大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Marie on behalf of John and has been added to the site with his permission. John fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

In 1943 a call went out for young men to train as railway shunters on the mainland. I volunteered and within a few weeks I was sent to the marshalling yard at Feltham in Middlesex. The size of the place was an eye-opener 鈥� it had 32 miles of track and sidings and a fleet of nearly 100 steam locomotives. I was given lodgings with the family of one of the yard foreman, gave my ration book to his wife and then had 2 days to look round and familiarise myself with the yard and the workings of this vast layout. After another couple of days to learn the rudiments of loose shunting, I was assigned to a shunting gang which consisted of two class three shunters and one class one shunter who was in charge. The class Three shunters were, depending on their knowledge, either working the hand points or unhooking the wagons to get them marshalled in station order. You had to do a lot of running to keep up with the work and I was put on the shunting pole unhooking the wagons and working twelve hour shifts. When I started in this gang I was told how the previous shunter had had a very serious accident and had both his legs amputated below the knee which wasn鈥檛 the kind of thing I needed to hear. There were a lot of points that needed to be stepped over 鈥� on the night shift with restricted lighting this was difficult and made even worse by air raids when all the lights would go out but we had to carry on working until the German bombers went over when we would go for shelter, or when the nearby anti-aircraft guns started firing and shrapnel would rain down like confetti.

After working twelve hour shifts I would arrive at my lodgings very tired and filthy so would wash and clean up, have my meal and then go straight to my room and bed. One evening I was woken up by the husband banging on my door 鈥� the Germans had been dropping bombs on a nearby depot but some had started landing on the roofs of the local houses and everyone was outside with ladders and rakes getting these incendiary bombs down onto the ground so they could be covered up with sand and earth which would put the flames out. And until I was woken up, I hadn鈥檛 heard a thing!

As winter fell shunting became even worse 鈥� we now had to contend with the black-out, frost, snow and ice underfoot and above all the London smog which sometimes lasted days. We had to carry out the flat shunting using whistle codes so the driver knew to pull up, set back or stop. Even so, there were derailments and collisions everytime the smog came down, and the freight trains leaving the yard were hours late. As these had to be slotted into the mainline passenger train service 鈥� with 4 trains an hour into waterloo and 4 trains an hour out, the signalman controlling all this mayhem had quite a job.

Early in 1944 the freight traffic started to increase more than ever 鈥� this was for D-Day, but of course we didn鈥檛 know it at the time. Because of shunting staff shortage I only got one Sunday off in five, when I would attempt to visit my family on the IOW. I would get away late Saturday afternoon and be back on Monday. This worked well until Saturday 4th June 1944 when I arrived at Portsmouth harbour to find that the paddle steamer boat service to Ryde had been suspended 鈥� the only boat to the IOW was the Portsmouth to Fishbourne car ferry and there were no more of them until Sunday morning. I went back to Portsmouth Town station, found somewhere to get a sandwich and a cup of tea and then saw the Station Forman and told him I couldn鈥檛 get home. He fixed it up for me to sleep in the compartment of an electric train and for someone to give me a call in time for the first car ferry. As this ferry came out of the harbour I saw rows and rows of ships large and small stretching out as far as the eye could see. The weather was terrible and I felt so sorry for all the soldiers being tossed about in the flat bottomed landing craft by the very rough sea. When the ferry landed, I got the bus home to Gunville and explained to my mother what had happened, had a meal and then had to go back to work. I heard that the invasion of Europe had started and turned up at the yard to find they were looking for volunteers to go as shunters in Southampton Docks to help deal with invasion traffic. I volunteered straight away and on D-Day plus seven, I was on my way. I had to report to the Dock Superintendant鈥檚 Office traffic Section 鈥� a large building in the old docks facing Canute Road. I was given my lodgings address and told to wait for the Superintendant 鈥� he noticed straight away that I didn鈥檛 have a London accent and his face lit up when I told him I was from the IOW. He鈥檇 been brought up in Alverstone which was the last station I worked at before I went to London. By now he鈥檇 obviously formed his opinion of me and he said 鈥淚 know you鈥檙e very young, but if I offered you a Head Shunters job do you think you could do it?鈥� I said I would give it a jolly good try and he sent me to the New Docks as the track layout was a lot easier to learn than at the Old Docks.

