大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Roger Marsh of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the author's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 11: Attleborough, Norfolk
Mid September - early November 1942

Sorry all you East Anglians, it's a common cliche - friendly North, snooty South. Sorry, but at Attleborough, after Bonnybridge, Scotland it was all too true. After Bonnybridge and the extraordinary friendliness and generosity of the Scots, the contrast at Attleborough was painful and depressing.

Even as the hundred plus lorries of 133 Coy trundled by the trim, extensive lawns of the worthy denizens of the Norfolk town, there was a feeling that the common soldiery weren't welcome. People stayed in their houses, children were brought in, otherwise a twitch of a lace curtain here and there being the only sign of habitation. Driver Jock McQuaker stopped his lorry, got out of the cab, walked up a long drive and asked at a big house for a drink of water. The man of the house pointed into the distance: "There's a stream down there".

This snub brought out the vengeful beast in the common soldiery of 133 COY, we much regret to say. The man had a big garden with extensive front lawn and a drive that could accommodate a dozen Rolls Royce (he had just one, securely garaged).

That night his drive and lawn accommodated just six Bedford 3 tonners, lights blazing. To be fair they did leave after half an hour or so with a bit of manoeuvring, though one lorry got embedded in a sodden area of the lawn, and had to be towed out by the workshop's Scammel breakdown vehicle.

The perils of war - everyone has to play their part, even if it just means being nice to people you don't normally get on with. And the British Tommies can be deceptively good-hearted and cheerful sometimes. It must have been a bit alarming for the locals to have what seemed like an endless convoy settling down in their sleepy old town - but there was a war on. The expectation among the men was that their stay in Attleborough wouldn't be long and that they would soon sail to North Africa - perhaps from Harwich.

The USAF had settled at an airfield with the only decent barracks in the locality and 133 had to settle for big khaki tents in a field. They were pitched on a pre-war camp site. Stop taps provided them with cold running water.

Butch was often seen head under tap having a long drink of water, but apart from a glass of bitter now and again he didn't booze and neither did he smoke - that's why he was (and is) a clear headed dynamo!

Brotherstone and Powell went with some other lads from `A' platoon to the local pub once their camp had been set up, only to find that the pub was shut. The landlord came to the door and explained they had run out of beer. There was a sound of revelry from the pub however, and peeping through a gap in the shutters, Brotherstone saw Yankee airmen boozing away. He and Powell talked things over with other lads in the three platoons and they agreed to go, a dozen men at a time, at hourly intervals, during the next day's opening times right until closing time at 22:OOh. At least half the Company was involved and some, including Brotherstone and Powell, went twice!

The landlord got the message that Britons should be served, as well as Yanks. To be fair, though, he'd had the Yanks as regular customers for six months without too much trouble and he feared our lads would sooner or later trade punches with them, especially if the local women were involved.

The Yanks would be saying they were having to bale us out again - our men would accuse them of coming into the war late as usual - and of being overpaid, oversexed and over here. All the usual banter.

Amidst the increasing military activity Butch, Brotherstone and Powell did get time to go to the seaside; up to Great Yarmouth in fact; into the Sally Lunn cafe to be specific.

Petty and Warhurst had also gone up with them but had decided to take a dip in the North Sea. It was now October 1942, the sea was cold, grey and agitated and they took hesitant steps towards what Butch had called `the deep end'. Petty was proud of his pigeon chest, but that is only incidental to this little vignette of wartime army life. - He'd given Butch a ten bob note (a ten shilling note, two of them would make a pound, quite a lot of money then, even more than a RASC 2nd class Mechanic's pay which, as you know, was seventeen shillings and sixpence (87 陆 p) a week). He'd given Butch this ten bob note to save for him, not to spend in the Sally Lunn cafe.

Butch bought a very big Sally Lunn and a very big pot of tea to share with Brotherstone and Powell, using the said ten bob note.

The proprietress in error gave him change for a pound. His conscience hurt him. He got a scrap of paper and scribbled a note to Brotherstone:
鈥淪he's given me ten bob too much change. Should I:
a) Give it her back?
b) Give it to Petty?鈥�

Brotherstone said, "Lend me your pencil." and wrote his answer below Butch's questions:
鈥渃) Buy another Sally Lunn, adding P.S. Why didn't you ask Powell?鈥�

Butch took the well-written-on scrap of paper, turned it over and wrote: 鈥淏ecause Powell is a keen Methodist and too honest.鈥�

The Rhondda man finally had enough of their secrecy: "Whatever are you two writing about -you're like two silly schoolboys." The Sheffield man said:
"Shurrup an' eat thi Sally Lunn ".

