大象传媒

My name is Donald F Cogger and I was born in London in January 1926. When war was declared in September 1939 I was thirteen and a half years old, living with my parents and family in North London. Like the majority of school children at that time, I was evacuated with my brothers and sister to the country away from London, which was expected to be bombed. After my fourteenth birthday in January 1940 I was old enough to leave school and return to London to live with my parents and go out to work. This was quite usual in those days as further education was very limited.

For the next three years I worked at various jobs in factories to help with war work and also worked in a garage learning about car maintenance and repairs and also learned to drive, although underage for a licence. At the age of sixteen I joined the Home Guard and had two years鈥� training as a combatant should the need arise. We were trained in all aspects of fighting including house to house clearing which we did in some of the bombed out areas. London was heavily bombed in those years and my family and I were bombed out on two occasions, fortunately without injury. My father who had served in the First World War was a Special Constable and my elder sister served with the Auxiliary Fire Service and both were kept very busy. I spent many a night sleeping in bomb shelters and underground stations.

After my seventeenth birthday in 1943 I was eligible for call-up so I volunteered to join the Royal Navy, but after a medical I was turned down because of a perforated eardrum. I tried again later that year but was again rejected on medical grounds as unfit for overseas service. This problem also meant that I was not liable to be called upon to work in the coalmines as a Bevin-Boy. Being very disappointed at not being able to join my friends in the services, I carried on working in a garage. In 1944 I was old enough to hold a driving licence and passed army tests with the Home Guard on cars, lorries and motorcycles. It was this experience which lead to the next part of my life.

Early in 1944 I was directed by the Labour Exchange to report to the Ministry of War Transport in Berkeley Square in London, but was not told what it was about. The M.O.W.T as it was known was not a very much-publicised set-up, and I found out at my first interview that their main purpose was to coordinate movements of shipping and supplies between the civilians and military, the shipping side being of paramount importance. However, it was explained that each unit of the M.O.W.T was self-sufficient with its own transport facilities, and as some members of the personnel could not drive, my first job was to teach those persons to drive and to maintain the transport. This went on until the end of May 1944.

Although it was well known that an invasion of France was imminent I could not imagine what my part could be. However in the first few days of June the unit I was with was sent up to Southampton. It took us two or three days to get there for the whole of this area was choc a bloc with troops and equipment. It was then clear that the second front was on and that I would be part of it as a civilian, in a blue uniform but unarmed, despite being classified as unfit for overseas service.

All this is over sixty years ago so memories are not as clear as one would like, however it was I think 9 or 10 June when our unit embarked on board an American L.S.T (landing ship tank) and set off to Normandy. It was as we crossed the Channel that we were told that we would be attached to the American forces and to cooperate with their equivalent of our M.O.W.T, the W.S.A (War Shipping Administration). I landed with my unit on Dog Red, Omaha beach the next day. We did not know at that time that this beach head was the most bitterly contested of the American sector and the American losses were horrendous, until the front line was forced two or three miles inland. My first few days in Normandy were rather muddled for nobody at that time knew what to do with unarmed civilians. I spent my first week or so camping out with the support troops sleeping in a pup tent over a hole in the ground. However things were gradually sorted out and our job of liaising between the Merchant Navy and the troops began. This involved a lot of coming and going between the merchant ships anchored offshore and the beaches. This was very interesting work and the Americans treated us very well and eventually I was billeted in a fisherman鈥檚 cottage in the village of Vierville sur Mer, just above the beaches.

As the liberation of Normandy progressed our job was to visit the small ports and harbours of the Normandy coast to advise whether or not they were safe for ships to use and we finished eventually in Cherbourg. These trips were not without some danger for we often had to dive for cover from attacks from German aircraft and in Cherbourg we came under sniper fire from small pockets of resistance. Eventually we were transferred to 21st Army Group HQ near Bayeux and my job changed to being dispatch rider, for by then all the Normandy and Brittany ports had been captured and I was kept busy taking dispatches between 21 AG and the port commanders. Still being a civilian and still unarmed I had some frightening experiences as it was difficult to prove to some trigger happy GI鈥檚 that I was on their side and not a spy. Carrying a British passport helped a lot in these circumstances. As the liberation of France continued several other ports were visited to clear them for shipping. These included Calais and Le Havre, so I got to know France quite well.

After Paris was liberated my unit was transferred to S.H.A.E.F stationed in Versailles and several units of the M.O.W.T were billeted in the Chateau Les Source in the village of Louvecienne, just outside Versailles. I stayed there for some months and my job basically was as chauffeur collecting V.I.P.s from Le Bourget airport and from Calais and Le Havre and taking them to conferences at various HQ. A lot of British government officials and ministers visited France at this time and although the job was interesting it was not exciting. However, I learned about people and life in that period.

When the ceasefire came to Europe we were told we would be going to Germany to check the docks at Hamburg, Bremen, and Bremerhaven for use by allied shipping. Before going to Germany most of us came back to the UK for leave for two weeks and for advice on what our role would be in Germany. At one meeting the question of us being unarmed was raised and most of us said we would not go back unless we had some protection. After a frantic consultation with 鈥淧owers that be鈥� we were issued with side arms but strongly advised not to use them unless life-threatening situations occurred. We then return to France through Holland to our designated venue in Germany. My unit, now reduced to just two, were sent to Bremen. The Americans mostly occupied this area and we were billeted with them and were looked after really well for they granted us Officer Status and were treated as such. Time here passed very quickly for there was much work to be done in the dock areas of Bremen and Bremerhaven before shipping could use them, as they had been very heavily bombed by the allies. Two very interesting experiences occurred in this period. Firstly, I was sent as a assistant to a Lloyds surveyor to examine the liner, Bremen which was laid up in Bremerhaven harbour, and spent two days with them going from to stem to stern of this great liner. This was a fascinating experience as I had never even seen let alone boarded this type of ship. Secondly, another occasion required a visit to a town on the river Weser, a place called Vegesack. Here was found an assembly line for U-Boats, and there were a dozen or more of these boats in section all along the riverbank in various stages of completion, a frightening thought if they had all been completed before peace came. In this period I met a lot of German people and they did not appear to bear any grudge against us and were as relieved as us that the war was over.

In the autumn of 1945 my job was beginning to wind down and I was wondering what would happen next in my young life when I was asked if I would be interested in a temporary post with the Foreign Office. This would entail going to Poland as an assistant to a Vice Consul who was going to reopen the Consulate in Gdynia where he had been stationed pre-war. As I had no other plans I was pleased to accept this offer. I met up with the Vice Consul on board a merchant ship in the Kiel Canal and within days I was in Poland. The work here was similar to what I had been doing in France and in Germany, checking on the docks for shipping to use to repatriate Polish servicemen and refugees. This was a civilian program working with Polish people trying to restore their country. One big stumbling block was the Russians who virtually occupied the country at that time and were very much against the Poles trying to re-establish themselves. They did, however, respect our British nationality and apart from the occasional dispute they left us alone.

The six months I spent in Poland went very quickly and having come through the very severe winter of 1945/46, when even the Baltic Sea froze, I was glad to come home to England a much wiser and mature young man.

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