Recollections (joining forces and training prior to invasion of Normandy)

The following was written by my father before his death in 1983. I would like to submit it to your archive. My father went on to gain a Military Medal at Arnhem.

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On Tuesday 2 October 1939, I was sworn in at Hulme Town Hall and sent to Kitchener Barracks, Chatham with 8 other recruits. On arrival we were given our army number. The barracks were full of reservists.

Saturday 6 October 1939. In the morning we were on the parade group with the reservists (over a 1000 at least). Names and numbers were called out and, on hearing your name, you stepped out and received a slip of paper with a division number on; in my case No 43. You then had to go to the guardroom where all with similar numbers were formed into groups, a man from each group picked out, given a railway warrant, told he was in charge and told to collect rations and deliver himself and his group at the destination shown on the warrant. In my group of 9 the destination was Codford, Wiltshire. The chap in charge was informed of the train times and it was his duty to deliver us to Codford Station that day. We arrived at about midnight (Codford Station at midnight seemed in the middle of nowhere). The station-master phoned and eventually a truck turned up and delivered us to Stockton House, a large mansion. We were received by a nice chap who told us he was the Quartermaster. He took us to a small room with a table and forms and told us to sit down and eat (tins of salmon and bread and butter with cocoa). After having supper we received 3 blankets each and taken to the main room of the mansion and told to get down on the floor and sleep.

The next morning we found we had been dumped on a TA unit who had been told 24 hours before to expect, in the next few days, 230 men; we were the first 9! The rest arrived within a week and we were formed into a company but with no company number. Training was to be by the TA unit on which we were billeted.

The training lasted until June 1940 and consisted of marching from billets to breakfast at Bampton Manor (about 3 miles), Bampton Manor to training ground (a field in Codford 2 miles further on), from training ground to Bampton Manor for dinner (2 miles), back to training ground at Codford or a route march for the afternoon, back to Bampton Manor for tea (2 miles) and then back to billets (3 miles). All this in the clothes we had left home in; in my case: 1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of socks, one shirt, one collar, one tie and one suit. I wore these for 3 months!

Leave was granted on 30 December 1939 and I was given a khaki battle-dress, that is all. After a train journey from Wiltshire to Manchester then a train to Oldham, I arrived at the top of my home street and cried — here I was, a soldier of 3 months, arriving on my first leave - my shoes filled with cut-out cardboard soles, no socks, a battle-dress, the same shirt I had left home in, no hat, my civilian gas mask in its cardboard box and, under my arm, my civilian shirt wrapped up in a groundsheet. The hero from the war returning!!!

On arriving back from leave the company, (by now called 553), was split into 4 groups: one group forming the nucleus of 553, one group to 204, another to 207 and the group I was in to 260 stationed at Codford Wood Store. On arriving there were greeted by the OC and given a welcome speech in the manner of “let me be your father” type and explaining to us that we were there to make up 260 — a company formed in April 1939 and consisting of a substantial number of ex-grammar school boys, making them up with tradesmen, of which most of our group were. When the OC (who, by the way, had been a schoolmaster at the grammar school and before that a Captain in WW1), gave us the welcome lecture, we found out the following morning at breakfast that he hadn’t been “talking bull”. Breakfast consisted of 3 Shredded Wheat sugar and warm milk, eggs (2 if required), bacon, bread, butter and jam. (In the company we had left the food was so badly cooked that, on occasions, 200 rations were dumped into the litter bins. Barm cakes bought at the local tuck shop made up the staple diet of the company). After breakfast at our new company we were issued with a complete kit: 2 pairs boots, 2 pairs socks, 2 sets of woollen underclothes, 3 shirts, 2 battle-dress, one hat (side), braces, cleaning tackle (housewife), 2 towels — in fact, everything bar a rifle (this I got in July 1940).

From the time I joined 260 Field Company RE, I felt I was in the army and from then on training started in a slightly more realistic manner and progressed more and more realistically as the years passed until June 1944 when we sailed to Normandy and fought our first battle at Hill 112.

The first month in 260, January — February 1940, we spent digging square bastion trenches as in WW1, digging a sap and living on the site. The winter of 1939-40 was the worst for years, ice on the tree branches so thick that some of them crashed to the ground with the weight of ice.

In March I was sent on a hygiene and sanitation course to Keogh Barracks, Aldershot, the RAMC depot. On returning to my unit we moved to Dunstable. We arrived at 8 pm and my section were billeted in an empty house on the main crossroads in the town.

At 5 am the following morning I was shaken awake by a sergeant and told to report with pencil, drawing pad, map and compass at the Officers’ Mess (about 600 yds away) at 6 am to a Lieutenant Hayes (whom I had never met). On reporting to him her said “You’re a mechanical draughtsman aren’t you?”
“No, a bricklayer” I replied
“xxxxxxx hell. You’re no good to me!” he replied “I want a draughtsman!”
“’Owd on a bit!” I said, “How do you know I’m no good to you? What do you want?”
“I’m meeting retired generals, colonels at least. We’re siting pill boxes for the LDV and I want someone who can make a sketch of the site with map references and position of pill boxes. These will be sent to the Area Commander and plotted on is map. A xxxxxxx bricklayer’s not good for that!”
“Isn’t he?” I replied. “This one is — and it’s too late to get anyone else.”
“Aye, it is” he said “I’ll see what you can do.”

