大象传媒

Mr Walter Richard Stevens interviewed by Margaret Le Cras. Edited transcript of the recording.

I left Guernsey on June 23rd 1940. I was working at Le Riche, so we were looking out on Smith Street. We were listening to the Press, The Press Radio, and the chap said, he said that today鈥檚 would be the last boat leaving Guernsey.
The Antwerp was a Swedish cargo boat, and she was carrying about two thousand. I left work, went home to St John鈥檚 Street, and picked my wife up, had something to eat, had the dinner in the oven, but we left that there, then we went down to Burnt Lane and picked my Mum up, and we set off down the White Rock.
There was two thousand on board. They all got on about the same time as we did. And we went to Weymouth, and we stayed overnight in Weymouth Bay, and then we went. The next day, I told my wife I was going to join the Army, because I had been in the Militia for three years, and I had had a certain amount of training. And sometimes I wish now I hadn鈥檛 done that, On the spur of the moment, I was an Army man and I joined the Army. All the military age people from Guernsey and Jersey went to the Sydney Hall, the Sydney Hall in Weymouth, where we were advised to group into numbers, fifty. And I joined up with a lot of people that I knew, and I joined the Dorset Regiment. And I was in Weymouth for about six months.
It was shortly after I got to Weymouth, we were training, and we had a group of about fifty East Londoners joined us. Mainly were all Guernsey, Jersey, West Country people. And amongst them was Dick Walker, who was the captain of West Ham football club at the time, and of course I was so interested in football, and we played one of our first matches, I played for the Dorsets, in Portland against the Somersets, and when we got up there, we turned out on the field, and I had a look around, and I reckon about fifteen out of twenty-two players were either Jersey or Guernsey, a lot of them Muratti players, and my own friends, who I worked with, at Le Riche, had come for the Somersets, and shortly after that they took over the Dorset Regiment and turned it into Royal Artillery, because of the need for anti-aircraft guns at that time. And I joined a Bofor unit, that was Bofors anti-aircraft.
My wife went up to Halifax with my Mum. And my sister had already gone to Bolton with her youngest child, and her older son, who was about fourteen, he left Vauvert School with the schoolchildren, he went to Glasgow, no to Edinburgh, and it took her some time to find out where he鈥檇 gone, and as soon as she knew she was taking steps to get him back. He was well established with a family in the chemistry trade, and they wanted to keep him. He was a nice little lad, you know, and they wanted to keep him. He was about thirteen, fourteen at the time. Anyway, my sister brought him back to Bolton. She stayed in Bolton the whole of the time, but in time, after six months in the Army, I found out where my wife and my mother had gone to, Halifax, and by then my sister found out as well, so they got down together. My first leave was six months after I joined the Army, and I had to travel up to Manchester, the first time in a train, We left Weymouth, went to Temple Meads, in Bristol, and then to Crewe, changed again, then went up to Manchester, and when we got outside Manchester there was an air raid going on, so we couldn鈥檛 go in, we had to stay overnight outside, and then we went into the city, and we never seen anything like it, glass, and shops, and we went into a services home just overnight until I could get to Bolton,
Eventually my wife discovered I was still in Weymouth, and she boldly left Halifax and came down to Weymouth. And of course like the Army always do, as soon as she came they moved us. And we were in the Artillery by then, and we had done our training, at Yeovilton, near Yeovil, and we went down to Devon, Cornwall, to fire at the sea, our final training, and then we went on a scheme that took us up to Scotland, up to Glasgow, and my wife was stranded then, in Bolton, although she had a friend with her, and then they tried to join the Navy, of course you couldn鈥檛 get in the wrens, everybody wanted to be in the wrens because of the uniform, and they didn鈥檛 want to go in the Army, so eventually they volunteered for war work, and they went up to North London, and worked in a Spitfire factory, and when Spitfires come back damaged, it was a previous furniture firm, and they took on the repair of, you know, propellers and things like that, and made them airworthy again. And she was there for three years. In the meantime I鈥檇 got posted to Glasgow, I was a footballer, I played for St Mirren football club for two Saturdays, and I thought, this is it, this is fine from the war, and the following week, Army fashion, they moved us again, and this time they moved us, the Clyde, in a convoy of about thirty ships, Aircraft carrier, and flying overhead,
After the war I learnt to drive a car, and we went all over the British Isles, including Glasgow and places I鈥檇 been up there. In the meantime, I鈥檇 joined the Army as I said, and we went abroad, in this convoy, and we landed at Bone, near Algiers, in the Med, and I eventually spent four years in the Artillery, went down into Tunis at the end of, I joined the First Army, and we were waiting for the Eighth Army to catch us up, and eventually they did, and the war ended in North Africa, and I was transferred to Italy, so I came over and landed at Salerno, I had to have a re-medical, I had been A1 before, as I had hidden the fact that I had a perforated eardrum, and I was in the Artillery of all places, so from A1 I became B7, and I had to be found another job, so this is another amusing鈥 was consigned to a transit camp, called 159 Transit Camp, in Rome, about half way between Rome and Naples, down the main road, and I was a Sergeant, ordinary Sergeant, and I had to call the roll every morning, of the people in camp, and in the afternoon there was a list of cards of everyone that was in there, and the regiment he belonged to, and where his regiment had gone while he鈥檇 been in hospital, and it was our duty to get them back to their units. So I went down there one morning 鈥� I鈥檇 been there about a twelve month I suppose 鈥� I went down there one morning and picked up the cards, I didn鈥檛 look at them, there was about sixty people perhaps, and I went out on the parade ground, they were all waiting for me, so I got them into three ranks and started calling the roll. I got down to about twenty-five, thirty, and I looked at the next one, and I called his name out, Signalman Ron Maindonald, He was working at the Press Company, next door to me, I was working at Le Riche. I knew him very well. I looked up and it was. I mean that was unusual, that was something that could only happen once鈥nd talking about going back over the war years, I came back home and started work at Le Riche again, and my wife came home with me, and I said to her one day, I said Doris, 鈥淚鈥檓 going to take you back there one day, to show you all the places we鈥檝e been鈥�. 鈥淥h yes?.鈥�. We didn鈥檛 have the money at that time. Anyway after a while things happened, we saved money, and we took a holiday to Venice. And we flew from Guernsey to Verona, we stayed overnight in Verona, and went to Venice, spent two days there, and started a tour down towards Rome, on the Adriatic side, and we passed through places like Verni, Arrezzo, Bari, all those places, where we鈥檇 routed soldiers back to their units, so we went down to Rome, and because I鈥檇 been stationed in Rome I knew quite a bit about Rome by then, so I took her into Rome, and showed her everything there, and then we went on further South, we went down to Salerno, and Capri, and then a later time we went on holiday again, and we went to Tunis, and we went to Soush where we had a gun during the war, and we walked on the sea wall there. When we first got to Soush it was dark, couldn鈥檛 see anything, we put the gun up on the wall, and we got up, had a look out in the morning, and across the bay, what do you think, Red Cross. Red Cross boats. The C忙sarea, the Isle of Guernsey, the Isle of Jersey,

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