Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Journey Into Belgium! (part 5)

At last at the end of august I was on a truck heading inland to the city of Caen or rather where it had once stood . As many will know it was almost totally destroyed by the violent battles and bombing as the allies strove to break out from the bridgeheads.

The roads were also impassable and it was easier to stand on the back of a truck than to get a sore backside by trying to sit.

We were put on a very long line of cattle trucks which could have come straight out of a film about Nazi victims being sent to the concentration camps. To attempt to send so many reinforcements by rail at that time was a massive success for the railway operations of the Royal Engineers gamely assisted by the Pioneer corps who were comprised of the most poorly educated grades of servicemen at that time.

The reason for this was that almost the entire French rail system in the area had been destroyed by the RAF to hold up the German army attempting to roll us back to the channel.

Looking back over the past 60 years I never experienced such a long and uncomfortable rail journey again in my life as we actually took 4 days to travel about 400 miles as the crow flies but due to so many repairs being done to the lines we were shunted around at least twice that distance.

However it was exciting as we never knew if we were going to be held up by hostile elements that had been surrounded and left behind by the rapid allied advance. Although the main enemy army had been torn apart and driven back to the Belgium/Dutch frontier, large garrisons were still occupying the channel ports to our left where the launch sites of the flying bombs were still attacking the SE of England.

Each wagon had a lookout post at the end and it was manned by one of us round the clock.
The first hundred miles were full of the smell of rotting animals in the fields and I was glad to get further north to see pleasant communities undamaged by war.

We went well wide of Paris but things got quite exciting as we came to Lille to the North after 3 days of stopping and starting and trying to snatch a few hours sleep here and there. Many hands were stretched out to us as we jerked along at about 15 miles per hour and we seemed to do a complete loop of this city before we left it behind.

You still had to shave etc. on a regular basis and once when we stopped I climbed out and put my mirror on the ledge at the side of the wagon to have a nice quiet shave. It always took a while to lather up in cold water and I nervously looked down the line towards the steaming engine hoping it would give me plenty of time. Suddenly there was the usual hoot to warn we were on the move again but instead of waiting a few seconds the whole train jerked into life and I was left running to get on with my face full of soap. Quite a few faces were splitting their sides with laughter as they pulled me aboard and I'm pretty sure the engine driver did it on purpose as we came to a halt again only half a mile further on.

After another day of listening to the click clack on the rails I discovered we had arrived at the Belgian garrison town of Bourg Leopold.There was an enormous air of hustle and hassle as thousands had recently passed through here on the operation "market garden" which was the attempt to break through as far as Arnhem and shorten the war before winter set in.

I was fast learning to be surprised at nothing and the next thing I knew was that I was to sleep in the old cavalry barracks in the actual mangers where the horses used to eat. There we were lying on the new straw just as if we had been a bunch of stallions. We still had no constant unit and were still part of the reinforcement holding operation.

I was in this town for much of September wondering what would happen next and we ordinary chaps knew nothing of what was going on with the war outside the area. As it happened a great deal was going on and the war lords had too much on their hands to keep us informed.
This period was improved by two pleasant events.

I was in the middle of washing my smalls in a canvas bucket when a young Lieutenant in the Service Corps who were the transport people came up to me out of the blue.

Colleagues around me of a similar lowly form of army life gaped to see this officer shake me by the hand and address me in such a familiar manner. Somehow my young cousin Charles Brown on my fathers side who was only about 22 himself had been able to find me in all the chaos of war.

His father was the one I had often visited in Croydon and Charles himself had called on us in Herne Bay several times before I was in uniform.

He is now a retired vicar near Sevenoaks.

Feeling elated I clambered aboard his jeep as he offered to take me out and we landed up at a quiet cafe for a good natter.

It was always an amusing memory because when it came to paying he had come down from Holland and had only that currency and I finished up using my Belgian currency.

I made a good friend with another sapper called Ron Hedgecock during my stay here and the pair of us were befriended by a local couple called Cornelius- Broche.

I used to exercise my schoolboy French and we used to get boiled fresh eggs for tea which was something we hadn't tasted for months.

I wished I had kept in touch with them and when I made enquiries not long ago on the internet I had news they had both passed on.

Suddenly in early October the pair of us were told we were off that night to a unit just behind the lines and I felt a little less of a tourist.

I wondered what would have happened to me if I had not been held up on the beaches with that spell in hospital.

I also remembered with some disgust the crowd of guys on our side I had seen locked up behind barbed wire in Hampshire just before I sailed.

