In 2003 further testimony was received when Exeter Library acted as a pilot site for the BBC's People's War initiative. The BBC website can be seen at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/. If you have memories of the War outside Devon, you can still add testimony to this national colllective memory store.
Witness: John Allen, Buckfastleigh. What I did in the War.
Many, many, years ago I thought: is it worth putting down on paper "What I did in the last War"? In those early days I had read many books, short stories etc concerning soldiers’ experiences. Compared to some I had not lived and they put my experiences in the shade. When I think of the prisoners of war held by the Japanese (what a fate) and the brave Merchantmen who maintained our "lifeline" with their precious cargoes, who do I mention next. There are far too many to even mention here, I am not gifted enough to do them justice. My thoughts go back home to those who had the guts and unlimited courage to "keep the flag flying" for those of us away from Britain. A small example of what our courageous people endured, day after day and nights likewise. In London there was 180 days of non stop bombing, so they had to work in bomb damaged factories, queue for the food ration (whenever time allowed), then gathering blankets etc to shelter in the Underground. Others not working went into Air Raid Shelters built on the pavements. Some "slept(’?)" in their damp Anderson Air Raid Shelters, what an existence. The word impossible never existed then, you were expected to do your share, Air Raid Warden, Fire Watcher, First Aid Staff and so on. How can "My War" compare to what these courageous people endured. My own wife summed up "Her War" as going into the street after an air raid, seeing an arm or leg blown there, and then hurrying off to work. My experiences are best forgotten compared to theirs. The following is a bit about my army life, the horrors I have left out.
Like so many young people I was inclined to think when war was declared "What happens next?" I began to think of my dear long suffering father who died in 1934, aged 40, from his wounds from the 1914-18 war. The war left him with a fist sized hole in his back which never healed and was often weeping. His reward was a small pension so he worked until a month or so before he died. Our financial commitments were heavy, my Mother went before an Army Tribunal of "armchair" Generals, who decided that Cancer was the major cause of his death hence no renewed pension.
The slogan "Your King and Your Country Need You" did not mean a fig to me. My family, and childhood sweetheart (Dorothy) were my thoughts and my life. I was the main breadwinner (mother found a part-time job) I was a meat porter driver (extras, tips, overtime etc), then the day came when my call up papers for my medical arrived. When I reported to the Cricketers Arms, Shooters Hill, I was joined by another workmate who was in the same boat (we held heavy goods licences). He advised me, when asked, to say R.A.F Barrage Balloon Section. When my turn came I was told the R.A.F had enough and my appointment was with the Royal Corp of Signals at a place called Whitby. To leave home was a tearful affair all round. The next problem was where the hell was Whitby. I had yet to find out!
The first time I realised that I was in the bracing, Yorkshire town of Whitby was June 6th 1940. As the train ground to a halt a cheer went up from the would be soldiers. The train doors swung open and as one mass we fell and scrambled along the platform. Each man carrying his personal belongings (some with expensive attaché cases, others with a string parcel). Outside we received a rude awaking, a voice of authority YOU ARE IN THE ARMY NOW. Where was the brave man who could deny the fact of our future lives. A person in the shape of a Lance Corporal detailed about 20 of us "rookies" to GET FELL IN, in a double line (I must agree with the L. Corp. who said we looked a proper shower). Mark you this L.C had the power of God Almighty (well we knew in no uncertain terms he could create Hell for us if we were slow to do his bidding).
Leaving the station, the road sloped towards the seafront, as we tried to march (after all we were a shower) the L.C shouted "Eyes right!", in our innocence most of us thought it must be a pretty girl going by but no such luck. It was our first experience of"Pips" or Officers. You soon find out they are a bit
more equal than the rest of us. We marched down the seafront and stopped outside a crescent shaped row of terraced boarding houses. Within minutes, six of us were allocated to a room overlooking the sea. After that there was a lot of marching to get kitted out, then back to the room to pack our civilian
clothes so they could be sent home (In my case it was years before I wore civilian clothing again). Four blankets made your bed roll, of sorts, with ground sheet to cover the bare wooden floor. That night when many of us were wondering if we would ever get to sleep a siren screeched out its warning. Panic was in order that early morning, the L.C shouting everyone out and man the trenches. The order was given to Stand Too and with great enthusiasm and gross ignorance most of us "would be soldiers" jumped into the dark trench. It was a brilliant full moon and there was only a few occasions when black clouds blotted out the moon and limited our vision.
When we entered the trench our luck was out as every trench held water from 6 to 18 inches in the base. Wet feet and little sleep was an excellent introduction to what the future might hold. Soon after entering our very wet trench a German Bomber came in from the north sea and passed over Whitby but luckily never dropped any bombs.
The following day with our Lee Enfields still full of grease from the late evening issue of yesterday, 6 of us were detailed to get into the back of a 15 cwt open truck with another LC. Destination the LC told us was Sandsend roughly 7 miles from Whitby. The truck stopped miles from anywhere. it was bleak, desolate and it was on the map as Sandsend. The coastal road was narrow,one side was open moorland and on the other the North Sea. We jumped from the truck carrying our grease filled rifles and unload a sealed box of 303 ammo. The truck then went back to Whitby with the drivers promising to return with tea and grub. Sizing the situation as it was on the foreshore there was a flimsy erected tubular scaffolding and the second line of defence was 6 rookies with grease filled rifles and a reluctant L.C who informed us that he must not break the seal on the ammunition (Wait for it!) unless an Officer gave his permission! Here we were miles from anywhere and we were hoping to push or drive Jerry back into the sea. It was a drastic lesson I learnt then, and many times since, you must act from strength not weakness. Paper signed pledges or documents are as strong as the paper they are written on.
The truck did come for us hungry soldiers late in the afternoon. We left Sandsend as it was before, guarded by the Seagulls! (When the truck stopped at Sandsend it was opposite a clean dug slit trench roughly 3ft deep, 10ft in length, 4ft in width, about 4 yards from a drop to the beach of 20 feet. What a "Fred Karno’s Army".
[Note from the typist! My Uncles wartime service took him all over Europe (France, Belgium, Italy, and even Berlin to mention just a few places. The following are a few comments on his time as a Desert Rat.]
Sometimes our Signals Section (likewise many others) were in what is called a static position. This gave us "dugout time". One creates a dugout for safety against air attack/shelling or for comfort. Time spent in one’s abode gave the person opportunity to write home and think (not too much of that). Some dugouts held several lads. I had a close friend ( a wireless operator) called Vincent Brandwood. He was better educated than myself but never talked down to me or belittle me in our talks. In our dugout it gave you time to think "Why am I here? You don’t think of your loved ones or home too much as it could drive you crazy. Instead you think of what you would give for a slice of new bread coated with a thick layer of butter. You can smell the piping hot crusty loaf, just peeled out of the oven. The elderly baker calls out Do you want another?. This crusty loaf is all yours. Are you going to share it? Not bloody likely! Your dreams are shattered, Viny enters the dugout his spell of listening watch over for another day. He brings me post from home. Need I say what a letter from home means to the average soldier. Viny and myself share our letters. His entry into the dugout brought an extra cloud of dust with which my daydreams vanish. Viny lights up one of his Victory V’s - 10 in one packet - made in India and which we both agreed consisted mainly of camel shit. Every lad had an allowance of 40 fags per week. I watched him puffing away and wallowed in the drifting aroma. As I did’nt need my fags Viny readily accepted them. Now I know my generosity would help to put nails in my good pals coffin. Later from D Day I smoked myself This drifting smoky haze at times disturbed our permanent uninvited guests, a couple of green scorpions (who had escaped my murderous onslaught) Centipedes, several Shit beetles (army language) and for good measure, a scorpion enemy, a scorpion spider which I treated with great respect. Outside our dugout were several scrub bushes which contained glow worms. When they glowed at night it was a wonder to behold. For a short time in our dugout there was a Chameleon who proved to be an excellent flycatcher. Dusk falls quickly in the desert, there were a few hurricane lamps available and candles were an issue at times. As they were few and far between, necessity is the mother of invention and Cherry Blossom (empty blacking tins) made a lamp. A friend from base camp brought a couple of tins of export fags for Viny and the tins made excellent lamps with a piece of string and a small hole in the lid finishing the lamp. Paraffin was the fuel and we were able to read and write by this light. If possible a hole 6fl X Sft made a comfortable sleeping area for two during dust storms. It could be hell outside and everyone took cover of sorts. As soon as darkness fell the duststorms vanished and many of us dashed outside to our make shift toilet. During a duststorm one peed in a tin. One such time during a storm I had to go outside. 1 could not wait. At that moment outside I could see a clear area, so 1 rushed out, by the time I had dug my hole and completed my business, the dust had thickened and I had lost my sense of direction. My experience told me to stay put and cover my face, for the time being I was lost After a couple of hours, sheltered by a deep hole that I had dug with my toilet shovel, the dust cleared and I was not a hundred feet from our dugout entrance. Viny’s anguish vanished when my dusty face appeared in the dugout entrance. After that experience we made sure that if similar circumstances ever occurred again our insurance was a length of telephone cable wire and our gas mask goggles.