I did all right and, for 6 weeks, every day we were off at 6 am returning at 11 pm having had dinner at one of the retired general officer’s residencies each evening, me in the servants’ quarters with the butler, cook, servants etc. I suspect I had better food than my officer, at least, more of it. (The beer was always Worthingtons I noticed).

In June the company went to Pangbourne doing bridging and watermanship on the Thames. The weather was glorious. We spent our time in naval cutters learning watermanship, lifting pontoons off their transport and making rafts, joining them together to make a ?Class 20 Bridge. This we did day in and day out for 4 weeks.

When the bridging exam was over we moved to Dedham (Constable country) and there prepared bridges for demolition using gun cotton and 808 plastic. Here we found that 808, a gelignite-type of explosive, if handled by bare hands, gave one a violent headache. It was at Dedham I was made a lance-corporal and my pay went up from 6/- per week to 28/- (the pay for a sapper of my trade was 3/- per day but, if married, 2/- went to your wife). That left 7/- per week less 1/- per week barrack room damages so 28/- made me quite affluent.

After Dedham we moved to Ongar in early August. The Battle of Britain was taking place in the sky above. London was bombed on the night of 7 September and the following day quite a number of refugees arrived in the village. The night-life became quite lively then but in a few days we moved to Sandling Park, Hythe where, whenever we went out we had to carry rifles, steel helmet, respirator and 50 rounds of ammunition in case of invasion.

Just after Christmas we moved to Deal and billeted in empty boarding houses. My job, with a section of men, was to take up 2 rows of beachmines that had been laid in the shingle beach between Deal and Sandwich and replace them with 4 rows wired together and mapped. The 2 rows we picked up had been laid 7 paces apart one row staggered behind the other. The land was sand dunes with sand leading down to a shingle beach. The method we used was to kneel on the edge of sand and shingle and prod until we found a mine. This we carefully uncovered, pressed in the safety catch and lifted, placing it at the side of the hole. We would then stride 6 paces parallel to the beach, prod for the second mine, make safe and lift that out. This meant we had found one row so then we took the middle of the 2 mines already found and paced 6 steps towards the sea and prodded for the third mine. When found this would give us the start for the second row then 2 men, one on each row, would find and disarm their respective rows, one man being 3 mines in front of the other in case he set one off. The mines would detonate with a 40 lb pressure. We lost 2 men early on before adopting the 3 mine distance rule. After that, we had a minimum of men on the beach and those carrying the mines from the beach keeping well clear of the 2 finders. Each day a stretch of beach would be cleared and wired off, 4 rows dug and new mines laid, wired together and mapped. I was on the job for about 11 months. We took 3500 mines up and re-laid 7000. This was mainly on the beach of the Sandwich Golf Course.

In August 1941 we moved to Mote Park, Maidstone. We lived in tents while we erected Nissun huts to serve as a winter camp. During this time we went on a lot of exercises, mostly de-fencing, laying make-believe minefields, blowing make-believe craters etc. On one occasion digging in and actually blowing a set of Fougasse — these were 50 gallon oil drums filled with petrol and oil, buried in the side of a defile with a small charge of explosives behind or underneath. The idea was that when a column of enemy tanks [illegible] the spot the Fourgasse were blown. I don’t know if they were ever used in action but, at the demonstration we did, the flame covered an area of about 50 sq yds and nothing could have lived in it. I think this would have stopped some of the tanks, of course, this was the whole point of the exercise!

By this time I was a sergeant. he company consisted of 4 platoons — one, 2 and 3, the 4th was Headquarters platoon in which the office staff, MT, Q stores, batman formed the personnel. The 3 working platoons were made up of one officer, one platoon sergeant, 2 lance-sergeants, 4 corporals, 6 lance-corporals — a total of 1 officer and 72 other ranks. At this time a large training programme for senior NCOs and officers had been implemented by the School of Royal engineers at the Military Engineering (SME), Ripon and units had to send an officer and sergeant. The platoon sergeants were to valuable to be away from their platoons for weeks on end. I was made a sergeant to go on these courses which I attended off and on until the invasion of Normandy.

On 10 June 1944 we went from Hawkhurst where the company had been stationed, for the last 4 months, to the East India Docks, London. Tented camps had been erected on bomb-cleared land. One of the men was in a tent on the actual spot, so he said, where his house had stood before the bombing. We stayed there one night and boarded a liberty ship which sailed the following night. On arriving off the Normandy coast we anchored and stayed for 6 days on board. The rations were Compo 14-men packs. One pack held rations for 14 men for one day. The packs were numbered 1 — 6. Each number a different menu. The trouble was that our packs were all the same number and we fed on Russian Salad as the main meal for the whole of the 6 days! From the liberty ship we eventually transferred to a naval tank-landing ship of which the Captain had a meal prepared for us of steak pudding, chips and peas (marvellous!).

The landing on the beach on 19 June was, for us, a dry one. (For months we had practised waterproofing the vehicles and driving in specially prepared concrete water tanks). After landing we were directed to a large field where the waterproofing was removed after which we drove for a few miles to our allocated location, a small village, Puto-en Busain, about 1½ miles behind the front. We stayed there until the start of 8 Corps attached, code named “Epsom”. 8 corps constructed of 11 armoured divisions, 15 Scottish divisions and 43 Wessex Division. The 2 infantry divisions 15 and 43 each had an armoured brigade attached.

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