大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Jas from Global Information Centre Eastbourne and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Dent with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

I was never stationed in the place. The concert lasted about an hour and a half and Vic Oliver was on stage for at least half of it.

After the third interruption from the air raid siren which was on the roof of the town hall he remarked, 鈥淚鈥檓 going to have to kill that guy鈥�. This got a good laugh and underlined the degree of fatalism that had crept in.

If you stayed put you were no more likely to get hit than if you moved somewhere else : very British : the feeling was that if it had your name on it there was no pointing inconveniencing yourself by trying to dodge it.

I think it must also have been from Horsmonden that I was sent to Leeds Castle. I wasn鈥檛 supposed to do anything of the sort; I was actually supposed to be going on leave and had actually drawn two weeks pay and was due to go on the next day.

It seemed there was a shortage of paper money at the time and I had been paid entirely in florins and half crowns 鈥� I recall that they weighed heavily in my great coat pocket - there being no where else to put them.

Next thing was a call to the company office: 鈥淪orry, Corporal. You鈥檙e not going on leave; you鈥檙e going to instruct the Sussex Regimental Stretcher bearers in First Aid.鈥� I was duly delivered to Leeds 鈥� a pleasant little village a few miles from Maidstone.

I found a sort of office and presented myself. 鈥淲hat can I do for you?鈥� said the occupant. I explained my mission and he said 鈥淵ou鈥檙e unlucky 鈥� they鈥檝e gone off on a training exercise and won鈥檛 be back for three days鈥� - the sort of thing that became known generally as a 鈥榯ypical army balls up鈥�. The chap was very helpful: I dumped my kit on the piece of floor he offered me for a bed.

He told me when food would be available and suggested I might go to the cinema in Maidstone which was a few miles away. I did much the same on the next day and on the third day they all came back and spent the rest of the day cleaning their equipment.

On the fourth day I was allotted an hour to talk to a bunch of them. I started with dental hygiene 鈥� a compulsory subject but of short duration as the training manual only offered about five lines on the matter.

I did my best with 鈥榟ow to stop bleeding鈥�. Then in response to a question. The cause of hiccups. Mission accomplished and back to base where, presumably, I was allowed to go on leave.

This is where the eastward drift starts and I think drift is a good description as I really have little recollection of location or sequence and it certainly didn鈥檛 matter as we were never in a town 鈥� usually some miles out and one piece of open country is very like another and we were doing the same job wherever we were.

I seem to have glossed around the medical side of things but we were always an operational unit where local troops could send their sick, lame and lazy with their aches and pains, boils and carbuncles and all the various oddities that make up the rich tapestry of life in the world of medicine.

It鈥檚 just that I wasn鈥檛 always involved. Our main moves were in areas of Canterbury, Deal, Dover and Thanet which is a posh way of saying Ramsgate and Broadstairs.

Looking at the map the logical move would have been to Canterbury but in military matters 鈥榣ogical鈥� does not always come into it 鈥� there are other factors especially as the whole idea of the constant movement was to keep one step ahead of German intelligence so that they didn鈥檛 know where the soft bits were.

In June Hitler thought it was a good idea to invade Russia. We all thought it was a good idea too as although it didn鈥檛 remove the threat of invasion, it made it a lot less likely. We were some miles out of Canterbury but we could walk three or four miles each way across open country for a trip to the cinema or the 鈥楻ose Club鈥�, a forces canteen near the cathedral.

I got in quite a bit of rugby around this area and was picked for an army team representing south east England. I don鈥檛 know why; I was tall which could be quite useful but I was mainly involved with unskilled labour in the scrum. Anyway, I was on to a good thing and never bored.

Ringwould was a pleasant place and I think I was more involved with the medical side. It was from here that we were taken to see the cross channel guns. The Germans had them as well. I don鈥檛 think any of them were a very serious threat 鈥� it was largely a matter of prestige.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the obvious dummy consisting of a ring of sandbags with a scaffold pole pointing up at about sixty degrees with a solitary stuffed baffle dress propped up beside it.

This was obviously intended to distract the attention of the man with the bombs before coming to something much more realistic that could well have been the real thing and would have attracted the bombs.

The real thing of course was largely underground and barely visible.
It was also from here that we were taken in to Deal for a swim. It was no treat for me as I have never been a natural swimmer.