[Additional testimony of
John Allen's time in Berlin in 1945 can be seen on this web site.
Witness: Gerald Barker, Plymouth. Camping in the Blitz.
As a brief respite from the almost nightly air raids on Plymouth, I, together with a group of seven or eight other boys aged 13 or 14 would set off on our bicycles to camp for the weekend at Bickleigh Vale, which lay in a valley near woods on the way to Dartmoor. One lad would remain behind in case a raid on the Friday or Saturday night resulted in an unexploded bomb or worse in the vicinity of one of our houses. If this happened, and it did, the boy whose house was threatened would ride home to give assistance with the removal of furniture.
One night, soon after we had fallen asleep in the white tent that we had erected, our peace was shattered by the sound of a plane diving and machine guns firing, too near for comfort. We scrambled out of the tent in the darkness and after hastily putting on some footwear we dashed for the bridge. We had recently decided that an opening in the side of the concrete structure was intended for explosives to be placed in the event of enemy invasion. I was the last one to squeeze inside. Within seconds the ground outside was lit up by huge flares that must have been dropped by the enemy aircraft. The machine gunning continued so we raced to the cover of an old farm shed which we considered was less of a target.
The following days, after we had returned home to Plymouth, meant spending frequent trips to the air-raid shelter. No matter how heavy the bombing, how noisy the anti-aircraft guns trying to hit the aircraft among the criss-crossing searchlights, or the sight of tracer bullets soaring skywards; nothing equalled the experience of sitting under the bridge at Bickleigh Vale with the sound of machine gun bullets seemingly trying to hit our tent and the closeness of the bright flares falling almost within touching distance from what we thought was a safe refuge.
Much later we found out that a military establishment had been erected in a wooded area of the Vale area in about 1941.
Witness:
5626449 PTE Berry D H, 4TH Bn, Somerset Light Infatnry 43rd Wessex Division.
Landed in Normandy on 19 June 1944. We had a very rough crossing; the boat I was in got lost from the convoy. During the night nobody in sight. In the morning everyone was seasick including the sailors. On 25 June we started to move up the line just behind Cheux where we came under shell fire for the first time.
On 10 July the Battalion attacked hill 112, I was in C Company, casualties were heavy all around me. I saw Major Wardle go down wounded and start to dig himself in. During our stay on the hill the Germans counter-attacked and we were nearly over-run. On the second or third night we were relieved and moved to the bottom of the hill into German slit trenches. I was then wounded in the right hand and evacuated to England by hospital ship to Southampton, then onto Dewsbury Hospital.
Four months later I returned to C Company thirteen platoon on the Dutch German border. It was bitter cold weather, with deep snow and we were glad to get back to Treebeck in comfortable billets. From there we moved on to Belgium. On our way to the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes which was halted we had Christmas dinner in Liege. On 28 January 1945 we returned to Treebeck for regrouping.
On 9-12 February we went to attack Cleve for which we paid a heavy price. The town had taken terrible punishment, hardly a house intact, craters and trees across the road making them impassable. By 12 February the road out of Cleve was open and the advance continued. Our task was to capture Bedburg. On the way to Goach, about 20 February, the Battalion was ordered to capture the village of Halverboont. It was during this attack I saw the Company Commander, Major Mallalieu get killed. I was about 20feet away.
On 27 February the Battalion moved up to take over from the Canadians in positions overlooking Calcar.
On 1 March I was wounded in the left arm and sent back to the Canadian Hospital in Holland. On the 2 March from there I flew from Brussels to Swindon in a Dakota then by train to Derby Hospital.
Witness: Mrs J.M.Bishop, living in Exeter during the War
I didn't do anything in the Second World War!
Born and brought up in Exeter, I well remember that last week of peace. Our family holiday was usually taken in Cornwall, this time we took day trips to South Devon resorts in the tense atmosphere of those final days.
One day as we walked along the canal tow path near Exeter, we saw a sea-going vessel ready to sail, when a taxi drew up, a man with an attaché case jumped out and quickly boarded the ship, which was soon under way. Who was he? Where was he going? We never discovered!
On the Saturday, we were in Torquay, where a number of Royal Navy ships were at anchor outside the harbour. Already painted battleship grey, the day too was grey and lowering. There was a sudden flurry as sailors made for the Liberty boats, and, as we stood there, an officer raced up in a huge, open tourer. He missed the launch and stood impotently on the quayside. We returned home, very subdued.
Next day, that unforgettable 3 September 1939, we heard Mr Chamberlain announce that we were at war with Nazi Germany. Even at eleven years old I was aware of the gravity of this declaration. My parents had never expected to see another conflict in their lifetime, after the Great War that was to end all wars. The future looked uncertain for us all.
When the first air-raid siren sounded one night, we all trooped downstairs in our dressing gowns. We squatted behind the sofa, well away from the windows (as yet unprotected against breakage). My parents, small brother and I huddled under a table top which we held over our heads! Then the all clear sounded - it was a false alarm.
Some incidents were funny. Of course we laughed at ourselves. In the immortal words of Mrs Mopp of ITMA fame, "It's being so cheerful as keeps us going". Popular songs of the time to which we all knew the words, were: "Roll out the barrel", "Run, rabbit, run", "The white cliffs of Dover" and "We'll meet again". Old First World War favourites like "Tipperary" also expressed our feelings.
Another night when the warning went, for some reason my father didn't put the light on to dress. We were in fits of laughter when he appeared downstairs in a black tail-coat - and the most disreputable pair of old grey gardening trousers!
There were terrible times when we heard of heavy losses on land, sea and in the air; of civilian casualties after unremitting bombardment in other cities. Easter 1941 my father was buried alive under rubble during a raid on Bristol. He was badly shocked when rescued later, but uninjured.
Enemy planes frequently crossed Devon skies on the way to bomb targets in S Wales and the Midlands. Later, we'd hear them return as we recognised the distinctive sound of their aircraft.
By 1940 I was in the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Southernhay at the start of a prolonged bout of ill-health. A bone infection took five and a half years to clear. No penicillin available for civilians. I stoically endured several painful operations. If not an in-patient then I regularly - daily - attended for out-patient treatment. I was in the hospital (Newcourt Ward) the night the bomb fell on the adjoining chapel. I remember being sent home early after an operation, as beds were urgently needed for Plymouth blitz victims. Ten days later I was back in for more surgery, which left a life long scar on my face.
After France fell, there were several tip and run raids, both by night and by day. The worst raid was on 3/4 May 1942. A brilliant moonlit night, when all hell broke loose. A Baedeker raid following a RAF strike against Lubeck, as Exeter Cathedral was bombed in reprisal, and the city centre laid waste. My enduring memory is of sitting beside my blind grandfather, who calmly held my hand throughout. Dry-eyed, but numb with fear, I heard the bombs whistle down. Our home and most of our possessions were lost that night.
Next morning, a thick pall of smoke obscured the sky. A foul, sickening stench of burning foodstuffs etc. permeated the atmosphere. The devastation of the lovely old city seemed unreal as my mother took my grandparents, my brother and me to the country to stay with my godmother. It was a nightmare journey. Frequently turned back by ARP wardens because of unexploded bombs, or blocked rubble-strewn roads, we later learnt that we'd driven over undiscovered bombs anyway, thinking our passage safe. It took hours to clear the now unfamiliar landscape.
We left a ravaged city to find it was a lovely, sunny morning. The peace and tranquillity of the village was like a different world.
No gas, no electricity, no water, but, irony of ironies, a Morrison shelter was delivered to our bombed out Exeter home within days of the raid! An unsightly steel "cage" with thick steel top and wire mesh side pieces, it was claustrophobic to sleep in. One tried not to think of being in it if the house collapsed and buried it. We two children spent many nights in it on our return to Exeter. Mercifully, it efficiency was never put to the test.
The Maynard School was damaged, but arrangements were made for us to share Bishop Blackall premises, each school attending for half a day, so that life continued with minimum disruption. No escape there, alas!
No more teas at Dellers ever again. Trips to the coast were curtailed, beach fortifications and the ever present threat of daylight air attacks made them vulnerable. Only towards the end of the war was I allowed to go to the cinema.
Large water tanks and public air-raid shelters were erected in the open areas of the city, and ARP wardens insisted on everyone taking shelter when the siren went. Traders found themselves make-do premises, proudly announcing "Business as usual". Blackout, rationing, shortages of many items, with Spam sandwiches, dried egg omelettes - but no bananas! The war dragged on until one morning in June 1944.
For weeks we had seen planes towing gliders over Exeter. Men and machines vanished overnight. The Yanks had gone from the nearby billet; there were no more US troops slouching along the road or hanging around Boots' corner, whistling and catcalling, and no more Jeeps racing around the town. D Day had finally arrived.
