大象传媒

There was a broadcast on a Saturday night at the end of May 1940 asking for volunteers for Home Defence - 18 year old's as that was the age for call-up. So I went to the Recruiting Office first thing on Monday morning and volunteered. Within a week they gave us a uniform and sent us home.Then we went to Witton Barracks, Birmingham,- a coach load of us went from coventry and we were put into tents and we began elementary training, drill and that kind of thing.After a week we went to Sutton Park and we had two weeks training there and then we went to Wittering Aerodrome for the defence of the base.Meantime we did various training and worked day on and day off,but every time the siren sounded on our day off we had to turn out in case there were German paras landing.So it was for most days and that went on for several weeks.Then when it came to November I went on leave on the 11th and Coventry was bombed on the 14th right in the middle of my leave.The unit then went to Nuneaton on bomb damage clearance, looking for survivors and that sort of thing. We were there for a few weeks before moving to an airfield that was being built near Rugby, the Church Lawford airfield. There had been a lot of pilfering going on and as they didn't know what to do with us they sent us there. We still carried on with the bomb damage activity but we had to march from Nuneaton and I was the guide. They had asked if there was anyone who knew the villages in the area and I said that I did but I didn't know where the airfield was. So we marched all the way to Church Lawford but couldn't find the airfield. I said to one of the officers that we should ask someone the way but he replied that we couldn't as it would make us look stupid.We marched and marched but eventually had to ask somebody the way.All the blokes were having a go at me as I was supposed to be the guide. Anyway we stayed at the airfield but still went to Coventry on bomb clearance.
Then after a few weeks we were moved to the aerodrome at Catterick in North Yorkshire to carry out guard duties and carry on training.I never went outside the gates for six months. We moved about the north east coast and back to Catterick.
By now I had reached the age of 20 and went in the Regular Army.I was gived the choice of three regiments and I chose The Royal Warwickshire Regiment,that's when I joined the 2nd Battalion who were stationed just outside Croydon on defence duties for London.They had been there for months-ever since Dunkirk. At this time we were given orders to go abroad and were sent on 4 days embarkationleave.We were kitted out with cold weather gear, thick anoraks and other things from our ankles to the top of our heads,sleeping bags and so on - we were not very happy at the thought of it.After our leave we carried on with defence duties and then given another 3 days leave and then the draft was cancelled and we never did find out where we might have been going.
The battalion was then sent to Ripon in North Yorkshire. In between training we were helping farmers to get the crops in.Then it was in to some hard training, speed marches like ten miles in 2 hours in full kit - then we got it down to 1 hour 35 minutes. We then went to the Cairngorns in Scotland for three weeks mountain training then seven days leave. Then it is landing craft training at a Commando base and from there to Berwick on Tweed for a few weeks, still doing the same training. We put into the 79th Experimental Army Tank Unit and we were the Infantry side of it. Training really started getting serious, hard that was the beginning of 1943. After that we then went into the Third Division which had been ear-marked for the Normandy landings. Training went on and on and sometimes we went for days without a meal and the excuse was that the cook's truck had broken down. I remember very well a forced march we did from 0700 to 2100 without anything to eat and only a drop of water from our water bottles. One thing I remember is that we had to help the Royal Engineers to build a Bailey bridge across a river but when it was finished we were told that it had been blown up and we had to swim the river.

This hard training went on for days and eventually we reached a small hamlet where there were urns of tea on tressle tables. We were then told that just two miles along the road there was a hot meal waiting - but at that point I just keeled over and couldn't go any further. It was just as if two spikes had been driven into my feet. Just then a Bren gun carrier passed and I got a lift back to base.

From then we would do landing craft training once a week for weeks on end in the Moray Firth. One funny thing - three landing craft were moving abreast and approaching the beach when two of them grounded on a sand bank several hundred yards from shore, the officers jumped off the ramp into the sea while we carried on and did the beach landing without supervision. We were laughing ourselves silly at the officers as they struggled to come ashore but then the Company Sergent Major ordered us back into the water - that stopped us laughing!

Then there was a time when we were along the Firth of Clyde, a tented camp with a brick building in the middle. This turned out to be a drying room - so strange as we had never seen a drying room before and thought it a bit ominous. We started training day and night and got soaked either by the weather or the practise landings. After each session we collected dry uniforms from the drying room and this went for three weeks - it was really rough.

After this moved to just outside Haywards Heath in Sussex in a tented camp. After a few weeks we were put behind barbed wire with no communications with the outside world but then we were given three separate 36-hour passes, moved to another camp for a couple of days and finally onto the landing craft on the 5th June. However, the landing was delayed for 24 hours. We were taken off and given an hours P.T. then back onto the landing craft for the D-Day invasion.

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