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This story was condensed from‘WAFFLER’S TALES’ by W A Merrill, and submitted to the People’s War Site by Alan Allsop, volunteer with HandHCAP and has been added to the site with Mr Merrill’s permission. The author fully understands the site terms and conditions.

CHESTERFIELD
End of September 1939 the war was entering its third week and I was busy working as a motor mechanic/driver in the garage of Woodhead’s in Chesterfield. We were fitting blackout discs to the headlights of the delivery lorries to dim the light and the main topic of conversation (as we were all 19 and 20 years old) was, should we wait to be called up or volunteer’ for the branch of service we preferred.
Four of my friends volunteered for the Royal Marines and within eight days were enlisted. Sadly Geoff Fox was killed when H.M.S Repulse was sunk and Eric George became a marine commando and was severely injured at Anzio Italy and had his leg amputated.
With my twentieth birthday approaching I decided to go to Boythorpe Drill Hall in Chesterfield to see what was on offer. I was welcomed by a smartly dressed Sgt. Who said ‘follow me’, and before I could get my thoughts together, I was asked to strip, cough and I was passed A1 by a medical panel and asked ‘when can you go’.
I thought maybe next week, next month or even next year. The Sgt said sign here, gave me a travel warrant to Newark and four shillings to join the No 2 Training Battalion as a mechanic, and said ‘Go tomorrow. Good Luck you are in the Army now’.
I went back to work and told my boss what I had done, set off on my bike to tell mum.

On arrival at Newark Barracks we sat down for our first army meal, two slices of bread and marge and two hard boiled dutch eggs on a tin plate, followed by slices of bread and marmalade with a mug of tea. The corporal in charge told us to assemble outside at 1800 hours and we would be taken to our billets. We asked ‘what time is that?’
At 08-00 hours the next morning we were loaded into a three-ton truck and taken to the ‘Parochial Hall’ to be kitted out with our uniforms etc. The drill Sgt put us through are paces and by 1940 we were a fully trained Company comprising of four sections. The Company Orders stated that everyone was to be on parade to be inspected by our new C.O. a major from the First World War and had been decorated with the Military Cross. The C.O. told us we would be given three days leave before being posted abroad.

GOSPORT
During the first week in July we were moved to Gosport on the south coast where heavy equipment was arriving from a holding depot. I was no longer required as an officer’s driver and was transfered to the R.E. workshops. Later without any warning I was attached to No 6 Bomb Disposal Section (B.D.S.) at Lee on the Solent.

During August 1940 the German air raids intensified and I arrived at No 6 B.D.S. with a 3 ton Dennis lorry adapted to carry bombs. My first experience was after a raid on Portsmouth, a row of houses had been hit and four bombs had failed to explode. After a long process the bombs were loaded on to the lorry and I was escorted by the M.P to a remote sandbagged area on the marshes where they were safely exploded.

Early October 1940 we were kept busy carrying out repairs to several bomb damaged aerodromes, filling in bomb craters and removing debris in order that our aircraft could continue to be operational.

During the last major daylight raid on Sept 30th by the Germans, four Heinkels (HE111) were shot down. Twelve airmen were reported missing and the bodies of four were later washed ashore. One of these men was ‘Willi Schocke’ a twenty-one year old air gunner, our section was used to convey the body in one of our three-ton drop-side Dennis lorries with a German flag draped over the coffin to be interred at Gosport Cemetery. All due reverence was observed for a departed soul aged 21. Although more than sixty years have passed Willie Schocke’s headstone still stands alone in the cemetery in Gosport.

March 1941 I was again sent to the B.D.S detachment at Hilsea near Portsmouth.
During a hot spell we went to a ruined area of Portsmouth where a large U.X.B. had been located and fenced off, the stench was awful. The rescue team had found the bodies of a young mother and her little girl on the rubble that had lain on the rubble for almost a month. With due reverence their remains were taken away, and the bomb was defused by a young officer. I was very grateful, now I could transport the bomb to the disposal area without mishap. Later I was transferred back to my own unit.

GATWICK
I was given five days leave before the section was moved to Gatwick to make new runways (now Gatwick Airport). On arrival at Gatwick, we had to live for eight days under canvas again, ten men to a tent. Then we moved to a large empty house and we had to sleep on the floor, twenty-five men in one bedroom.

Working on the runways was heavy work and each morning at 10am and 12-30pm a 15cwt truck would bring our mid-day rations of two slices of thick bread with a choice of bully beef, Spam or cheese. Twice a week we were taken to the baths at Redhill, on these occasions the general public were not allowed and there were always plenty of hot water.
After completing the Gatwick runways the section was moved to a place called Westonbirt in Gloucestershire. The winter of 1941 was spent in a nissen hut with an iron stove. Waking up in the mornings with frost and ice on the inside of the windows, washing and shaving in iced cold water didn’t lift our spirits much, either.
We knew we would be posted overseas to a destination unknown and the mechanised staff Sgt. made sure that the mechanical equipment was in top working order ready for service.