Despite the drabness, the restrictions and the great empty spaces, life went on with renewed hope. We felt that we were winning through. Pleasures were simple. I used to cycle to Topsham, sit on the Goat Walk and revise for School Certificates. My health improved, I went horse riding in Alphington, there were school friends for company (one had been a German refugee girl from pre-war Hamburg). I read a lot, mainly borrowed books, one of my school books was tenth-hand, such was the scarcity of paper products.
New clothes were a rare treat. School uniform took a lot of clothing coupons, and size 51/2 shoes were very hard to find. I never felt any resentment or bitterness. It was all part of the on-going war effort.
The final horror of the skeletal Belsen victims confronting us from cinema screens left us stunned with disbelief. Man's inhumanity to man was unbounded. Returning Prisoners of War added their witness to further atrocities. I felt only relief, not excitement, when VE then VJ day arrived.
One strong theme ran through all my days. When this is all over, I promised myself, I shall travel and see the world. The travel urge had been there since childhood, and I was always fascinated by places mentioned on the "wireless" as the war moved from sphere to sphere. I survived to live and travel world-wide ... but that is another story!
Witness: Mr. R B Blatchford MBE, in Territorial Army, Barnstaple
Conscription was reintroduced for young men, with an option of joining the Territorial Forces to get evening and weekend training, and the Territorial Army was doubled. I was affected by this and, being in the middle of exams, elected to join the 6th Battalion Devonshire Regiment T.A. at Barnstaple Drill Hall - a culture shock as a private being mixed in with all sorts and sizes.
The Unit, having been split in two to form the 9th Devons, was very short of officers, NCOs, and the only equipment was from the First World War, except for a bren gun carrier (track laying vehicle lightly armoured with a Ford V8 30 h.p. engine from Fords factory at Dagenham) one bren light machine gun and one three inch mortar. Our first job was removing the grease from old Lee Enfield rifles stored from World War One. There were only three permanent staff, an adjutant (Major Symons), a regimental sergeant major (R.S.M.Peddar) and a storeman. Headquarters Company was in Barnstaple with rifle companies at South Molton, Torrington, Holsworthy and Bideford. We had to share the Drill Hall with the HQ of a battery of 142 Field Regiment Royal Artillery (North Devon Hussars).
As I had knowledge of electricity and magnetism, I was placed in the signal platoon under Sergeant ----, who was a Post Office telegraphist. His morse was terrific but his organisation pathetic. All the equipment was First World War. We had telephone line equipment comprising D3 telephone sets which rarely worked. All calling was done by buzzer and the HQ exchange consisted of a series of receiver on a board, and if something buzzed you covered up the receivers in turn to find out which one was calling and plugged into that. It was all done on earth return so much of the communication had to be by Morse. We also heliographs (OK in India perhaps), signalling lamps and flags. Most messages went by runner or bicycle on manoeuvres. I was usually organising the signal office and was soon promoted to Lance Corporal. I can only remember shooting on the range at Filleigh (five rounds as there was little ammunition) and weekend exercises on Halsinger Down, as being of any benefit, though I suppose we learned to fall in, march and salute.
In the summer of 1938 Hitler had been demanding the return of the Sudeten Lands, part of Czecholslovakia adjoining Germany where some Germans lived and annexed this territory
Witness: Greta E.Bray, North Devon
I can still remember the cold shudder that ran through me as I head those fateful words 'England is at war with Germany' spoken over the air by our then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. It was September 3rd 1939. I was almost 141/2 years of age and alone in our house. Looking back, I can still remember the thoughts which raced through my mind. All those stories which I had heard from 'grown-ups' of the 'Great War' as it was then called, rose before me. The 1914-1918 war which people had thought to be 'The war to end all wars'. Those tragic stories seemed almost a part of me. 'The Kaiser' was such a familiar name. I felt as though I had known him. Now a new name had emerged - that of Adolf Hitler.
The changes soon came. Words hitherto almost unknown to us began to enter into our daily conversations. Words such as ration books, clothes-coupons, identity-cards, Home Guard, air-raid precautions, air-raid shelters, black-outs, joined-up, called-up, conscientious objectors, gas masks and evacuees. Train loads of evacuees were now coming to the South West to be compulsorily billeted to those households who had room for them. We did not have any because a few weeks previously my parents had received a pleading letter from an acquaintance asking them to accommodate her daughter and two children who were living in London and whose husband had already been 'called up'. This meant that we already had eight people living in a four-bedroomed house. I can recall some sad stories of children being sent into homes where they were not wanted. There were also happy ones where the children fitted in well and who even today come back and visit their war-time homes.
During this time I was cycling to Barnstaple each day to what was then known as the B.G.G.S. (Barnstaple Girls' Grammar School). The school had had strict rules when wearing uniform out of school. Hats must always be worn and nothing must be eaten in the street. Even this seemed to change. Now the biggest crime we could commit was to arrive at school without our gas-masks. We had many air-raid practices. When the air-raid siren sounded we would leave our work, troop down the path quickly (in an orderly manner of course) and crouch by a wall near the River Taw (East of Rock Path). Fortunately these were only trial runs. We never had any real raids. By this time the school was full to overflowing. This was due to the coming of the evacuees. One of my proudest moments, I recollect, was when I was able to present to my headteacher the first balaclava which was all my own work. She had been encouraging us to knit them for our forces. This, it seemed to me, was a real war effort.
But even in those dark days we were often able to see the lighter side of life. For instance, one night my brother who was in the Tawstock branch of the Home Guard was on night duty in the village. He was relieved from duty early in the morning to enable him to have time to help with the milking and to take the milk into Barnstaple to the retailer by 8 o'clock. However, by the time he had reached the village all the men who had been with him through the night had gone home and strangers had taken their place. As he was no longer in uniform he was stopped and ordered to show his identity card which he hadn't thought to take with him. He had considerable difficulty in convincing them that he was a 'friend' and not a 'foe'. I reckon that some Barnstaple housewives got their pinta rather late that morning.
In March 1941 change was again my lot. I left school two months before I was due to sit for my 'Higher School Certificate'. Here is the reason. My father had sold his farm. Having been brought up on a stock farm at Arlington he preferred this kind of farming. He now became the tenant of a 200 acre farm called South Radworthy in the Parish of North Molton. His landlord was the Right Honourable Lord Poltimore of Court House, North Molton. He had formerly lived at Court Hall but that was now occupied by an evacuated school from one of our cities. As my brother had promised to stay on as manager of the farm in Tawstock 'labour' was my father's chief concern. Another problem was how I would travel to and from school each day. So with permission from my headmistress I was allowed to leave school in order to work on the land. This decision, I may add, was at variance with the opinions of some of my other teachers but agriculture was considered to be of prime importance during the war. Education was not even a close second. We were certainly in a favoured position as far as food rationing was concerned. I was surprised recently on turning out my last ration book to see that it was issued for 1953-4.
At times the only help that my father had was that of my sister and myself. What made this so much worse was the high acreage of corn and potatoes that he was compelled to grow. A number of very wet harvesting times made the work even harder. The pitching of the corn sheaves (which had been tied by the binder) to a high corn-rick was straining work. The stony terrain on which we worked played havoc with our wellingtons. Replacements took most of our clothing coupons. Later German prisoners helped us. Some people thought we treated them too well. To us, they were lonely men, a long way from home.
Opportunities for social life was almost non existent. Our highlight was the North Molton WI's monthly meetings. We walked the three miles as petrol was for essential journeys only. Other war efforts were picking wortleberries (used for dyeing) and collecting foxgloves from which was extracted the drug 'digitalis'.
Despite many difficulties there was much cheerfulness and good humour during these years. No talk of unemployment, burglaries or boredom but a great feeling of togetherness. We were in it together. The National Days of prayer were well supported.
One night an American plane ( Flying Fortress ) crashed two miles away on its way back to base after dropping its bombs in Germany. It landed at Sandway, on the Devon and Somerset border. At least eight men were on board. Only two were in a fit condition to seek help. Although they had crashed only 500 yards from a farmhouse, the dense fog and strict blackout precautions prevented its detection. After walking eight miles in three hours they reached a farmhouse at Millbrook at midnight ( the home of my future husband ). My husband, guided by the men and followed by an ambulance drove to the scene of the accident. Our local policeman also went. On arrival one man was dead, two had broken legs and the others superficial injuries. Several years later two of these men returned asking to be directed back to that spot. On that same moor a searchlight camp was erected. Only once was it in the firing line of the enemy aircraft.
Our North Molton Home Guard was very vigilant. So were the 'Exmoor Mounties'. They hit the headlines. The following extract is from the Daily Herald. Sept 2nd 1940 by Dudley Barker.
These riders of the moor seem to me almost a perfect example of what the Home Guard should be. I mean of course, in spirit for we cannot all go riding horses across romantic moors. Few of them have ever been soldiers, for farmers must till, not fight. But they have a few old cavalrymen to teach them the essence of the thing.
The unit I visited, based on the village of North Molton, has an estate painter named Smith, ex-cavalry officer who now keeps a riding stable, farms a bit, and talks about the Home Guard with as good sense as any ex-officer I have met so far, and with better sense than most.