They had refused to embark when their turn came and frankly it had not been too bad at all. Why hadn't they gone for another kind of war job at home like the mines instead of making fools of themselves like that.

The comradeship and the good rations and the constant mail from home seemed to make things all worthwhile.


This article is repeated from http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-5.htmThe next chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-6.htm and the previous chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-4.htm

All the Best

Robin

Friday, December 10, 2004

Into France! (part 4)

One august evening when the weather was thankfully fair I was transported with about 150 others to Southampton docks to board a small steam packet called Ben McDwui that in peacetime had plied between Liverpool and The Isle of Man.

None of us belonged to a unit yet and as members of a reinforcement holding company were from all branches of the army. We were all kitted out but we didn't know where we would finish up.

We could see lots of other boats who made the ferrying trip to and fro to France every day but there was none of the drama or danger of the earlier landings and I settled down on the deck to see the Isle of Wight sliding away on the starboard side on my first ever ocean trip, which in those days was a big adventure in itself.

It was remarkable that we were even fed on this trip when the vessel was no larger than the Medway Queen paddle steamer that called in at Herne Bay on its journey between London and Margate in the 30s.

As I climbed down onto the floating Mulberry dock at Arromanches the next morning I felt like a tourist and in my elation I am ashamed to say I did not think at that time about all the thousands of young husbands and sons who had died to make this possible for me.

It all seemed so organised and calm in contrast to what it must have been like in June and much of July.

There was a small air battle going on which even made it feel more like home. Home was under canvass of course but the weather was great and it was only a couple of days before I started to get mail from all my family and friends. What fantastic organisation.

I was kept busy keeping an eye on the thousands of German prisoners in their barbed wire compounds and that too was an amazing side to the organisation that has never been seen since. What a liability and expense to feed and look after all that lot.

We looked well fed, fresh and neat and they looked baggy eyed, half starved and beaten but you couldn't take any chances. Some were younger than I and some well into middle age and you had to guard against feeling too sorry for them as they stretched out their hands through the fence with watches etc. to exchange for a few cigarettes.

On my temporary station I was given a DUKV or "duck" floating vehicle to drive people and supplies around in which was great fun because it can go straight onto calm water and off the field or road if necessary.

We even had evening passes to visit Bayeaux about 8 miles inland, the first French city held safely by our side.

It was a slow trip due to the great congestion and on the way I saw something for the first time that told me I was very definitely not in the UK.

Two girls of mature age had felt too hot in the sun by their farmhouse and were stripped to the waist tipping buckets of water over each other.

I did not have any special friend with me as we had not been static enough to get to know anyone over the past weeks but everyone mixed very easily when with similar rank and I had a great time doing a cafe crawl and seeing the Cathedral and the sights.

I sat out on the pavement with a load of postcards and wrote them for home just like a peacetime tourist. Sapper Brown was enjoying his war whilst hundreds were still dying much further on toward Belgium.

I can still remember the kick that "Calvados" gave me and the shock I got when I suddenly heard a shot ring out. The military police came by and told us to take cover as several French women in the area were actually sniping at us. These collaborators had been too comfortable with their German boyfriends and were still firing at us and being rounded up in the built up areas.

I became a soldier again in a few seconds, hadn't we supposed to have been liberating the French !! I quickly thumbed a lift back to the beaches and as I climbed up the back of one of our trucks I found myself very much closer to the German army than I had bargained for. I hoped they all had been properly disarmed as I stood with my one rifle in amongst at least 20 more prisoners as they could have easily dealt with me if they hadn't been really keen to get out of the war.

In a couple of days I was on a draft to join a unit which was already in Belgium when I suddenly got some terrible stomach pains which I had never had before. Again the efficient army acted quickly and I found myself in a field hospital diagnosed as having yellow jaundice whatever that was.

I was there for a week feeling very secure in the care of female army nurses who must have thought I was skiving and all the rest of the guys I was supposed to be with left without me. So far I had been of no use to his majesty's forces in France but it had been an interesting fortnight.


This article is repeated from http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-4.htmThe next chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-5.htm and the previous chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-3.htm

All the Best

Robin

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Into Battle ! (part 3)


This was not the kind of battle that was being fought over in Normandy and I quite enjoyed it because I felt useful, but there were no age limits on this side of the channel and babies and children were killed along with the rest on a daily basis.