SCOTLAND
Late spring of 1942 orders were received to move to Scotland. The cooks' lorry left first to prepare meals later in the day and our first meal was near Wigan with meat and veg stew with a mug of tea. The next stop was Hadrian’s camp at Carlisle where we stayed overnight in two barracks huts and the following day we arrived at Monkton near Ayr and soon we were erecting bell tents which were to be our homes for the next few months. On the 25th of August I was given ten days leave to be at home for the birth of our first child. Our son arrived the following day and the next day the local policeman arrived with a telegram to return back to my unit immediately. After only 12 hours at home I was on the train back to Scotland.

NORTH AFRICA
The day had arrived to say farewell to Monkton and local buses arrived to take us to the railway station en route to Greenock and to the troopship ‘DUNNOTAR CASTLE’. Up to this time I had only seen a rowing boat on the Queens Park lake at Chesterfield.
The ship was a little way out of the harbour and we were ferried across to board her.
Shortly after midnight the anchor was raised and the huge diesel engines began to take us away from ‘Blighty’. On the second night at sea the ship ran into violent storms and gales that lasted three days and by this time almost all suffered from seasickness.
We did not know our destination, but later one of the officers came to tell us we were bound for North Africa. Two ships in the convoy pulled into Gibraltar and we passed the coast of Spain to calmer waters, ideal for the U-Boats to operate. In the early hours of one morning a huge explosion shook us from our hammocks. One of the ships with a large number of nurses being sent to the field and base hospitals had been torpedoed.

On the 24th October the now historical Battle of El Alamein broke the desert silence.
Now we knew our destination, on the 10th November three invasion forces of 33,000 troops were to land at Algiers. On landing at Algiers our company set off in single file and we seemed to be walking for hours and arrived at ‘Maison Carrie’. Here we spent an uncomfortable night with only a blanket and ground sheet on a cold November night in North Africa. Our transport was still held up at the docks and after breakfast we started walking again. We saw our first German soldiers on this advance being escorted to a prisoner of war camp.

We reached a derelict brickworks and this was decided to be our staging post to wait for our transport and equipment. The German Luffwaffe launched a heavy air attack and one of our mates was killed during the raid. When our first trucks arrived we could hear a pig squealing in the back of a ‘three tonner’ the driver said he had found it wandering lost and alone so decided to enlist it into our company and we had pork for dinner the next two days.

On the 13th May at 2-15pm a message was received from the C in C General Alexander that the Tunisian Campaign was over and all enemy resistance had ceased.

ITALY
With the end of the North African Campaign all our equipment was collected from various stages of the front line and brought back to base in readiness for the next phase of the war that we thought would be Sicily. On the 9th September was the invasion of Salerno and it was here that my classmate at Heath school, Denys Widdowson was killed.

Our equipment had now been loaded and we moved in convoy to the beach at Bizerte.
With thousands of other troops we boarded the Tank Landing Craft and in the early hours of the morning we set off and said farewell to North Africa and wandered what fate awaited us when we landed at Salerno Bay, Italy. We landed at ‘Forre Annunziata’
The ground troops had already cleared the area, which made our landings easier.
One of my most vivid memories was the poverty and starvation of the civilians. We were surrounded by children begging for scraps and left overs, an old man holding an empty bean can asking one of our drivers to give him the remains of his beans and soya sausage from his mess tin, which he did and the old man indicated that he was taking it home to share with his wife.

After the fall of Casino we found ourselves heading up route six on the road to Rome.
We entered Rome three days after the American Forces on June 7th 1944. The D-Day landings on the coast of France overshadowed all the events in Italy at this time.
Our Company stopped a short distance south of Perugia in the ruined town of Terni. Our equipment was returned from various places back to us and we assumed it was to be prepared for a final push.

Christmas Eve 1944 is one that I will never forget. It was my fifth Xmas away from home and we had moved into a ruined factory and the office block without windows provided shelter over the Xmas period. We lived and slept in the back of our Scammels and Matador Tractors. After evening meal I collected my N.A.A.F.I rations, fifty senior cigarettes, two bars of blended chocolate, and a bar of Lux soap.

A major offensive by the Allies on the Italian front was launched 10th April 1945 and we knew the end of the war was near. I was detailed to fetch in some of our mechanical equipment and on returning back to base I stopped under some sweet chestnut trees. Everywhere was silent except for the birds singing. I gazed across the deep ravine and saw a German burnt out tank and as I returned back to my lorry I came across two recent German graves, one of a man aged 32 and a boy aged 19. They were supposed to be the enemy, yet I felt deeply sad.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a three ton truck making its way up the steep incline and as it approached the occupants shouted and cheered ‘Its all over’ the date was May 5th 1945.

Although the war was over I stayed in Italy for another fifteen months before I finally came home. I was demobbed at Aldershot and with three of my company friends we went to London to catch are various trains home. We had been together for over six years, we shook hands and said our goodbyes and there were tears all round. Although the platforms were thronged with all manner of servicemen, when my friends departed I felt lost and alone.
It was good to be going home at last, and for a very long time afterwards I missed the comradeship of my mates, some of which never came home.

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