Those years 1939-1945 stand out clearer in my memory than any other period. The utility marks on my furniture are constant reminders. Memories pour in. Events such as D-Day, Normandy landings, Battle of Britain - familiar events now, but then news was sketchy. It was difficult to sift facts from fiction. Lord Haw Haw's broadcasting propaganda didn't help. Then two new names emerged - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These places are remembered with mixed feelings!
Anyway we celebrated V.E. Day. We won - that is if anyone can win a war.
Witness: D.W.Brush, living in Plymouth during the War
During the blitz fire pumps were sent from Bristol but they couldn't be used, wrong connections to hydrants. Many a building could have been saved had all the pumps worked. The fire brigade didn't use the sea water for fear of damaging the pumps, many a building was burnt out on the Barbican.
The Spanish refugees were camped at Marsh Mills. It was said that they lit a bonfire to guide the German planes in, whether it was true never bothered to pursue. Many people of Plymouth left the town and went to places like Cornwood if they thought there was to be a raid, leaving the keys of their houses to neighbours who stopped behind. It was said that they called them the "yellow convoy". Of course the business people moved out altogether, some of them never to return, to places like the Yealm, Bigbury, the Moors, anywhere out of it. The static water tanks were installed after all the bombing.
The Indian contingent was stationed around Chaddlewood. Last but not least the lads from southern Ireland, very popular lads, strong, healthy lot - they made many friends. They came here to do bomb damage work. They were good at it, they knew their bond[?]. But inside work - if there was a right or wrong way to put up a gyproc 8'x4' ceiling Paddy knew best. Yes, you guessed, the wrong way!
Witness: Ronald Cox, stationed at Instow
Learning to Wade Ashore
There was one memorable period of training which, curiously, I cannot date and which goes unmentioned in the Regimental War Diary and the Regimental history - presumably because we went on it in groups over a period of time rather than all at once. For me that training took place either shortly before we left Bridlington or, much less likely, in the early part of our next posting which was to Aldershot.
It was based on Instow, a small Devon village of indifferent appearance standing midway between the attractive own of Bideford and the equally unattractive town of Barnstaple. Its purposes were tuition in the tact of waterproofing our tanks and practice in coming ashore from tank landing craft. Clearly the General Staff had D-Day in mind.
The whole process, being secret at the time, is very poorly documented, even at the Imperial War Museum (and, therefore, in subsequent books). But some four months after the Invasion of Normandy, when any ban on publication of the information had been lifted, it was excellently described and illustrated in that splendid magazine, Picture Post (1).
The article was entitled 'A Tank Goes for a Swim'. It began:
This is the kind of order which we can assume the General Staff addressed to REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) some time ago:
You are requested to carry out with utmost speed, thoroughness and secrecy, a project on which the success of future combined operations of a specific nature will depend.
Fully to understand your part in the proposed project you will assume the following:
1. A number of tanks of various typed are to be carried on a tank landing craft to a rendezvous 200 yards from a sandy beach held by the enemy.
2. At the point X, where the Tank Landing Craft will stop, the sea is 4'6" (1.37m) deep, with waves riding at 1'6" (46cm). It is high tide.
3. The tanks, under their own motive power, must enter the sea from the ramp of the TLC and wade ashore.
4. On wading ashore the tanks must not only be ready for immediate offensive action, but notwithstanding immersion in the sea, must be capable of carrying on action of an indefinite period.
The article continued:
Exactly how the Department of Tank Design solved the problem would make a very long story, but never a tedious one. All manner of plastic compounds, metal exhaust extensions, gaskets and what not were applied to prevent the seas surging or seeping into turrets and engines. Officers and men volunteered to act as 'guinea pigs' - crews for tanks under the sea on test; some were drowned when unexpected things happened and tanks flooded; but the work went on.
We were not in this at the "guinea pig" volunteers stage. When we arrived in the scene the pioneer work had been done and, accordingly to the article quoted above, tanks had already gone ashore in the way described, in the invasion of North Africa(1). We went to Instow largely to learn all about it.
In essence, the waterproofing had five elements: sealing those parts of the tank which would be under water or which would be damaged by sea spray; ensuring that the expansion gases from the engine could escape; getting the tank safely ashore through, perhaps, six feet (1.8m) of water; making the tank instantly battle-ready when it landed; and ensuring that, if necessary, the tank could operate over a considerable distance while still, largely, in a waterproof state.
The first of these elements involved sealing every joint with black rubbery plastic compounds and/or rubberised fabric. Three photographs in the quoted article show: a plastic compound being fitted round essential mechanical parts, joints in the hull being covered with rubberised fabric and "a secret compound" being used to seal the hatchway in the hull(2).
The second element required the fitting of a huge canvas or metal exhaust chute on the rear of the tank, adequate in size to cope with the engine gasses, sufficiently high not to take water on board when the tank was in the sea and firmly enough fixed not to be washed away(3).
The third element involved running the tank down a ramp in the bows of the tank landing craft and ensuring that, by means of the wireless inter-com, the driver (who was under water and had initially no vision) was guided ashore safely by the crew commander(4).
The fourth element, as the Picture Post article explained, involved throwing a switch to blow off the cover on the gun and also the exhaust chute. The minor explosion on this account mystified the Germans on D-Day(5).
Finally, there was substantial road testing to ensure that the vehicle could be driven with the sealant still in place without mechanical breakdown, especially through overheating(6).
The first two of these five elements were, I think, dealt with by our fitters and by attached REME personnel. I have no recollection of that work, either at Instow or back with the Regiment. It was the other three elements in which we were trained.
Instow is a west-facing village at the windswept confluence of two rivers, Torridge (on which Bideford stands) and Taw (which flows through Barnstaple). We were billeted in Nissen huts on the sand dunes, between the railway line and the sea. I think the tanks must have been 'resident' ones rather than our own and I have a recollection of only one tank at a time being allowed across the medieval bridge at Bideford because of its inadequacy. The bridge had to be crossed because the starting point for our sea trip was, I think, somewhere near Northam, on the west bank of the Torridge. There we presumably practised driving the tanks onto landing craft ( it is astonishing how some of this dramatic action cannot be remembered at all).
I do certainly recollect putting to sea in the tank landing craft, with the tanks on board. I remember, especially, passing the quay at Appledore, watched by a line of silent and doubtless sceptical fishermen. Once we had emerged into Bideford bay we hove to off Northam Burrows, just north of Westward Ho! The ramps of the tank landing craft were then lowered and we ran our tanks down into the water, one by one.
I think we may have done this on two separate occasions, on one of which the water was becoming increasingly choppy, the naval crew and observers being much more sanguine about the weather conditions than we were. My tank went into the water and waded ashore with no difficulty. But one tank (not of my Squadron or, necessarily, of my Regiment) suffered a breakdown
of its wireless inter-com at the crucial moment. As a result the driver, unable to see (because he was beneath the water) and hearing no instructions, drove in what he thought was a straight line for the shore though in fact the tank had turned and it moved seaward until water started coming into the turret. We didn't have a chance to see whether the driver and co-driver escaped.
There were other hazards, too. On one occasion (I think on the second) we were taken to Northam Burrows on a 3-ton truck which was left standing on the sands. We then went, presumably, to our tanks and carried out the wading exercise. When we returned to the truck we found it bogged down and all our efforts to dislodge it failed. A recovery vehicle was sent for (I assume our tanks had by then been driven away and were uncontactable) but before it arrived the tide came in and we watched, fascinated, as the water gradually crept up the wheels and then into the cabin of the truck. At that point we were collected by another vehicle, so I never saw the end of the saga. The driver, doubtless, had some explaining to do, but he seemed more concerned at the time that he was going to miss a "date" in town (it was a Saturday).
Much more pleasant than the wading exercises, which we carried out in miserable weather, was the subsequent road-testing. For this purpose, we were told to disperse (presumably to avoid too much wear and tear on any one road) and cover x miles by road (not cross-country, but keeping clear of towns) before returning to base. We set off in the general direction of South Molton with a unique sense of freedom; it was a bit like going on a mystery tour instead of being ordered every inch of a pre-arranged way by some higher authority.
We did, however, at one stage run into a difficulty which, though we didn't realise it, was a foretaste of what was to come in Normandy. We went steeply down a very long, winding, narrow country lane with high banks on either side; below us, in the valley, was the magnificent tower of a village church (it might have been West Buckland, but I've never been back that way so I'm not sure). The father we went, the steeper and more narrow the road became and, finally at a bend we could go no further without wedging the Sherman. We couldn't turn because of the high banks on either side and so we had to reverse, bit by bit, back the way we had come. It gave Corporal McCafferty, my crew commander, excellent training in precise driver instruction, it gave the driver (who might have been Pete Reagan) good experience in reacting swiftly and accurately to orders he was given, and it certainly put the waterproofing to the test. The engine didn't overheat; but the amount of petrol consumed must have been horrendous. Fortunately during the whole of the hour or so spent in that length of Devon county lane we met no vehicle wanting to pass in either direction, something unimaginable in the 1990s, however remote the area might be.