In July 44 I had been taking part in an exercise on Wimbledon common involving an assault course and earthworks and as I was having a breather as my dad used to say I heard a noise quite different to any ever heard during the Battle of Britain dogfights. It sounded like an exhaust was just about to fall off a car and a small plane appeared seemingly on fire.

Instead of ducking and weaving to avoid the anti aircraft fire and a chasing spitfire that could barely keep up, it bore straight on quite unconcerned. Not surprising as there was no one on it.

Suddenly the nose dropped as the motor shut off and we thought it had been hit and brought down. NO SUCH LUCK !! for we were witnessing the worlds first jet propelled flying bomb as it came down into a densely populated area of London at random. A cloud of black smoke arose about 2 miles away and the dirty surprise was done.

This was Hitlers last ditch secret weapon attempt to crush the South East of England in the hope that it would stop the tide that had now turned so completely against him.

There was no real steering on these bombs and the RAF made gallant attempts to come up alongside and tilt the wings sideways with their own wings to turn it away from the London area without blowing themselves up with the 1000lbs of high explosive next to them in the process.
Many were not successful.

My detachment of sappers were ordered to do all possible to help the civilian population along with thousands of others and it proved to be a very apt training for the time when I would be sent to France.

We were put in a large air raid shelter in SW London and had to report daily to the Brixton town hall where we told to go to certain streets to do what we could. One good aspect was that the doodle bugs as they were called by the Cockneys seldom came over at night so at least we could get a nights sleep.

During the daytime there was no air raid as such as in the previous years as they just kept coming randomly, several at a time all day long.

A car bomb in London today would give the effect of just one flying bomb and hit the headlines all over the world so let us try to remember what it was like to have 50 or more such attacks in a single day. Some would go off course and hit other towns and villages in the home counties.

At that time my darling wife of today was still a baby living in SE London with her mother, while her father was a military police sergeant already serving in France, having done a hard stint in the North African desert.

It was about 6 weeks not without humour. After all said and done London is a vast place and it fascinated me for the first time at the age of 18.

Many of the buildings had been evacuated by the time we reached them and people just wanted us to retrieve some of their furniture and take it out to relatives in the country. I swore I would never work for a removal firm when I got out of the services!

There was one little old Jewish couple who were so upset about their grand piano up in the top flat of a 4 storey building. Three of us swore and puffed to get that piano down all those stairs and round all those corners and it played a funny old tune on the way. Well a certain trio of very inexperienced mechanical equipment sappers made it in the end to drive out to Hertfordshire with most of their other belongings.

I was lucky to have an uncle on my dads side and family not far away near Croydon and what little time off I did have found me in their peaceful home with a billiard table whilst their own lads were overseas and one was in a German prison camp.

I also made my debut on the Streatham ice rink and found that even though I could roller skate a bit this was a lot harder.

Before the 2nd blitz on London ended I was sent in August to a reinforcement holding unit in Hampshire to live under canvass and to prepare for overseas posting.

Although we were now 2 months after D day and the allies had broken out from the Normandy bridgeheads we were still sealed off away from any civilian contact in secrecy as part of 8th Corps who were some 150,000 troops. As far as the British were concerned this was a very big reinforcement behind the 30th Corps and 12th Corps who had fought so hard in the assault on Europe and who were now chasing the enemy back to Belgium.

The French money looked interesting and there many discussions as to what we would buy with it. All the discomforts of service life were washed away by the thought of what excitement lay ahead on my very first trip away from the UK. It didn't seem very unusual at the time that I was still only 18 and 8 months after a year in the army and a year in the home guard and holder of the UK defence medal.


This article is repeated from http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-3.htmThe next chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-4.htm and the previous chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-2.htm

All the Best

Robin

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Off to War! (part 2)

I left several friends, well-wishers and family behind at London Kings Cross standing all the way enroute for Preston to join a company of basic training recruits in August 1943.

We were starting to win the war at last in North Africa and the Med but I soon found that it was no personal joyride with the Kings regiment of Lancashire who were bent on knocking us teenagers into shape.


I was greeted at the barrack gates by a "Where the hell have you come from The Halle orchestra ! Get a bloody haircut" and I wasn't yet even kitted out in uniform. The next morning I was reported for having shaving cream behind my ears and had to scrub the floors in the officers' quarters. The glamour of joining up as a volunteer suddenly faded, but already in a few days I had many letters from friends and relatives that boosted my morale.


It took 6 weeks to pass out at this course spent mostly on the sand dunes of the coast at Formby. It was a good job I was fit with all the full gear we had to run in along the dunes taking care not to get a dirty rifle barrel.


