大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples's War site by J. Marshall on behalf of Leslie McClelland and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I was 13 and lived in West Ham when the War started and my school (Plaistow Grammar School) was evacuated to Weymouth. This turned out to be the Phoney War and we all came back after 3 months. In 1940 it started properly and we were bombed out and had to take refuge in a school for several days. My family moved to Newport in Essex and stayed in a hut used as a weekend shelter by cyclists. It was so cold that there was ice on the inside of the windows! We stayed there about a year and then my mother came back to London and managed to get our house repaired so we all came back.

My school was still fragmented so I decided to leave school and went to work as a clerk in a stationers. By this time my brothers were in the Forces and I volunteered for the RAF as air crew even though I was too young. When my call up papers came my father told them I was underage. He probably saved my life because the casualty rate was 75%.

I then volunteered for the Royal Marines and did the training 鈥� my father was still upset but gave in eventually. I thought the Royal Marines uniform was very glamorous and the girls loved it! The training was very hard but I got fit very quickly.

We were posted to Landing Craft at Poole and trained for D Day. We went in before D Day to protect the landing troops and stayed to defend the ships and Mulberry Harbours from strikes by 2 man torpedoes and explosive motor boats. After that I took part in the landing at Walcheren Island off Antwerp which we had to capture because it was a key position. It was a terrible time as we lost 1/3rd of our squadron 鈥� we got caught in our own rocket fire.

Between D Day and Walcheren I came home on leave and my brother took me to a dance in a hall in Manor Park where he introduced me to a girl. She thought I was a 鈥渟masher鈥� and I thought the same! When I went back after leave I wasn鈥檛 able to tell her where I was going or when I would be back so I was really worried she would think it was 鈥渟hips passing in the night鈥�. Luckily we made contact and we were married within a year.

After I got back from Walcheren my commanding officer recommended me for a commission and I spent 9 months at the Officer and Cadet Training Unit at Brentwood. I was promoted to Captain quickly and I stayed until 1949.

After that I went to work in a bank, I wanted to go back to study but didn鈥檛 want to stop earning!

Many years later, we had just moved into a new house and someone had left us a picture of servicemen obviously taken during the war. I realised some of the men looked familiar and realised I was one of them! It turned out that the solicitor dealing with the sale of the house had recognised my name and sent the photo. We met regularly after that to reminisce about old times.

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