, so although I didn鈥檛 know it then, we were to become brothers-in-law.

We were both made lance corporals and sent to WOSB [the War Office Selection Board] at Wrotham in Kent for three days selection, repeatedly climbing up and down the escarpment. We were very young so we could cope with that. We then went to pre-OCTU [Officer Cadet Training Unit] I think mainly to check whether we could use a knife and fork.

When we returned in 1943, all the others were sent to join a regiment somewhere, but Jack and I went to the Royal Military College, Mons Barracks Aldershot OCTU. (Sandhurst had been handed over to the armoured corps and the infantry kicked out). Tibby Brittain (Coldstream Guards) was the regimental sergeant major. Jack was very smart and I was usually the untidy one. We were in a guards company, and most of the others were very up-market. The chap in the next bed was Prince Jean of Luxembourg (we called him Lux).

On the few occasions when I travelled through London I knew that I could get a free drink and meal at the Whiteley Hats showroom in Maddox Street near Liberty, which I took advantage of, as did others who knew Jack.

During my training at OCTU I was hit in the eye by a small stone thrown up by a thunder flash, which caused a blood clot and put me in hospital for a couple of days. Thirty years later I had an operation for a cataract and proved it was a wartime injury (I still have the original medical certificate) and as a result was given a 20% war disability pension.

After six months at OCTU I was commissioned into the Black Watch and Jack into the Green Howards. We didn鈥檛 write, but I heard, probably from his parents, that he was wounded a couple of times, and that he was at Anzio. But more of that later.

I was posted to the 10th Black Watch in Barrow in Furness, a platoon commander at the age of nineteen. I was given thirty men including a sergeant and was supposed to train them. I don't think I was very good at it. I had been told that the men would either work for you or with you, and I tried the 鈥渨ith you鈥� bit. I should have tried the big stick approach.

We were sent overseas on 10 December 1943 and embarked at Liverpool, having been told that that we were going to the tropics. I was in a single first class cabin with five other officers. Needless to say it was bit of a squash, but I was very glad of it, as all the jocks were on a mess deck in hammocks.

I was very lucky in that I did not suffer from seasickness, but about 90% of the men and the other five officers were laid low with it. We were still on board at Christmas 1943 when, being the only officer still on his feet, I served the men with their special dinner. The mess decks were in a terrible state with all the vomit, and of course I had to help with the clearing up.

After cruising the Atlantic somewhere near the Azores we landed at Oran in Algeria, on Boxing Day 1943, and entrained in cattle trucks (each deemed suitable for twelve horses or thirty-two men) for a transit camp in Phillipville, arriving December 29th or 30th. We were marching from the railway line through the sand to the transit camp, rather worn out, when a piper struck up and the effect was truly magical. We all had a spring in our step again. We arrived just in time to celebrate Hogmanay. A fight started between the Celtic and Rangers supporters because somebody sang 鈥淕alway Bay鈥�. That was my first experience of the religious divisions in Glasgow.

I was attached to the Gordon Highlanders, and after two or three days we shipped out in American (very informal) LCTs [Landing Craft Troops] to Pompeii to another camp, then after couple of days on RN LCTs (very formal) to Anzio, landing on January 23rd or 24th and climbing down nets from the ship into DUKWs [amphibious vehicles, also known as 鈥淒ucks鈥漖 which took us to the beach, where they say that one of the beachmasters was Dennis Healey.

We saw some bombing and German planes strafing just along the beachhead, but we were put into the pinewoods, where overnight we were bombarded by hailstones the size of large marbles. We had to wear tin hats to avoid injury.

There was me, a very junior 2nd Lt in charge of a platoon of thirty and I didn鈥檛 have a clue as to what was going on. We moved off for about half a mile and were told that we were the reserve company. When we arrived, the three other companies in the battalion had been rounded up by tiger tanks, and we were the only ones left of the 6th Gordons. There were of course many other regiments as we were part of General Mark Clark鈥檚 5th Army, First British Division. I can't remember the brigade.

We marched to various locations and dug slit trenches. These were flooded overnight, which didn't make life any easier.

We moved on to a group of buildings we called the tobacco factory where we suffered the odd shell and enemy patrol. When aircraft bombed us we guessed they were Yanks, who couldn't read maps. It was here that we heard an enemy patrol come in and thought it had overrun one of my section posts. I took a small group to find out. We arrived with fixed bayonets to find that our machine gun had jammed and a very young German was shivering in a corner of one of the trenches. We took him back and when he was interrogated at brigade HQ he gave all sorts of valuable information on what the enemy was doing.