Sunday was always peace and I used to take myself off to explore the countryside for I had never seen real hills and small mountains before.


I went right up the Pennine summits having gone as far as I could on fascinating rural single track railways. One day I stood at a bustop and an old lady who lived nearby came out of her house to invite me in for tea and I quickly found out that the northeners were far more hospitable than people down south. She had no fear of a complete stranger and I must have seemed really young to her.

I made the mistake of worrying about my broken education and and had brought a load of books with me into the army world but 2 kitbags was soon too much to carry and they were later much reduced.

I had to cross from one Liverpool station to the other on my first journey home on leave and I always remember how a man of about 50 which was old to me then picked up my extra kit bag and put it on his bicycle to walk with me across the city. You never forget kind people.

I was very pleased at the end of that 6 weeks to be told that my wish to join the Royal Engineers had been granted.
It felt a bit safer compared to the infantry at the time but in fact I could have been entirely wrong there. My grammar school education short though it was had proved a bit of a help here. Even more was the fact that I had spent a year helping a close friends farmer father drive his tractor.

To my amazement I found that I had to report to Kitchener barracks Chatham no more than 30 miles from home to Herne Bay but later in the 12 week course I was soon disappointed as I was only granted one weekend home in all that time.

When I visit the RE association meetings now as a life member in Chatham at nearby Brompton barracks, the serving members find it hard to believe that we used to sleep in rows on straw mattresses on a cold concrete floor. We also had no hot water and we had to be checked in by 11pm at night as reveille was at 5:45

I was stupid enough to let it be known I had played hockey at school so I had my Saturday afternoons ruined by being ordered to play with the officers.

My family had friends just over the river in Frindsbury and I had a steady girlfriend there and not only do I still know the same family today, one of whom got killed in the RAF but she gave me tremendous support for the next 3 years wherever I went in uniform. Everybody did of course and I cant praise the postal services and canteen services and clubs enough who all helped us so much.

The biggest item about being in the Medway towns was the river where we were out on the pontoons daily learning to build bridges. Even though I was not a swimmer it did not worry me on the water because of all the discipline and organisation around me. I enjoyed the rowing having done a bit on the sea at home.

Now at 18 and Xmas just over I was sent on a variety of mechanical equipment training courses on all the kind of things used in road construction. I was not at all happy with a thing called an RB20 with an enormous bucket and dragline and nearly pulled the wrong leaver and brought the whole thing jib and all crashing down. The Irish instructor scared the daylights out of me.

Next came a nice little posting to the Isle of Sheppey even nearer to home and yet so far, driving a dumper which was my first experience of driving on the road. We were repairing the airfield and I could see Herne Bay pier over the sea on a clear day. However the best thing was that we were a very small section billetted in a commandered private house and even though we had to sleep on the floor it felt so much more civilised.

Suddenly I was taken away to the midlands somewhere and it was a unit preparing for the invasion of Europe but of course I didn't know this at the time. The next thing I knew was that I was summoned to the COs office wondering what I had done wrong or was about to hear.

"We've made a mistake about your age sapper and thought you were 6 months older and we are having to send you somewhere else .You are not to discuss this with anyone else". This was a fighting unit and I knew you had to be 18 years 6 months to be shot at and so I knew something was afoot.

Next in the early summer more by chance than intention to be kind to me ,I am sure, I was sent to a special unit in a grand country house at the village of Nutfield on the Kent side of Redhill right on the same 410 bus route that went straight through Biggin Hill where my parents lived on its way to Bromley. I could often get home in the evenings without even a special pass and as the last bus back at 10pm only went to a garage 4 miles short of my billet I enjoyed some high speed walking at the end of lovely summer days.

At this time the D Day landings were announced and we all knew how lucky I had been that the error in my age had been noticed for at that moment I was still just 10 days too young to get killed.

However we all know other mistakes like that have been overlooked in the past.

This article is repeated from
http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-2.htm

The next chapter is at
http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-3.htm and the previous chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-1.htm

All the Best

Robin


Getting To Know Me: A brief outline of my life (part 1)

My father was one of seven in a poor South London Baptist minister's family who succeeded in going to Westminster School and from there graduating to Christs Hospital, the famous Blue Coat public school now in Horsham.

Born Dec 1925 the son of an actuary who was gassed and injured in WW1 I grew up in the small sea side resort of Herne Bay Kent and lived in a small cottage one mile inland with open views over the golf course. It was a very quiet area but my small private grammar school was only a few yards down the lane. There were some boarders who came from all over the world.