Author's footnotes
1. Picture Post, vol. 25, no 4, 21 Oct. 1944, pp8-9, Family Archives FI/1795.
2. Ibid
3. The Picture Post photographs show an exhaust chute being fitted and a tank coming ashore with its steel chute in place, Ibid.
4. One of the Picture Post illustrations shows a tank running down just such a ramp, with the crew commander in the turret giving instructions, Ibid.
5. A photograph shows a Sherman at the moment of these explosions, Ibid.
6. The whole system is referred to in Anon, The story of the 23rd Hussars 1940-1946, 1946, p24. But the Picture Post article is the definitive one; all the detailed references and photographs at the Imperial War Museum appear to refer to later, more sophisticated, techniques where tanks could actually float ashore. The great secrecy surrounding the earlier work probably accounts for the paucity of material on the subject.
Witness: Mrs E.Curtis, living in Exeter
I was thirteen years old, when it was announced over my Grandmother's radio that England was at war with Germany.
There was a lot of hustle and bustle making blackout curtains which was a little scary but life seemed to go on much the same for some while. I joined Boots the Chemist at sixteen years as an assistant. In those days you were given a good training especially on the drug counter, there was no National Health and people who could not afford to go to the Doctor, came to us for advice on their health problems so we had to know what we were doing. I spent the first year helping in the dispensary getting to know the drugs, filling up the half empty drug containers, with the dispenser keeping his beady eye on me, compressing the powder he had dispensed into tablet form. Very few goods were pre-packed, glouber salts, Epsom salts, magnesium powders etc. were all kept in the little drawers labelled in Latin at the back of the counter, having first been weighed in the drug stock room into two and four ounce packets.
We all took it in turns to fire-watch on the firms premises for incendiary bombs, four of us at a time. We slept in the upstairs library on camp beds. Boots at that time was on the corner of Queen Street where C & A now stands. A restaurant under C & A was our stock rooms. Everyone was doing their bit for the war effort and I joined the Women's Voluntary Service and spent two or three nights a week after work washing dishes until quite late after the evening meal at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. No dishwashers in those days. Everyone over eighteen was in the forces so it was the very young and old who did this work. The Exeter Museum was the venue for the Allied Forces Canteen and here after work I also helped with cutting up sandwiches and making tea and coffee for the forces. At home we were provided with a Morrison Shelter, an iron table which could be removed during the day for eating and put back when there was a raid. My father had spinal problems and wasn't called up. He became a Fire Warden with others in the road too old and not fit enough for service.
The Blitz ... Exeter had several attacks by air and although we heard Lord Hawhaw, the German Propagandist, over the radio say "the streets of Exeter, 'the Golden City of the West' would run with blood", we doubted it would. How wrong we were! The sirens sounded that awful night in May but my sisters and I decided not to get up. My mother had got my younger brothers from their beds and kept calling for us to come down, and then the first bomb came down. It sounded so close we fell out of bed, down the stairs and into the Morrison Shelter, not before the second bomb came down. It was the most terrifying experience.
The bombs whistled down one after another. We were all crammed in, eight of us including my mother. Father was outside doing his duty and stayed there until it was all over, two and half hours of hell. My mother was screaming for him to come in and my youngest brother seemed to do a somersault with every bomb, putting his little head down and covering his ears with his hands. As the eldest I tried to protect him, my mother did her best with my youngest sister who was about five years old. We clung to each other as the planes roared above us dropping their evil weapons. Suddenly there was an almighty explosion, much worse than the others. I think we all died for a moment. Everyone was deathly quiet and we thought the end was near, but no, the bombs continued until at last the planes died away. Still we sat in that little cramped container too frightened to move when my father came in and told us it seemed to be all over. We crawled out one by one too dazed and frightened for words. Then we looked out of the window and someone screamed "Our school is on fire!" The sky was bright red but it turned out later, it wasn't the school, but the almost complete destruction of the city. Our front door had been blown off its hinges and the bedroom ceilings fallen down on our beds, but apart from that it was the only damage to our house.
The next day my father and I tried to get to work, not knowing the full extent of the damage. We lived overlooking the higher cemetery so we walked up Pinhoe Road and there, halfway up, were the results of the very loud explosion, several houses, six I believe, had been demolished by a land mine. The ambulances were there and the dead bodies were being brought out. To a sixteen year old it was nauseating. In those days in the early forties, we knew little about death, not having televisions. We continued to the top of Sidwell Street, many roads were cordoned off with 'unexploded bomb' notices, and there before out eyes was the 'Golden City' completely in ruins. We could see as far as the Cathedral and there, it stood out in all its glory amidst the rubble of Exeter, proud and defiant, a comfort to us all - a sight I shall never forget. I looked at my father as he stood there quietly weeping and then we both wept. We made our way home but not before noticing a body, covered with a sheet awaiting collection on the pavement. Where once rows and rows of little houses stood called Newtown they now lay flattened to the ground.
Later that day a loud speaker told us we could go to Broadclyst where the village hall would be open that night if we didn't want to stay in Exeter in case of another raid. We took pillows and blankets and were looked after by two young NCO Royal Airforce cadets, pupils of Hele's School. Being the same age, my friend and I sat up most of the night talking to them.
The next day my father took my mother and the younger children to Yeovil hoping that they would be safer there. I refused to leave my father alone, and so I was alone that afternoon when there was a knock on the door and one of the young NCO's stood there. He told me his uncle was missing who had been working in Exeter. He had rung the hospitals and police who told him to try the mortuary. His aunt was an invalid, as was his father, would I go with him? I said I would if my friend of the night before would come with us. We arrived at the mortuary gate, but the two of us were too nervous to go in and waited outside. He was gone for a very long time and eventually we went in search of him, we faced a corridor with doors with windows blown out and there we glimpsed dead bodies, we turned on our heels and fled. My friend didn't eat for five days. The young seventeen year old NCO was apparently asked to clean up the bodies with other Senior Hele's School boys.
Days later, we witnessed a mass burial in the corner of the cemetery, from our netted bedroom windows. I believe the Last Post was played but my memory isn't so good these days. There were German pilots also buried nearby.
Now as I sit and paint in my garden, high on the Blackdown Hills, and study the beautiful cloud formations, looking down this lovely Otter Valley to Exeter, it is hard to remember these lovely skies were once the venue for many, many German planes that rained down bombs on the innocent people of Exeter.
Witness: Mrs J Dubicki-Matthews, living in Plymouth
If I had taken heed of a warning from a stranger in a doorway that night, I would not have been alive today to tell this tale, but as the old adage "don't talk to strangers" was subconscious in my mind, put there by my mother at an early age, I rejected the warning and by doing so, was saved from being blown to pieces.
It happened in the Second World War, when several British towns were being devastated by German air attacks.
I lived beside the Devonport dockyard, not far from the city of Plymouth, which had been bombed very badly several nights before. Although it was only a short distance away, no bombs had yet fallen on Devonport during that horrific "blitzing" on Plymouth.
On the night in question I was revisiting the hotel where I worked as a bar girl. It was my evening off. I had promised the girls who worked with me, that I would meet them in the lounge. The place quickly filled with naval personnel. They were a jolly lot, as in the war years everyone seemed drawn to one another in a spirit of camaraderie which is sadly lacking today.
My parents kept a small public house further down the hill beside the dockyard wall but I was helping out here in the hotel, the former bar girl having recently married, until a replacement could be found.
It was very busy now "Johno" and "Bugsy Baker", two of our customers, were jesting with us and telling us to get behind the counter and serve them, when a sudden hush came over the lounge as the voice of "Lord Haw Haw" spoke over the radio from Germany, telling us that Devonport would be bombed at nine o' clock that same night.
It was now nearly nine, we looked at one another not knowing what to think when suddenly the world outside seemed to go haywire. The place shook as deafening thuds sounded outside, then the doors opened and several wardens appeared, telling everyone to go down to the cellar below as the whole place outside was alight with thousands of incendiary bombs and soon the explosive bombs would follow in their wake. The door opened again, I could see a red glow in the sky. Voices were crying out from the burning buildings opposite, then we were all bundled down into the cellar.
I knew I had to get out and go home as quickly as I could; my mother would be frantic knowing I was out. I was afraid she would not go into the small stone shelter (which was built on to an outside wall of the house) without me.
I made an excuse of wanting to go to the toilet, running into the courtyard. I found the tall backdoor was locked and bolted, a high stone wall sheltered the hotel from the street outside. I don't know how I climbed over the wall but within seconds I was standing in the street in the middle of "Dante's Inferno".
It is hard to believe now that the holocaust I saw before me was happening in a civilised world. To my right was a high hill above the dockyard wall, which I had to run down before turning off at the bottom. The road on the hill was strewn with thousands of incendiary bombs standing on end like huge glowing candles, on my left houses were burning each side of a narrow street, red hot debris was flying everywhere, cries of "help!" were all around me, above in the red glowing sky, the German Luftwaffe looked like locusts, the heavy drone of their engines denoted that they were weighted with bombs. I crossed over on to the hill. I was so high up now, it seemed as if I too was up there with the enemy. In the glow of searchlights I saw bombs dropping like pellets, then came explosions each side of me, the target being the dockyard to which I was running parallel alongside. The road ahead was lit like a runway. Going back hours later after the all clear I found the hill was filled with bomb craters, so I was glad I had left early when the lighted hill was probably being used as a guide.
