大象传媒

Mr. Mike Berry understands the site鈥檚 rules and regulations and has agreed that the following can be entered on the Peoples鈥� War site.

鈥淭he Man Who Was Called Up and 鈥楧emobbed鈥� Three Times.鈥�

I lived with my parents in Birmingham and in March 1938, attracted by the two weeks鈥� paid annual holiday at Territorial Army camp, I and some other lads joined the TA 5th Battalion, Royal Worcestershire Regiment. I joined as infantry but later converted to be trained to operate searchlights.

I was called up at the time of the Munich crisis in September 1938, posted to Fort Dunlop in Birmingham on anti-aircraft duties, given a Lewis gun and told to shoot anything that might attack us. After the crisis we were stood down (demobilised) and returned home. Some employers were not very patriotic as I discovered that I had lost my job as a sales representative!!! After a few weeks, however, I found another job.

In about July 1939 I was called up again for one month鈥檚 war training, as acting unpaid Lance Corporal; - the TA had no funds to pay soldiers! After the month鈥檚 training I was stood down (demobbed) again.

This was short-lived as, in August 1939 I was called up for the third time, this time for Active Service. As Notional Detachment Commander I was put in charge of nine others in a Searchlight Unit. I was later made up to Detachment Commander on 2/- per day plus 6d for being a Lance Corporal.

In early 1940 I was sent to Yeovil to train others, in the process being promoted to Corporal and later to Sergeant. We were stationed near the Westland Aircraft Company, with Bristol Aircraft Co. not far away 鈥� both targets for the Luftwaffe. One Saturday night there was a bombing raid with our billet receiving a direct hit which killed eleven of my comrades. I missed it fortunately, as I had been to the pictures with a girlfriend and got back to camp as late as permitted, 23.59 hours, to find chaos and death. That date saved my life, and it was not very pleasant for a 20-year old to have to help clear up the remains of his mates. Three days later the site was machine-gunned by three Heinkels.

A few months later I moved again. Being a radio ham, I was sent to training school at Coventry and later Shrivenham to be trained as a radar mechanic. After that, in addition to my new duties, I was sent to guard the South Coast.

In 1944 after D-Day I went to Europe aboard a tank landing craft which took three days to get to Ostend from Tilbury. The weather was bad and most of those on board were sea-sick. I managed to avoid some of the unpleasantness of this by spending most of the journey in the cab of one of the lorries aboard.

I was with an Advanced Base Workshop which was used to repair anything from tanks to radio sets. We passed through France, Belgium and Holland before ending up in Cologne. One unpleasant task en-route was to recover a tank from a river, complete with the bodies of some British soldiers still inside.

After spending my war with the Royal Worcester Regiment, the Royal Engineers, the Royal Artillery, Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, with a change of cap badge each time, I was demobilised for the third and last time in March 1946.

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