It was close to the main bus route to Canterbury and that was the most exciting place in my young days together with Christmas trips to stay with relatives near London and their visits at Easter time

The winter could be lonely apart from some good neighbours but during the summer I spent a lot of time rambling on the downs and promenade by the sea.

In 1936 I remember the excitement of the Munich war scare and how we all got identity cards being so close to the continent and how I hated trying out my gas mask.

My favourite subjects at school were geography, English and even maths but I hated Latin and French.

I played Rugby football, hockey and cricket and excelled as a wing three quarter as I was a sprinter and the fastest in the school at 12.

We had a good sized garden and ate in it a lot in the summer and my family were also local teachers and we did have a lot of private pupils and friends come up the small path off the lane to see us.

My sister Betty Joy was brought up by another friend near London due to my fathers earlier illness throughout my young life and I missed her a lot as she was only one year younger.

In those days we were still in short trousers at 13 but when war came I went into long pants overnight and came back from a Baptist church summer camp near the cliffs of Dover in a rush.

I was a patrol leader of the swift patrol in the local school scouts and given the honour of being the company scribe.

Quite suddenly half the school was taken over by the army and I was summoned to the headmasters office to be told I was to be a messenger runner with my bike for elements that were organising underground resistance in the event of an invasion.

This was exciting schoolboy stuff and rather different to the three previous occasions when I had to suffer a whack on my backside with a slipper which is unheard of today.

I spoke some German learnt from a next-door neighbour who was in fact formerly Dutch and she used to give me lessons as she had a lot of friends out there. In addition my best friend at school was a German Jewish refugee with his family fleeing from Hitler. He had to go to the States due to the invasion threat and we are still in touch today.

At 14 in 1940 I spent long hours watching the luftwaffe passing over and being shot down from the garden. I used go and collect bits of aircraft afterwards and we used to compare our trophies at school.

We had no air raid shelter and had to crouch down in our small hall for safety several times, listening to the whine of a bomb. They missed us and fell on the golf course a quarter of a mile away and that was all part of normal life.

In 1942 ay 16 I joined the local home guard and used to go on duty at night patrolling a lonely stretch of the nearby coast with a school friend.

I was fully armed with a Lee Enfield 303 rifle and 50 live rounds and it all stood in my bedroom when off duty, my family soon got used to the idea that I was no longer a school boy who used to scare them with an airgun.

Many of my school friends were farmers sons and used to shot guns. Sunday morning was machine gun practise from the top of the cliffs and my first pints at the local for 6 pence.

Nights were often exciting watching the searchlights chase the bombers and wondering if I would have to help to round up baled out enemy aircrew.

Some of the older school members had already been killed. One lady we knew had lost both her sons in the air in their early 20s.

My school folded up when I was just 16 and I never could take any exams and the future was very uncertain.

Jack Wood of Canterbury who was my best friend got his father to let me help with the harvest in 1942 when I was 16 and I got to drive the tractor as well. It was the first time I had done any hot sweaty work but it was so satisfying when we had a break to sit and eat his mothers wonderful home made cakes. He paid me One Pound and Ten shillings for a week which was lot of money in those days for a 16 year old and I used to put those notes under a book and just look at them in awe. Compare that with the fact that as a new recruit in the army a year later I only got One Pound and One Shilling weekly.

My father put me into the Shorts seaplane works at Rochester when I was 17 to hopefully keep me as safe as possible so he thought and I lodged with friends walking distance from the job. After 6 weeks I walked out as I could not stand the noise and dirt and smell and I always considered myself to be a clerical type. I felt very miserable about having let him down and later registered for the army instead so I could stop worrying about my future in a sense and be like many others I knew.

Instead of waiting for my call up at 18, I got my papers to report for duty in August 1943 at the age of 17 and 8 months as a volunteer. Its amazing how adventurous one felt at that age but there were plenty of shocks around the corner.

This article is repeated at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-1.htm and the next chapter is at http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/brief-life-story-2.htm

All the best

Robin


Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Welcome to my Find An Old Friend Blog

Most of us have someone or some people in our past lives we would like to find again after many years...

After all, most of us aren't very good at keeping in touch, right?

You know how the years go by .... addresses and telephone numbers get lost!

Luckily I've been quite successful at finding old friends again, through my people finder site http://www.findanoldfriend.co.uk/

This blog focuses on my thoughts and experiences in searching for long lost friends.

All the best

Robin