I was running now in and out of the "candles" staring ahead, my brain frozen with fear, my coat flying out behind me I was saying over and over, "God help me! God help me!"
I came to the lower road now, running in the middle as if in a nightmare, my lungs were bursting, each side of me houses were burning, cries came over the smoke filled breeze, my coat was discarded as it was burning also. Suddenly, as I neared the corner on my left, I beheld what seemed to be a sheet coming down towards me. Someone in the doorway on my right shouted "get in here quick, you'll be killed", I turned my head slightly and saw a young sailor in the doorway but I kept on running I had only gone a couple of yards when instinct made me drop to the ground, I felt the hard pavement as I crossed my arms over my head, that action saved my life, when the landmine dropped only a few feet away.
All hell was let loose. Bricks, buildings, everything seemed to go sky high. I will never forget the noise as the debris flew around me, or the blast from the mine that swept past me like a whirlwind of pressure that drew every breath out of my body.
Just reaching that corner and almost turning it had prevented me from being in a direct line of the blast. When I got up and turned, like Lot's wife, I wish I hadn't for the huge corner block where the young sailor had called to me had disappeared.
At my feet were remnants of a body. I turned and ran. Someone from a nearby shelter tried to drag me in but I scratched like a wild thing and they let me go again. I reached our shelter and ran in. My mother was there with my father and customers from our little pub. They were sitting packed like sardines, drinking from huge jugs; you'd have thought they were on a picnic. Someone shouted "Nell, your pub's been hit!" as another wave came and took our breaths away. I scrambled on our roof with a hosepipe and tried to put out the blaze.
Later, when the all clear sounded, a friend and I walked back along the route I had taken earlier. Rubble and debris were everywhere. Large craters where the bombs had fallen made our journey difficult. The lounge of the hotel where I had worked was completely demolished. Wardens and nurses were carrying injured into the hospital nearby.
On returning I remarked to my parents that I would sleep in the small stone shelter which would be more peaceful to my mind than the shattered public house which was still smouldering.
I awoke in the morning to find an air raid warden shaking me, telling me to hurry and get out, as the shelter was cordoned off with rope. A huge unexploded bomb (one of the largest) had fallen through the roof of the house to which the shelter was attached and was lying under the floor of the shelter, ticking away. I remarked that I had stayed there to sleep as it had seemed more peaceful, especially listening to the tick of what
I thought was a grandfather clock coming from a room in the house. I went outside to see my parents. We were all told to move away as an unexploded bomb lay in the entrance to our public house, called Smokey Joe's.
We stood, not knowing what to do or where to go, when a voice behind us said "Would anyone like to come into my house and have a boiled egg?" It was Beat Tricks, our helper, and we all sat in her kitchen, a boiled egg in our hands, amongst the rubble. It was the best meal I have ever tasted. I silently thanked God for bringing us through that terrible night.
Witness: Mr N A Hill
D Day - 6 June 1944 - Normandy
I had failed, it would appear, to fully grasp the potential tactical value of playing back the sounds of war through a 40 inch cube speaker from the bucking bows of a sea-borne bronco off the coast of the Cherbourg peninsula to a teutonic listener whose inaudible "Gott im Himmel!" would register in Admiralty House.
My punishment for this signal lack of insight was an immediate but temporary transfer to a theatre of war more suitable for a young RNVR Sub Lt whose mouth was rarely in sync with his brain. I was 20, a man of war, in every sense of the word. A graduate of the school of hard knocks (HMS Raleigh), and the land of make-believe (HMS King Alfred), with a year at sea in-between.
Thus to Bursledon up the Hamble River I came, to join 42 Commando (or was it 47 Commando? who remembers?). They were warm sunny days in Britain's then "no-go" area. "E" Squadron Commander was Major Pound RM, probably a near relative of Admiral Sir Dudley, charged with the initial responsibility of delivering his Commandos to the right beach (Gold), objectively to make contact with American troops landing on Omaha and converging on Arromanches from the west. I should explain here that I was one of three or four very young Naval Officers attached to the Marines in order to provide nautical expertise and navigational skills to Operation Overload during the critical period of the actual landing and subsequent build-up of fighting men and resources.
Having slipped our moorings on the eve of that eventful June day and glided silently and menacingly into the Solent we waited for the dawn light to commence our historic thrust into Europe. Unfortunately, with the dawn light, came the realisation that we were high and dry in Osborne Bay. LCMs are rather like floating "skips" with flat bottoms and twin marine diesels. My cargo glared at me in disbelief.
Hastily assuring my charges that, with four Solent tides per day, we would be "off in a jiffy", and at least "we had had a restful, seasick-free night", I turned to my faithful stoker/mechanic from Liverpool and said, "When the bucket floats give me revs you don't even have on the dial".
Shuddering dangerously we roared off in hot pursuit of the other 89 LCMs and the fast disappearing armada on the smoky horizon. In the gathering dusk, and the acrid smoke and heat of the battle, we finally caught up with our command group. A rising tide helped me to provide a dry landing for our battle-hungry marines. Up to that moment I had felt precariously responsible for them; now, as they turned and waved and were swallowed up by the smoke pall, a brief period of strange loneliness set in.
As night fell, and the action on the beach appeared to have moved on up the hill, away from that delightful Tudor style cottage, I found myself in attendance upon my Commanding Officer alongside our HQ ship from which he was blown to Kingdom come by the same bomb which ignited my RM issue khaki trousers. I had seen the "stick of six" coming as the Stuka roared overhead, and as each one fell and obscured the one before I knew we were in for a "seeing to". Screaming down the hatch for "revs!" I knew my "scouse" killick would respond. Moments later he was tearing at my trousers and spraying my tackle with the contents of the bulk-head fire extinguisher.
That night we slept uneasily, if at all, our hammocks slung under the stars. "Bobby" Shaftoe came alongside to share my five-star accommodation, moving his tin-hat over his exposed torso, unable to choose the right position of his anatomy requiring maximum protection from enemy machine-gun attacks. We laughed, nervously.
My recollections of the following six weeks or so are necessarily vague, events followed events with mind-bearing rapidity leaving little time to savour the details. My confidence grew with the shaky belief that everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. Mulberry Harbours, Plutos, Kitchen Barges and other such luxuries were still very much in the future. For the moment all we could do was career about, picking people out of the water who shouldn't have been there, and running between larger and more impressive craft with larger and more impressive officers.
"Bunny" Fox's idea of lashing two LCMs to the port and starboard quarters of huge soccer-pitch size floating steel platoons caught the imagination of everyone involved in the frustrating task of trying to get heavy arms and equipment ashore from growing fleets of cargo ships clogging the sea-ways.
Even this had its lighter moments. On many occasions we would arrive at the beach with twenty or more heavy trucks and no drivers. The beach-master, Lieut Commander RN (Not Kenneth Moore!) would order us to drive them up the beach ourselves. Truck driving was not required reading at Lancing College, so I apologise to any apoplectic General Staff stamping impatiently outside Bayeux.
Prior to the arrival of the huge concrete caissons which were to form the walls of the Mulberry Harbour, ancient derelict merchant vessels were towed into a temporary breakwater for the many small craft and beached. The storm which raged for three days shortly after D-Day did more damage to our flotilla of small craft than the combined efforts of the German High Command and our own ineptitudes.
Swiftly Shaftoe, Fox, and I drew lots for the privilege of sleeping in the cockroach infested quarters of these half submerged wrecks. The "privilege" however included stepping out of flea-ridden bunks into two feet of water at high tide!
Gradually, like mud-larks, we gravitated to drier land. The news coming back was very encouraging. We stepped up our rate of production, fighting among ourselves for the honour of emptying a newly arrived cargo ship. The theatre of war had moved away, apart from the terrifying spectacle of hundreds of Lancaster bombers on their way to destroy Caen, and the blasting of the whole cliffside on "Sword" beach by ear-splitting 15 inch guns from HMS Rodney.
"Bunny" Fox and I found digs in a farmhouse at the top of the hill road out of Arromanches. We lived on Camembert, Calvados, and Frank Sinatra (I remember thinking, "He'll never make it over Bing Crosby").
Six weeks to the day we sailed back up the Hamble River. Six weeks to the day a handful of us sat down to tea in the huge empty mess-hall. Tearful WRNS hung back.
Yes, I would like to return to Normandy, but for the life of my I can't imagine why? - Or perhaps that would be the best reason of all.
