大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wendy Ford and has been added to the website on behalf of Derek Bishop with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Derek Bishop says that his father dismissed all his war time experiences as 'nothing' but Derek thinks different. His father Laurence was with the Army in India during the mid 1930's. He was about 20 then, having been born in 1915. When the war broke out he was posted to North Africa possibly serving with General Alexander. Then he was sent to Italy.
One night he and his fellow soldiers were driving a 7 ton truck through Italy at night and were looking for somewhere to camp for the night. They saw a farm gate which was open and pulled in. When they drove out in daylight they saw a notice on the gate saying Achtung. The field was mined but fortunately for them no one was hurt. In fact the make sure the field was mined they shot a few rounds into the ground and discovered they were live mines when they suddenly blew up. A close shave indeed.

Continuing to drive through Italy after a while they came upon a scene where obviously an ambush had taken place as the road was littered with dead people and animals. The driver of the vehicle pulled up and refused to drive any further. Laurence then took over and said that they had to continue to reach their destination so unfortunately had the grim task of driving over the bodies.

On another occasion still travelling through Italy, the Sgt. instructed his men to 'sharpen' their shovels. When one man asked why, the reply was 'you'll soon see'. A little further on they reached the outskirts of a village and it soon became clear why they had to sharpen their spades. Some Italians started to attack the vehicle and tried to steal it. Once again, Laurence and his comrades had to do something very unpleasant in that they used their spades as weapons. Derek says that his father's description of this occasion was rather gory.

Eventually Laurence and his group arrived at a big house with a group of Italians standing outside. It was a big house with a garage and the Italians appeared to be digging up the garage floor which would have been a dirt floor. So wishing to help Laurence and his friends started to help dig up the floor and lo and behold they eventually found a Vintage Rolls Royce which the family had buried so the Germans could take it.

Years later when Derek asked his father to tell him more about the war, he said he didn't do anything much! Derek's mother worked in Admiralty Arch at the time dealing with train movements.

Derek has a lot of memorabilia of the war including ration books, ID cards for his mother, father, grandmother and himself as well as his father's Good Conduct book and his release papers.

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