After a week we went back to B echelon (that's where we went for a break from the front line) and the Thunderbirds (USA army division) took over. They had all the weapons in the world but didn't seem to know what to do.

We marched back along the lateral road across the fields and I proved that I could go to sleep while marching. Once while resting at the side of the road I was quite sure that I had left my body and was looking down on myself from above, but I never reported the experience to anyone else.

At one point just short of the flyover, a shell landed quite near and I saw pieces of shrapnel fly past me. They were white hot in the dark, and I was rather lucky that I was not in the way of any of them.

At B echelon the whole beachhead was within range of German guns, so we lived in dugouts, holes in the ground covered over with earth and branches, where we were OK unless there was a direct hit. Within twenty yards of my bunker the Germans dropped about a dozen anti-personnel mines. They were about the size of a tin of beans and bright yellow. We didn't try to let them off.

We had a visit from ENSA, I remember. It was Hughie Green (or somebody of that ilk) with Opportunity Knocks.

All officers had an issue of one bottle of scotch every month (normally Vat 69) and as the Yanks didn't get any, we could exchange it for a Jeep at any time.

Eventually the shower brigade turned up and we were able to wash in actual hot water.

Our rations at first were compo [composite] packs, each a wooden box of supplies for twelve men for one day. They included corned beef, beef stew, a mixture of tea, sugar and milk known as 鈥渃ompo-tea鈥�, tinned cheese, biscuits and loo paper. Later on we were issued with American 鈥淜鈥� rations, one pack per man per day, which included three cigarettes. Our own cigarettes, in packs of fifty, always seemed to be from South Africa and were labelled 鈥淐 to C鈥� (Cape to Cairo) and or 鈥淰ictory Vs鈥�. For cooking equipment we had our own mess tins (two) and a mug. We had some instant fuel in small round pieces, which we balanced on two bits of metal. With this we could make some kind of cake or bread by digging a hole in the side of the bunker and using it as a primitive oven. Sometime in March we received our first supply of fresh bread. Water came in old jerry cans previously used for petrol. They were never really satisfactorily cleaned, so the water always had a petrol flavour.

During one stint in B echelon I heard that the Green Howards were relatively nearby. I went off in a Jeep to visit them (being stopped just before I got to the front line by a notice reading 鈥淒ust Brings Shells鈥�) and learnt that Jack had been wounded again and was in a hospital somewhere.

Our last stint was a longer stay beside the flyover where we were dug in looking directly towards the enemy lines. Put your head over the top and a shot would ring out. I was in command of one day-patrol along a gully with instructions to find out if it was occupied. After passing a couple of bodies and crawling around some trip wires which were designed to kill more than one person by sending an explosive into the air, we came to some barbed-wire. I very cleverly climbed over, and was fired at from about ten yards along the gully. The bullets missed me and killed the bloke behind. Then came a couple of stick grenades, the ones with long throwing handles, which also missed me. Instead of being very brave and firing back, I threw a smoke grenade and got out over the wire rather quickly. I didn't have time to check on the bloke who was killed, and was told off later as I should have taken his nametag or something. For several years after I was married I often woke up in the night dreaming of that experience.

We also were dug in beside the flyover in a small wood where it was difficult to dig slit trenches, so all we had were foxholes. A direct hit on one of them killed two of my men. All told during that period from my platoon of thirty, some twenty were killed or wounded, including some of those who were on the way to us as replacements. You could say that I was rather lucky, surviving without a scratch.

When the enemy withdrew we advanced towards Rome. The smell from rotting bodies was something I'll never forget. We had to wait for the Yanks to go in first, for political reasons no doubt. It was fascinating walking past the Coliseum surrounded by locals cheering 鈥淰iva il liberatori!鈥� and also 鈥淪cozzese - niente pantaloni!鈥� [鈥淪cottish - no trousers!鈥漖

I was billeted for a few days in the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto. It was nice to hear a waiter say 鈥淗ow would you like your eggs?鈥� I was all of twenty years old and a virgin soldier. When I left Rome about a week later I was a virgin no longer.

Edward Lees鈥檚 story is continued in 鈥淭he shrapnel was white-hot in the dark. Part 2.鈥�

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