大象传媒

When war was declared I was 16 years of age living at No 82 Delance St, Camden Town with my mother, sister Joy who was 18 years of age and my two stepbrothers who were very small, one was a year old and the other was 2. I was working as an office boy for a firm of Gunsmiths in Leicester Square. I belonged to the Naval Cadets who were in Hampsted, I joined together with my friend Tom Baker and his brother George. My mother was evacuated along with my two brothers to Luton Hoo whilst my sister went to live with her friend in Hardie House at Hornsey Rise and I went to live with Tom Baker and family in a block of flats in the Euston area. Tom and George who were both a little older than me were called up and went into the Navy. As there was no sign of any enemy activity at this stage, my mother who had given birth to my third brother whilst in Luton Hoo returned to London and rented a ground floor flat at 38 Rathcoole Gardens in Hornsey, whilst I had changed my job to that of a yard boy for a firm of builders merchants in Tottanham Lane in Hornsey. Suddenly we all realised that we were at war, when we were being bombed, I remember standing with my mother in our back garden and watching the dog fights in the skies above, with the sounds of the machine gun fire, parachutes and smoking flames. It was during the Blitz that we moved to No 8 Enfield Rd in Hornsey, and after nights of bombing I used to get up early in the morning and pedal around to pick up shrapnel which was laying around. People who used the underground as a shelter, used to leave their bedding bundles in shops specifically for that purpose of storing them during the day, in the evening I would go to the shop and collect bedding bundles to order, for which I received a few pence. When the air raids first started we used to sit under the staircase for shelter, but later we got an Anderson shelter. I dug out the garden and installed the shelter together with sandbags. We started to use this for protection, but smelt damp and was very uncomfortable, so eventually we stayed indoors and kept our fingers crossed. I used to go to the local cinema for entertainment, and it became regular that whilst watching the film, it would be flashed up that the air raid warnings had sounded. When the film had finished and I went out into the street, the buses had stopped running, which meant that I would have to walk home in the pitch black, sometimes to the tune of shrapnel wizzing around. One night as I left the cinema, the whole High St was alight from a stick of inceneary bombs.
I left my job as a yard boy and got a job with Crisps the bakers as a delivery roundsman. I had my own large two-wheeled cart, which I would pull round to the front of the shop in the early hours of the morning, load it up and off I went to serve my customers. I would finish around one pm and the rest of the day was my own. My Auntie had travelled down to her parents in Spalding and returned with a couple of pound of onions which were in very short supply, so I took four of them and raffled them on my bread round, I think I got almost 1pund which was a lot of money in those days. They then cut back on the daily deliveries to every other day, so I was teemed up with a Mr Bunny Austin, and together we would go in his electric van and deliver to his customers one day and mine the next. It was around this time that I got my call up papers and even though I could have walked into the Royal Navy I had no wish to do so. I was young and scatty and wanted to be an air gunner, and so was told that there were no vacancies for air gunners, but there were vacancies for Pilot Observers for which I took a test but failed on my maths, so from this I chose the army. I got my call up papers to report to Parkhurst Training Camp on the Isle of Wight on 6th June 1942. Whilst there I underwent a six week primary training course, during which I stated preference for an Airborne Trooper to be told that they were selected from the ranks, so I then went for a tank gunner. At the end of the primary training we were given a test at which I was passed out as a Technical Assistant and sent to the 4th Field Training Regiment of the Royal Artuillery at Larkhill where I would undergo a four week training period for working in either the command post, gun post or observation post. During this period my mother wrote to say that she was finding it hard to cope with my brothers who had various teeth and scalp troubles. I showed the letter to my commanding officer and was granted 48 hours leave which was eventually lengthened to 72 hours. So when I got back to Larkhill I was three days short of my initial training and from this period of time I was never able to catch up with the knowledge that I had missed whilst on leave. At the end I was passed out with a very low marking and was sent to Colwyn Bay. I was there for some few days when I was drafted to Stirling in Scotland. I got up to Stirling to be sent home on 14 days embarkment leave. From my leave I returned to Stirling and within a few days was away to Portsmouth and abroad a troopship bound for I know not where. We set sail and during the voyage we played Cron and Anchor, I won all round, but one fellow played owings and so by doubling up at every time he won it all back. During the trip I was on galley fatigues which was collecting the food in dixies and bringing it to the mess tables. One day I had to take a hasty sick departure, and whilst being sick over the side I got a backdraft. We were in the 2nd Fld Regt attached to the 1st British Infrant Division and arrived at Algiers, our destination was Bone, but we had to dock at Algiers to let The KSLI鈥橲 disembark, whilst doing so Jerry started bombing the harbour, so we were all ushered below decks whilst the padre sang songs and for all of us to join in, lots of loud singing and lots of brown pants. The ships capain started to sail out of the harbour, but managed to foul our propeller with the dock. S o we laid outside the harbour for 24 hours and then transferred to another ship, which took us on to the Bone. We were with French Sengalese troops, digging slit trenches into rocks. I was being used as a anti aircraft defence with Bren Gun and 100 round drums of 303 bellets. In our first position I was with another gunner Jones, we were stationed on