Witness: Mrs Halls (Née Butcher), Working in Plymouth Library
Reminiscences of a teenager in the blitz
I was fourteen when the Second World War broke out. For the last two years I had been conscious that my parents were very worried that there might be another war. I was playing with my brother in the woods where the telephone exchange now stands, near Crownhill, on that sunny September morning, when a friend came to tell us that war had been declared. The announcement had seemed inevitable for some time and didn't mean a lot to us children but we could see how worried our parents were.
The next day there was a trial sounding of the air raid warning and all clear sirens. When I heard the first one I was extremely scared but I realised that from now on there would be many more and it was no use feeling frightened. When the real raids came I did not have that terrified feeling again; I think it was the prospect of another night's loss of sleep that bothered me most. There were disappointments too; at school our half- term holidays were cancelled and the school leavers' party, "in view of the National emergency."
I left school at sixteen and became a very junior member of the staff of Plymouth City Library. I remember going to work in the black-out and, because we were on double summer time for the duration in the winter, it meant getting up on raw, cold mornings. When I could, I cycled. There were often traffic hold-ups where roads had been bombed overnight and I would find myself stuck behind an open truck covered with signs saying "Danger, unexploded bomb" and grinning soldiers sitting in the back beside the bomb. Sometimes roads were closed off with tapes but we all just popped underneath rather than making a detour.
The most frightening time was when I was on the late shift one evening. The siren went and all borrowers and staff went down to the basement to wait for the "all clear". Some of the seniors made tea and took it to the public in one part of the basement. We juniors were in a part where there was a table-tennis table and we took it in turns to play. As the air-raid became more intense the noise of the bombs falling was funnelled down the well of the large service lift. The sound of the bombs screaming down in that enclosed space was truly terrifying. Afterwards my friend and I walked home, picking our way over hoses while fire-fighters tried to quell the flames as Sherwell Church burned.
One day I cycled to work and found that the road behind the museum and library had a tape across it so I dodged underneath to find that the whole library was a burnt-out shell. The caretakers were rescuing what they could from the basement and we carried saturated leather-bound volumes of The Times up the road, where they were spread on the pavement to dry in the warm sun. They were so heavy it took two girls to carry each volume. This seemed to go on for days, though I don't suppose it did; the smell of burnt paper makes me feel sick even now. After this we were deployed to help the city services in issuing travel vouchers to people who were bombed out.
Later, an art gallery in the museum was allocated to the library and all books that were returned or donated were catalogued and classified ready to re-open in the Plymouth Room.
Lord Astor performed the opening ceremony on about 28 July 1941. We were able to expand and move downstairs to a
larger room after a few months.
Branch duties were interesting too. Every time it was my turn to go to St Budeaux there had been a bomb blast nearby the night before and my colleague and I had to clear up the mess, put back the books and get the issues in order. There was no way of knowing when the books were due back. We were always lucky to get books back, anyway.
The Laira Branch Library was situated in a cell of the old Police Station and owing to shortage of staff, the caretaker, Mrs Westlake, kept the library running very well. One of the staff did duty there once a week. The most moving experience I had was late one afternoon when I was in Crownhill Branch Library. It was very quiet that day, with few borrowers. I became aware of a strange noise which went on and on. I looked out of the window and saw that the road was filled with people; they were pushing carts, barrows, prams and were laden with bags. Some of the prams had children piled in and some were piled high with bags and blankets. There was no sound of voices, just the sound of feet as the people wearily, steadily walked up to the moor to get some kind of sleep safely away from the bombs. It was a sight I shall never forget. The wonderful thing was that everyone came back next morning to carry on as well as they could through the latest devastations. The spirit of Plymouth was truly great.
Witness: Mr J Holwell, aged 9 in 1944
I vividly remember visiting an aunt who lived on what is now Normandy Way Hill. Such visits were a weekly event but suddenly towards the end of May my mother had to apply - to whom I do not know - for a permit to visit my aunt. On June 5th we paid her a visit, but from about midway up Pemros Road we were escorted by U.S. Army police to the aunt's house and given a specific time to be ready to go home. If we failed to be ready at the given time we would have to stay the night!
From the front of my aunt's house the river was "choc a block" with ships, some fully laden and others being loaded with men and equipment from the Vicarage Road Camp. It appeared to me that it would be possible to walk from Saltash Passage across to Saltash from one ship's deck to another. My mother and I returned home after the visit and I remember the radio announcement on D-Day informing the nation that allied forces has landed on the beaches of northern France.
On a subsequent visit to my aunt she told me that, after going to bed having seen the mass of assembled ships, the next morning the river was completely empty. She often wondered how many of the embarked troops survived the landings.
In the build-up to D-Day I often visited another aunt who lived in Ivybridge. On a visit to her I met my first coloured person. Apparently the camp situated up the road from my aunt's house was occupied predominantly by coloured troops who had caused some public order problems in the town. On the occasion of my visit the commanding officer and a senior coloured soldier were paying a visit to apologise for the damage caused to her property. The compensation offered included my first taste of a Hershey bar.
Another highlight was a party held at Seaton Barracks at which I and my classmates experienced ice-cream, pancakes, white bread and "candies" hitherto unobtainable due to rationing.
Witness: Mr R Jackson
I was ten years of age at the declaration of the war. Being too young to understand the seriousness of war we thought it was fun. We remember clearly:
1. Mr Chamberlains speech ... also his meeting with Adolf Hitler.
2. Territorials jumping into lorries and off to war.
3. L.D.V - Local Defence Volunteers later known as the Home Guard. My father was in the Home Guard.
4. The blackout was very strict, any chink of light, there would be a shout "put that light out". No street lights, car lights were blinkered, only pointing downwards.
5. Food and clothes rationing, also sweets. Off-white bread, oranges and bananas on rare occasions.
6. Collections of metal for the war effort, even razor blades, iron gate railings, saucepans, kettles etc., anything metal. We lived at Garston Forest, Shaldon at the time. Our gate is still there, it was not taken because there is not a pavement outside.
7. Quite a few bombs fell in Shaldon as well as Teignmouth. I well remember the dayTeignmouth Hospital received a direct hit, killing several, including nurses. We children used to explore the wreckage of bombed houses, also collected shrapnel, sometimes still warm from the explosion, other collections included incendiary bombs which occasionally failed to go off, also bullet cases etc. The planes raided frequently, day or night, flying very low at times. I once waved to a German pilot when I stood on a hedge at Labrador. The plane came from Newton Abbot, down the Teign and up through Coombe Valley, so low I was looking from a higher level than the plane, the pilot released a bomb which landed just off shore.
8. There were many gun sites mostly ack-ack, also pom-poms and naval guns at the Ness, Shaldon, also a Boom across the Mouth of the Teign. Ships had Kite Balloons to keep off aircraft. Sometimes they broke away; we would watch them fly away and rise until bursting from inside pressure. I made a cape and leggings from balloon fabric. This balloon had been struck by lightning and fell in flames into the river. We were not allowed on the beaches, which were mined and barbed against invasion. Roads were tank trapped also oil fire trapped. There was great activity when there was an invasion scare.
9. There was a lot of activity in this area in preparation for invasion. We got on well with the Americans. The "Sea Bees" had occupation of the ... Sea Breeze Hotel. The Buffs were in the area, also Indian Cavalry in Shaldon. Morgan Giles [boat builders in Teignmouth] built MTBs. We had many evacuees in this area which was supposed to be safer than the city areas. Shaldon senior children travelled to Newton Abbot Highweek School by bus each day.
Dig for Victory: I still use a gardening book supplied by the Royal Horticultural Society, London entitled The Vegetable Garden Displayed, with 300 photographs issued in 1941. The Minister of Fisheries and Food was the Rt Hon R S Hudson, the Minister of Food was Lord Woolton. Powdered eggs were much used. All food scraps were saved for pig food. Collecting bins were placed around villages and towns, nothing was wasted in those days.
The Teign House Hotel, Shaldon was half demolished by a bomb. The first bomb on the beach left a large crater which we used to swim in. One bomb dropped from very low level in centre of Shaldon Bowling Green, bounced up over houses and exploded on allotments by Hamiltons, so it actually passed over our house at Garston; a piece of shrapnel stuck into our back door.
The German planes frequently did daylight tip and run raids, flying very low, taking our gunners by surprise, also our men often could not fire for fear of doing damage to us who would be in the line of fire.
Each house had a shelter - not quite sure if ours was called Anderson, but ours was like a large table of angled steel, wire mesh around sides, sheet metal top. We used ours as a large dining table.
I seem to remember a ship upside down in the direction of Shaldon, I wonder if it was to do with Operation Tiger?
I remember the German prison camp, Teignmouth, Milford Park. The prisoners, I believe, were treated very well. Most worked on the land helping with the harvest etc. Also they helped with the construction of the prefabs. Prefabs were constructed in factories and transported by rail. I believe they were intended to last about twenty years, but our family lived in one right up until 1967. We loved them, they were extremely well planned and cosy, usually constructed of aluminium outside and I think asbestos-lined insulation and asbestos inside walls. They had metal cupboards, kitchen units, wardrobes, gas cooker, gas fridge, fireplace in front room with doors fitted and back boiler. We had an outside shed which I believe was intended as an air raid shelter, thick galvanised nissen-hut shaped, mostly covered by soil. Each dwelling was detached so we all had a hedge and fence - our own private area.