The next morning I reported to the New Dock Inspector and was assigned to a Head Shunter so I could start learning the track layout for the whole of the New Dock area. It was no easy task, but after nearly two weeks learning on different shifts I said I was ready to take over with my own engine. This job turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my career. I had to deal with trains of petrol in jerricans, these had to be shunted out from the sidings, taken across the roadway and pushed onto the dockside at berths 107 and 108 to be loaded onto pallets and hoisted on board the ships. Ammunition was loaded at 101 and 102 berths, and things like large tents, nissen huts, picks, shovels etc were moved from berth 103 to 106. We also had three ambulance trains fully manned and ready to go 24 hours a day. Two of these trains were American and one of British medical staff, and whenever a hospital ship was due to arrive at the Old Docks, the New Docks shunters would have to pull these trains out of the sheds and over the Town Quay, threading your way between pedestrians and motor traffic, and all the vehicles that were parked too close to the railway lines that would mean you had to stop, find the driver and get them to move it so you could carry on. Some days there were many of these trips!

By now I had settled into my lodgings 鈥� the front bedroom and a small sitting room of a Victorian house in Winchester Road 鈥� and I persuaded the landlady to take in another shunter so I had some company when off duty. Shunters were allowed extra cheese rations and this pleased her, but not us 鈥� nearly every day we had cheese in our sandwiches! So being on a 12 hour shift I sometimes went into the Dockers Canteen where the food was basic but filling, and when off duty I went to the Government run British Restaurant serving wartime meals. This restaurant was on a bomb site in the High Street, Above Bar. But everywhere you looked there were bomb damaged buildings, especially in the Old Docks and surrounding areas. We were now getting Allied troops back from France, the first lot I can remember were the American Rangers from Normandy. They had taken awful punishment and lost a lot of men trying to get a foothold on 鈥淥maha鈥� beach landing. After some very severe fighting they had managed to advance inland, and now after a few weeks they were relieved and came back to England. They were being sent to London for Rest and Relaxation. The first train to leave with these bomb-happy troops kept getting stopped by some of them pulling the emergency cord and it took many stops and starts just to get to the Millbrook exit onto the mainline. The train driver and guard asked the Docks Traffic Inspector to get the officer in charge to stop the cord pulling or the train would not go any further as it would be a hazard to other trains on the mainline. Sure enough, that put a stop to all thr trouble!

Just outside No 8 gate, on spare ground sloping down towards the sea, the Americans had built a concrete hard to load tanks and troops. These large boats were departing one after another, and then after a few weeks the flow of men and tanks got less. They then laid temporary railway tracks down the hard and started loading railway freight vehicles. These had arrived as a kit of parts in large crates and were tested and assembled on spare land at the Millbrook end of the docks and then pulled down to Number 8 gate and pushed onboard. The track had to be flexible in places to compensate for high and low tide and some derailments did occur but a crane was kept on stand-by to deal with these. The boats started coming back full of German P.O.Ws instead of being empty. They were unloaded and marched to a very large compound of huts, and barbed wire which had been used by the Allied Troops days before D-Day. There they were deloused and then loaded back onto trains to be taken to Kempton Park Race Course or Newbury Race Course under a military escort to await dispersal to proper P.O.W. camps.

Amongst all of this work, we also had traders inside the docks who needed their wagons to come and go. Hibberts had wagons full of lager from Alloa in Scotland 鈥� it was bottled and ready to go onto ships; Cadburys had ships chocolate and cocoa arriving daily; there was Ranks Flour Mill supplies and Myers Timber Merchants receiving materials, plus coal for the coal fired ships, so we were kept very busy.

I remember receiving a letter from my mother early in 1945 with some bad news, our village had lost another young man, John Caute, who鈥檇 been a school friend of mine. He was serving in the 鈥淩oyal Tank Corps鈥� and had been killed crossing the Rhine River. There鈥檚 a plaque to his memory in the village church at Godshill where he was an altar boy.

V.E. Day arrived and I remember all the ships in the port of Southampton sounding the morse code V on their sirens and the church bells rang for hours, no black out restrictions anymore and the pubs were full that evening. The 鈥淐hannel island鈥� boat service started up taking refugees and supplies back with them. The Queen Mary came back into Southampton and the Queen Elizabeth came to Southampton for the first time since she was built. They were both still in wartime grey paint and put into service repatriating American troops 鈥� if memory serves correctly they took 10,000 troops at a time. Later the Queen Mary had to go into dry dock to have all the barnacles and weed removed from her her bottom as it was affecting her speed and steerage 鈥� I was one of the shunters who took away the loaded wagons of evil smelling scarpings. I made friends with the dry dock forman and he took me down the stairway to the bottom of the dock so I could see just how big she was, and the size of her proppellors and rudders. It was quite an experience! Then in 1946 I finished my time at Southampton Docks and was sent back to Feltham Marshalling Yard to become a train despatcher.

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