a small hilltop firing at the German aircraft, it was my first experience watching the tracer bullets climbing in to the sky. Our next position was at Medjez el bab, and we had to go into no mans land with black faces and plimsoles, no talking or smoking and prepare forward gun positions so that we could leap frog each other into prepared positions. During the night the sky was lit up with lights and bullets were flying to and from everywhere. We had to beat a hasty retreat and managed to get back to our lines. I was also in possession of our one and only anti tank rifle together with armour piercing bullets, which were very heavy, and I had conveniently managed to lose them. I was sharing a SLIT trench with a gunner Brown and Leach, German tanks were heard coming in our direction, so they called me to position and mount my anti tank rifle, I explained I had ditched the ammunition and so was sent back to A Echelon to get some more bandoliers about one mile behind our lines, I managed them and get the bandoliers and was returning to our lines as Jerry was shelling our position. They got a direct hit on the trench killing Brown and injuring Leach (Lucky Me). We had a dozen or so skirmishes before Kerry was out of North Africa. At which time we spent a few weeks swimming and taking it easy. Even during this time we came across land mines and booby traps left behind by the Germans, some of which got results. Due to the killed and injured they were short of specialists in the Command post. So I was now drafted into the Command Post. Our weather was unbearably hot, how I longed for London and some rain. We were also guarding prisoners of war on working parties. The Italians used to decorate our tobacco tins for us in return for some cigarettes. We eventually set sail again this time for Taranto, we landed and drove to Nocera a small Italian village near Vesuvius. We were in a large Italian army barracks, it was a beautiful village and the people were very friendly. It was from here that I was sent with an advance party to Anzio which was situated near Rome. They were having difficulties at Cassino, so had decided to pass by an invasion further up on the East Coast. We landed and there was little opposition, but after 36 hours when the Germans had rallied and realised Kesselring had brought his Panzers to push us back into the sea. Although it was quite hairy with a lot going on he was unsuccessful, just as we were in forcing him back. So after the initial pushes and oparries over the first couple of weeks it ended in stalemate and we were stuck there for some four months. The ground behind us was a kind of bog land, it stood a man walking but was very soft, so we were lucky in that the shells very often didn鈥檛 explode when coming in. There was a hill in front of us so we were able to move around, I had recognised an American Army unit in woods behind us, I got talking to them and found out that though their rations were superior to ours they never got any beer. We used to get an issue of one bottle of beer per man each week. I made an arrangement to swap my beer for some of their rations, in the course of a couple of weeks I had managed to recruit about18 other squaddies who wanted rations for their beer. In my dugout I had a shelving dug into the ground and used to set up shop to transfer rations for beer. The yanks used t send a jeep over filled with rations and take the beer back. The signallers made us a kind of radio with a razor blade, needle, copper wire and we could tune into a few programmes just by moving the needle over the razor blade. Then suddenly after some four months we were once again moving to a place just south of Rome. We were there for a few weeks when I used to enjoy daily visits to Rome. I used to stand in the Coliseum and barter with the Italians with food, cigarettes and sweets. With the money I got from bartering I used to go into the shops and buy my mother and sister stockings and blouses and my brothers good strong German toys like I鈥檇 never seen before. After a few weeks we were back into action once again moving in stages up to Florence. We were taken out of the line and sent back to Pelestine, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
Whilst in the line at Anzio I had been taken on to the command post, together with my teaching at Larkhill plus the actual combat learning I became a fully fledged specialist, was awarded two stripes to become a bombardier, taught to ride the motor cycle and as a result accompanied our officer on all recce ventures. Back in Palestine we took on duties of curtailing the Jewish terrorists, who were engaged in bombing hotels and railways. I had a leave in Syria at an army camp, where I won 拢64 on Bingo, worth 拢8 in English money, but still a lot as I only earned 3/6 per week. Then I went on to a course at Helipolis which is just outside Cairo, we used to travel most days to the pyramids and carry out surveying. Most of my troop had been recruited a few months before me, so they were in the demob group 44 whilst I was 47. I got a months home leave called LIAP which was leave in addition to python, python being the demob number. When it was time for the number 44 group to travel home on demob, they included me as I was a one off being a number 47. When it became time to depart, I was made some very tempting offers to stay on as a regular. But my heart was set on London. I had always planned to travel home by bus, taking in all the scenary around me, but when the time came, I made it as quick as possible by underground. W hen we landed back in England I was posted to the Royal Artillery at Woolwich, didn鈥檛 actually do anything apart from travelling to my home in Hornsey. Then 128 of us were taken apart, fitted out in Royal horse artillery uniforms, moved to a bedraggled hotel in Marleybone Rd, then we made up three shifts of men in an army benevolent association show on the site of John Lewis in Oxford St. Admission was 6d and the programmes were 6d, they had on a show Herman Goerings bullet proof car, the sword of surrender as used by the Japanese, relics of the war, and various desert and Far East situations. I was demobbed late 1946 or early 1847, can鈥檛 really remember.
I had a Brownie box camera, so do have some photographs.

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