My father used to say to me 鈥淛ust lean back and you鈥檒l float鈥�. Totally- untrue. However, on this occasion I couldn鈥檛 chicken out so I presented myself by the tank traps at the waters edge and one of our hosts pointed out that the mines had been cleared from here, pointing left and here, pointing right, so don鈥檛 go beyond those points.

I stayed in long enough to save my pride and then swam back. In all my swimming career I have never kept my feet off the bottom for so long. One thing that did intrigue me at Deal was the oil tanks at the top of the beach with pipes running under the shingle. Had an invasion taken place the valves would have been opened and the beach set on fire. Interesting thought.

One of my better memories is a spell at Heene just inland from Broadstairs. The building had been a fairly large boys鈥� school and was being run as a fairly extensive small hospital. I was put in charge of the 鈥榮cabies block鈥� which was in fact the school sanatorium and somewhat apart from the rest of the complex.

I suppose in nursing circles this would have been regarded as the bed of nails but in fact it suited me very well with my unconventional bunch of east enders. There were six of them and I got them together and explained that the disease was caused by a little mite that burrowed under the skin.

The somewhat brutal treatment consists of taking the tops off the burrows with the sort of scrubbing brush you would normally use on the floor. A quick dry and then sloshed all over with the medication 鈥� it stung a bit; the same again on day two.

The third day it was bath and calamine lotion to cool the victim down a bit then home on the fourth. I pointed out that with 40 beds occupied by patients and 20 more on stretchers on the floor between the beds and any other corner we could find, there would be a hell of a lot of bathing and scrubbing.

I suggested unofficially that if we could get it all done in the morning three could have the afternoon off and the other three the next and so on. 鈥淗ow does that seem?鈥� There came a few brief moments of thought transference, then one of them said 鈥淪oun sorite wiv us, Geoff鈥� and we were away.

Actually, this was probably the best thing that could have happened to us: it was hard graft but it was something positive. We were doing a real job instead of just filling up time. There were two bathrooms so we had two chaps doing the scrubbing, two sloshing the medication and the remaining two collected the meals from the kitchen and took the pyjamas to the laundry for exchange for clean ones.

Also the patients clothes to a steam disinfector for treatment. I was fully occupied with the paperwork and the other chaps settled down to it well and I could hear their merry cries from the bathroom 鈥渓eft knee up, right knee up鈥� then another voice 鈥渨ho鈥檚 that fool with both knees up?鈥�. Simple but it was working well until one morning an over zealous sergeant turned up and insisted we went and did PT with the rest of the mob.

I had to have words with God on that one and it never happened again. The next diversion came with the arrival of two military police sergeants as patients who tried to pull rank on me 鈥� a corporal 鈥� and demanded special consideration including use of the staff room which was a strictly non scabies area.

One of my lot sidled up to me and said 鈥淪orite, geoof. Leave鈥� em twuss.鈥� It so happened that both the police sergeants fainted in the bath and I never heard from them again.

The spread of scabies was quite phenomenal and I was given to understand that this was partly due to large numbers of people crowded together in air raid shelters and soldiers on leave were bringing it back with them. Also new recruits called up into the forces brought it with them.

We had been working hard and doing a useful job and it was with some regret that the eastward drift moved us away from Heene.

We had formed a strong bond of friendship and team spirit that lasted right through until we went our separate ways in 1943.

We moved on to the North Foreland which was uncommon bleak and I don鈥檛 remember much else about it except for one event which was a training exercise which involved a mock invasion of the Isle of Sheppey.

This time I was wearing my stretcher bearer Corporals鈥� hat again and I was given a map of the area which consisted mostly of thin blues lines denoting drainage ditches and one small blob called 鈥楥odds Cottages鈥�.

My job was to organise a relay of four bearers and a stretcher at regular intervals along the route. The system was that a squad from point 鈥楢鈥� would carry a stretcher with a casualty to point 鈥楤鈥� swap the lot for an empty stretcher and return to point 鈥楢鈥� and so on down the line.

It was getting pretty late in the year by now and my efforts were rewarded when at first light I went to see my chaps were still where I had left them. Out of the cold autumn mist I could see the outline of a cow grazing.

