大象传媒

I was born and lived in Leicester and before the war my father had died and I lived with my mother an older sister and three brothers, I was the third son. I was called up to the army on the 10 June 1939 before I was working as a warehouse clerk for Wolsey a hosiery firm. It was my 21 birthday I went into the 1st militia company, it was a new unit. We had a blue jacket and I think grey trousers I was stationed at Chilwell RAOC a big depot from the first war and we did the ordinary army training after two months when I finished training war declared. There was a raid alarm but it was a false one. I was on 1/6d a day as a private. When war was declared I was promoted to lance corporal and earned 3s. There was a rumour we were going to go to Turkey because they were expecting them to join up with us. They didn鈥檛 and we went to France we were an Ack ack unit and it was our job to put the guns on the airport for the RAF. The guns were from the last war, we had two army vehicles the rest civilian ones that were commandeered. We maintained these guns and vehicles. We had a little predictor that detected the sound of bombers. We were stationed luckily at Epergne near the Moet & Chandon champagne factory, so we had a good six months there and there was no action. I was promoted to full corporal in the office as a clerk after about almost six months I had a week鈥檚 leave back in England and then the sergeant went back on leave and the war started. He didn鈥檛 come back so I was made up to sergeant. On May 10 the Germans attacked and we were told to pack up and leave because the RAF had been wiped out because the guns only shot up to ten thousand feet and the Germans were coming in higher than that. We were told to retreat but not more than 3 miles an hour because we would damage the guns. Once we got away we moved down towards Brest on the River Loire. We had fourteen lorries and we were towing fourteen vehicles and I was in the captains car that had broken down behind and was being towed he broke the two rope many times and when he realise he had to come back for me. We arrived in Brest and had to smash up our vehicles the first Canadian s had arrived with all lovely new vehicles after we had finished smashing up the vehicles we returned to Plymouth. We were split up I was sent to Stockton on Tees to a similar workshop and they gave me the job of manning the petrol pump and manager of the vehicles although I couldn鈥檛 drive myself!! I was there for about two months and I got orders to visit several of the units in Newcastle and roundabout and measure the people up for uniforms. I had never done this but I did and a little later I was posted to Reading. We were given tropical gear, shorts and so on we didn鈥檛 know where we going went on a train to Liverpool and on a ship called the Monarch of Bermuda sailed out in the Atlantic and turned south and went down the west coast of Africa and called in at Cape Town and spent two days there it was marvellous. We toured round and went to dances at night. Then we carried on to Suez and found out we were attached to 73 ack ack battery which was Glasgow. We had to install guns up the canal and then we moved up to Port Said and installed them there. Stayed there for six months. The ships could not get through because of the war down in the Med. We then moved up to the Ports and the ack ack guns were on the harbour. Then after Tobruk was relieved and then I was sent up with half the unit to Tobruk where we joined the 51st heavy ack ack Battery. The Germans use to raid nearly every day. We shot down about 50 while I was there. We had to leave there because the Germans were getting close. I was told there was our regiment with 3.7 guns and a light ack ack gun unit and the captain of that and ours were told one of us could stay behind. The light unit chap said he was fed up going up and down the ports and he would stay. We had only just got out when the Germans came and took it. The Germans had 88mm which doubled up as an ack ack and artillery gun. Eventually we were told to go to Hell Fire Pass on the borders of Egypt and Libya and we were there a few days and we didn鈥檛 hear anything and our captain sent a dispatch rider to find out what was going on and found that they had forgotten all about us. We were told to get on the road to Alexandria. There were eighty men all together. We moved down the Nile Delta into Alexandria, the navy had evacuated and we moved into one of their barracks. Of course when we got to Alamein we stopped, there was a big depression and we could not go forward We held the Germans off and then Alamein we could hear the guns going for 24 hours it was about 20 miles away. Rommel鈥檚 tanks were so much better than ours After Alamein we had the remnants of one of our tank division and we looked after them for a bit. Most of them had been short and many wounded. The tanks had been shot up and not done much damage to Rommel鈥檚 and it was a very sad thing to look after these people for a couple days. We then had to go and take up the Port positions again. We went to Benghazi, Tripoli we were there when Winston Churchill visited us and we moved on to Sfax in Tripoli As the fighting finished in Tripoli and the Germans completely beaten we had instruction to return to Cairo and we went on ship back to Alexandria and then on to the invasion of Sicily which we eventually took over. Sicily was a very nice place except for the mosquitoes. The villages are all on top of hills and there was a round place full of water and they used to pump water into the tank and run it down the hill to water the vines. We use to go in here for a swim. The people were lovely, some nuns came and asked us for food. We were pretty well supplied with food and at that time in Sicily we were getting American boxes and you use to get a box with various items in it. We were on the invasion of Italy and the Germans had left and we were on a tank landing craft sitting in the sun it was beautiful. We landed and were stationed in an empty school. We went to Barrie and we did not see any other troops got in there the first night. We were buying champagne the first night at ten shillings a bottle. The people were very friendly some of them invited us for meals. We worked our way up to the Sangro river and spent Christmas there and in January as I had served the longest I was due to go back to England ready for D day. It was 1944, we went back to Naples to get a boat back to England and we could see Vesuvius erupting in the night time. We sailed back to Glasgow and went down to Nottingham and then we were posted to Salisbury Plain to a workshop there and our unit had to provide people with waterproof tanks to go on invasion. (Putting the exhaust up and over the roofs etc.) Because of this I never got to France. Before the invasion we had about 200 American and British sergeants in our mess. As people were transferred out I was given the job as quartermaster and training instructor and just about every job you could think of as everyone left. I was then sent to the ack ack Training camp in Wales and then to London, this was when the V2 were coming over. I was then sent to Alberfield which was the headquarters of REMY and became a teacher. Teaching about the organisation of REME. Then I was demobbed I had done six years. I was in Wales during VE day and we all went to a hotel and had a good singsong round the piano and had a meal it was at Barmouth and right along the coast. Our driver he was the worst for wear and we had to carry him into the driving seat and drove us back along the cliff top. In Salisbury we watched all the planes going over for D day. Invasion of Italy we were stationed at the bottom among the grapes oranges and tomatoes. I used to pitch my tent to a tree and then I had a mosquito net because the Italians had warned us about the mosquito. When we were in Italy, sergeant major said lets go for a ride. Drove along the front line but there was no shelling and we smelt where the dead bodies were and it was terrible. I was lucky being in the workshop but we worked from 7-9pm and sometimes longer. When in Tobruk we were in bunkers there were fleas in them. I use to go to the post office everyday to fetch the mail. I used an old car that had broken down it was called the Smoke Box. It was parked on a hill because it didn鈥檛 have a starter motor. I would run it down the hill to start it and park it on a hill so that I could get back. My mother had to take in a border during the war and she took in the local curate. There were one or two women in the hospital but we did not see many women during the war. The soldiers used to say they could smell the women if they were around because they were so rare. My best pal in the army was in the armoury. He went out on a motor bike ran over a mine and was killed. I used to go and visit his parents when I was stationed in Reading and they made me very welcome. I was in Lanzio and the ack ack guns had gone to fire for artillery just behind the front because the Germans did not attack and officially were guarding the airport. We got shelled from the front line from time to time. We had a little house where we had our food and we heard this bang and heard the noise of the shell as it landed a few feet away from us. We were shelled in this house but never got hurt, I heard after we had left that the house did eventually get blown up.

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