There was another tea shop incident in Attleborough, this time involving the three of them plus Harold Rumsey-Williams. It started with a fire drill at camp. Butch got them in a row: "When the alarm goes follow me". When it went he ran like a hare out of camp, down the road and into the cafe followed by the three panting driver-mechs. They bought four slices of cake and this was brought to them piled high on a plate.

The bottom slice was noticeably thicker than the rest. All four men hesitated, each waiting for the others to take the less generous slices.

Finally Butch knocked the top three slices off and took the thickest slice. "That'll teach you three not to be so greedy.鈥�

Butch still had his motorbike - it had come down from Dunipace House by the same way it got there - in Corporal Mulchinok's lorry. The Falkirk civvy, Butch spoke about to Errington, either hadn't wanted it or he was a figment of the imagination, created on the spur of the moment.

The Manxman couldn't be shipped to North Africa though - or could it? No, better not. Helen Reid offered a solution in a letter to her son. Her sister, Butch's aunty, lived near her in Stoke and was prepared to store the bike for him for the duration of the war. He had a twenty-four-hour pass and rode the faithful Manxman on a long cross-country journey to Stoke, stayed overnight at his mothers' and made the even longer cross-country journey back via various rail and bus routes.

His mam asked him to write more often. She knew he was due to go to North Africa - it was top secret but the troops and their loved ones knew. She knew too that there were British Forces Post Offices (B.F.P.O.) with the army wherever they went around the world. If he let her know the number when he got there, she'd promised to send him a cake.

He promised to write - as he'd promised `Girly' Ruth Hawes too - but writing letters was not a strong point with Butch. In fairness, it's never been a strong point with most young soldiers as a letter from Deolali, India, from my father to his mother in 1922 showed:

`Dear Mother and Father,
Just a few lines to say I received your last letter safe and hoping you are in the best of health as it leaves me at present. There has been a lot of mail lost lately, for I have wrote a few before. We sail from Bombay on the 13th, on the `Hecuba'. Well, I think I have said about all. From your loving son Fred'.

Not of any relevance to our story of World War Two - but it proves a point.

And how many letters to loved ones from soldiers, sailors and airmen were actually written or dictated by their more literate friends?

Driver Wheeler's letters home

These general observations on letter writing lead us again to the mad-cap Geordie, Driver Wheeler. He had been a telegram boy in Civvy Street and perhaps thought receiving news meant almost invariably receiving bad news, so he never wrote home. He was saving his mother the apprehension that would accompany her opening his letters. There again, perhaps he was just lazy.

In fact, of course, he wasn't saving his mother any apprehension - she was frantic with worry that something might have happened to him. She had not heard from him for over a year. He'd never been home on leave - preferring to stay and have a laugh with the lads, or seek out girlfriends. She knew he'd joined up with 133 Coy RASC at Broxmore House, near Salisbury in May 1941. He might be in Egypt, India, Burma, anywhere now.

In desperation she wrote to the Officer Commanding 133 Coy RASC Broxmore House, near Salisbury, saying she was very worried and asking him if he could get her `prodigal son' to write home from wherever he might be. Her letter eventually reached Major Dodds at Attleborough Camp, Norfolk who took it very seriously, ordering Sergeant Allen to get Wheeler to see him immediately.

Major Dodds, nervously fingering his cane and gloves, ordered Wheeler to write home once a week without fail, wherever they were in the world, until the end of the conflict - or Wheeler's death, whichever came first. He would be on a charge if he failed to write and Sergeant Allen would have his 鈥榞uts for garters'.

Back with the lads, Wheeler had them in stitches mimicking the mincing major, but they all then put to and got Wheeler sheets of paper and envelopes and even a few tuppence ha'penny (1p) stamps - or whatever the postal cost was then (they were red stamps, anyway, with King George VI's head on). Rumsey-Williams loaned him his pen and a bottle of `Quink' ink, and even offered to draft each letter for the prodigal Geordie. Wheeler turned down this offer. He loved his mam and didn't want her to worry, and so every week from that day in October 1942 onwards, he sent the same personal, loving message home.

`Prodigal son reporting, all's well'.

A few days into the month of November 1942 and their sojourn in Attleborough was over, perhaps to the relief of its citizens. 133 Coy RASC was on the move to Glasgow prior to sailing from the Clyde to North Africa.

Pr-BR

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