As I got closer I could see one of my boys sleeping on a stretcher with the cow enjoying a good lick on the pillow beside his head. My one regret was that the fellow woke up after the cow had gone away. It would have been an interesting experience for him.

That, I think, was the final high light of 1941 and the year ground to a dreary and bleak close.

1942 took over in turn and was just as dreary mainly because our circumstances hadn鈥檛 changed 鈥� but not for long as we were soon on the move again 鈥� this time to the North Downs. It was possibly February but certainly by March that I found myself in the familiar surroundings of Caterham 鈥� I could hardly believe my good fortune.

I was able to get home 鈥� to Purley 鈥� on occasion. We did a lot of marching 鈥� fitness was the objective 鈥� and it amused me to march my stretcher bearers past my old school. I never saw any sign of activity; they could well have been evacuated for all I knew.

We took stretchers up to the chalk escarpment of the North Downs and practised negotiating them in awkward conditions. The weather was good and it was rather nice being out and about in pleasant conditions.

We didn鈥檛 know at the time but it would be a long time before that happened again. The assumption that we would soon be heading for foreign parts became reality when the tropical gear was handed out.

Khaki drill shorts and cotton shirts to say nothing of the ghastly sun helmet things that have become the butt of many a TV comedy programme. The big surprise was the shorts. Rather baggy things that would have looked pretty odd on a tennis court even if they had been white. But their main feature was gigantic turn-ups which created quite a remarkable sight. They weren鈥檛 particularly comfortable to wear either.

The supposed reason for this facility was that in nineteenth century India, Lady Roberts didn鈥檛 care for the sight of the soldiers knees and the turn- ups had to be lowered whenever she was around. It gave us a giggle or two at the time but in the light of subsequent experience I think it more likely that they were to be lowered at sundown to give the mosquitoes a smaller target. Whatever their purpose one of the first things that happened on our arrival in Egypt was that the shorts were all collected up and a local tailor removed all the turn ups, a vast improvement but when we got them back, one of my two pairs had one leg two inches shorter the other.

Still a quite remarkable garment in a different way.

We can鈥檛 leave Caterham without mentioning the bath. The building we occupied had obviously been a very plush des res and the bathroom was immense 鈥� big enough for quite a lot of men to ablute at the same time. The bath itself was a king-size (Henry VIII at least) affair with suitably impressive brass taps and at the curved end a sort of built in shower.

It was as though two baths had been welded together at right angles. The horizontal bit was basically conventional but the vertical part was one huge shower with spray coming from any of three sides or above and the bottom of the bath. The area of body to be sprayed was selected by a series of knobs at the sides of the shower.

If you wished for a quick back and sides followed by a cold douche it could be arranged without getting your hair wet. I should add that one of our number had been a boiler man before being called up and prided himself on keeping us well supplied with very hot water which was also very comforting at times.

Not always: on one occasion I saw one chap experimenting with the shower controls while sitting in the bath until he finally treated himself to a jet of scalding hot water from right under his backside. Prior to this I hadn鈥檛 realised that it was possible to rise vertically from the bath while still in the sitting position.

I do hope that bath survived the post war developers. It was a work of wonder and should be in a museum somewhere.

Eventually the great day arrived. I should say night really because it was happening at about three o鈥檆lock in the morning. Our kit bags had gone on before and we were up and fully dressed in our greatcoats, webbing equipment with pack and water bottles filled.

Presumably a symbolic sweep of the floor and then we were ferried down to Godstone South station to meet and board our train. I don鈥檛 remember a thing about food 鈥� probably a crude sort of sandwich some time later.

To this day the memories come back as we drive under the Godstone South Bridge.
We knew nothing of our destination but as NCO in charge of the compartment I was given charge of THE toilet roll. Any person wishing to use the toilet had to apply to me for use of the toilet roll. This implied that we were in for a long journey.

We were. At that time no trains passed through London for safety and security reasons so we were embarked on a circuitous trip in the dark, much of the rest dozing in a resigned sort of way so we had no idea of our progress or whereabouts until early dawn some twenty four hours later the tram stopped.

A sign said it was Gourock. I had never heard of Gourock. I wondered if this might be a deliberate spelling mistake for Greenock to fool the enemy or perhaps the two places were close together. This turned out to be the case and so we were in Scotland and on the Clyde.

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