I seem to remember my eldest brother worked in Bristol at one time during the War. He told me about seeing a Spitfire being tested. The engine parted from the plane which must have crashed. Presumably the engine was too powerful for the body construction.
Witness: Mr R.Kneebone, living in Devonport 1939-42.
My first encounter with the War was as a senior boy scout asssisting civilians to be fitted with gas masks at the Devonport Guildhall. We were asked to assist the Civil Defence in this operation and hundreds of people passed through this centre. At the time I was a young naval shipyard apprentice learning my trade in the Naval Dockyard. I was Devonport born and bred, mostly educated in Devonport and almost without exception found my leisure and entertainment in the town.
When war was declared our scout troop (9th Devonport) was disbanded owing to our headquarters being the Territorial Army hall which was then required full-time by the army. We scouts went our own way, mostly joining the Civil Defence units. I chose the Auxiliary Fire Brigade as a part-timer, our fire station being a small garage at the rear of the shop directly outside the St. Levan Road Dockyard gates. We later moved to another garage further along St. Levan Road, beneath the railway viaduct. We came later to regret this move owing to the fact that the viaduct was to become a target for the German bombers.
At the outbreak of War the Three Towns fire services were independent of one another and had different screw threads for their fire hydrants so we had to carry adaptors for use in different parts of the city. Eventually the National Fire Service was formed and the universal bayonet fitting made things easier. Our appliance was a Beresford trailer pump which was pulled by a private car and our crew consisted of four teenage males and a mature crew leader. When the heavy raids began we were given leave of absence from work to go full-time as firemen, which lasted two or three weeks. Of course we were then on full fireman's pay.
Most of our fire fighting experience was confined to Devonport, Keyham and Morice Town which we knew well and in which we all lived.
I recall seeing hundreds of soldiers from France, Belgium and Britain sitting on the grassof the Brickfields playing fields after their evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk, all looking dishevelled and weary. Local people came up and gave them cigarettes etc. through the railings. The Raglan Army Barracks were there at the time and the Brickfield was army land.
In Devonport Park, close to the bowling green, I was in the company of four of my pals when the air raid warning sounded off and almost immediately we saw hundreds of incendiary bombs burning in Mount Edgcumbe Park. We heard the droning of German bombers and we knew we were in for a rough time. I had to go to Morice Square where I lived, to change into my uniform before reporting to my fire station in St. Levan Road. My pals were going a different route because they lived in the Pembroke Street area, so we parted company. Very soon afterwards a stick of fire bombs fell across the park and I did not know for a few days that three of my pals had been killed at that time. Also on the way to St. Levan Road fire station I was cycling past the Albert Road Gates and saw my first dead bodies lying around near the little park which used to be outside the gates.
From then on life changed dramatically, and I suppose we grew up very quickly. At work we would exchange stories with pals who lived in different parts of the city; some apprentices were in other branches of the civil defence, such as rescue, ambulance and home guard.
There were times when I would be in a dilemma over making a choice of reporting for duty or ramaining at home to defend my own home. My older brother was at sea, my younger brother was evacuated to relatives at Chagford, most of the occupants of our block of flats would evacuate town before nightfall, leaving my mother and father plus two or three other occupants on guard. My mother, father and I became very skilful in the use of a dustbin lid, stirrup pump and sandbag. The trick was to stand in the doorway of the corner shop and watch the roof of the block. Any incendiary bombs falling in the street we left alone, but any which fell on the roof were dealt with very quickly indeed.
There was humour sometimes in our activities, such as when my father and I were attempting to extinguish an incendiary bomb in a sofa in a neighbour's first floor flat. We could not completely damp out the fire, so my dad used his axe to remove the window frame, and we then pushed the thing out into the street, where it could burn itself out.
A very sad event was the night when an incendiary bomb fell onto the roof of King Street Senior School where I had spent my early school days. I desperately tried to break into the school, but the doors were very strongly constructed and the ground floor windows were high above the ground level, which made it extremely difficult to enter. I had to leave it because other bombs were threatening my own home, and through the night I watched the school burn to a shell.
An incident which would cause amusement in any other situation was the time a house was burning in the area where the Dockyard Apprentices' Centre now stands. Our appliance had to draw water from a static tank but our hoses had to pass through another house to reach the fire. I was sent to knock on the door and seek permission to lay our hoses through the house. I was confronted with a housewife who was irate at the suggestion of fire hoses on her carpet. She was finally persuaded when we were able to provide rubber-lined hoses which were waterproof. In the meantime all hell was going on round us as the air raid was still in progress.
On another occasion our crew and appliance were required to act as a booster pump to pump water from a static tank outside the Albert Road Gates to an appliance at the crest of the hill near the former Engineering College. We had just started the operation when a shout alerted us to the fact that a land mine suspended from a parachute was rapidly approaching in our direction. We stood with our backs to the Dockyard wall and watched it float over the wall. Suddenly there was a tremendous rush of water down the hill and our pump was swept away towards the Dockyard gates. We could see all this quite clearly because the bombers had dropped flares. We learned afterwards that the mine had exploded in a reservoir inside the wall and had blown the water over the wall into the roadway.
During the day our job would be to top up static water tanks and bomb craters with water ready for the night as well as try and get some sleep. One one such occasion we were called to the park in St Levan Road and instructed to pump water from a bomb crater by three soldiers. Owing to our state of semi-exhaustion we were sleeping when the call came - we had not realised the significance of the presence of the army. Only when the fins of a 500 pound unexploded bomb began to
appear from beneath the water did we realise what was happening and were relieved to be ordered off the site.
My view of the war at sea was at this time restricted to my work in the Dockyard, and it first hit me when my gang of shipwrights were ordered to dry-dock and repair the bows of H.M.S. Vanquisher, a destroyer which had been in collision with a sister ship H.M.S. Walker. Apparently some of her ship's company had been trapped in the wreckage and we civvies were not allowed on board until the area had been cleared of human remains and disinfected. Some lorries arrived from the Royal Naval Barracks with some "sailors" equipped with decontamination gear who proceeded to clear away the debris. I put the term sailors in inverted commas because the "sailors" were only partly dressed in uniform. They had only arrived to join the navy the day before and had not even completed their uniform issue. What an introduction to things to come.
These are only a few of my memories of that era, and no doubt may of my contemporaries could recall many more. The near miss by bombs, the lack of power and gas, the field kitchens in school playgrounds, the nine p.m. air raid warning which caused a peculiar sensation in the chest, and the next morning my father insisting we got to work on time, at seven a.m., even though we may not have slept properly.
All was not doom and gloom however; we danced at the Victory Hall, the Guildhall, the Corn Exchange, the Embassy, the Duke of Cornwall etc. We spent weekends on the beach at Whitsand and danced on Saturday nights at St. John's village hall. It was not unusual to sit through a film and hear gunfire from outside or even queue up under glass in Union Street and watch the anti-aircraft gun firing from Millbay railway bridge. Come the end of 1942 it was my turn to go to sea. But that is another story.
Witness: Miss M Lawrence
In August 1942 I came home to my parents for a holiday before taking my Final Nursing exams. I had two friends with me and my brother was also on leave at the time. On this day, I think it was the 24th, we set out for a picnic and a walk along the cliffs along Bishop's Walk. When we reached the point below the Marine Drive we decided it was time for lunch, and climbed up to an open grassy glade between the Walk and below the Marine Drive, overlooking the cliffs and the sea.
We heard the sound of planes but could not see any in the sky above. Then suddenly we saw three planes below us, low on the sea, coming towards us at great speed. They flew up and went right over our heads, not more than a few yards from us and we saw the pilots quite clearly. No doubt they saw us too. They flew inland and then we heard three explosions, one after the other. Then, a little further up the coast towards Babbacombe, we saw these three fighters speeding back down to sea level again.
There were two or three little rowing boats off the coast at this point, we saw them quite clearly being machine-gunned by these planes, we could see the line of bullets straddling the boats. We decided that we had better go home to see what had happened. Our home was at the Manor Road end of Cary Park and as we approached we saw that a bomb had been dropped on the Tennis Courts in the Park. We met our neighbour who was an A.R.P Warden at the time and he was in a very excited state. He assured us that our house was not hit but a bomb had fallen on the small row of houses behind us on the corner of Warbro Road, completely demolishing them and killing the people at home, but leaving "The Fortunes of War" intact, and there it still stands.
Our house suffered only from the blast. My father, enjoying his apples and custard for his lunch found a plate of broken glass before him, and his garden covered with broken bricks and other debris.
We learned afterwards that these Fighters were Fokker-Wolfs, with fixed machine guns. Had they been Messerschmitts they could have shot us where we were sitting. The small boats on the sea had in them patients from the Palace Hotel RAF Hospital, and we heard that one man had been killed and others wounded.
This was just one of the 142 "Hit and Run" raids on Torquay. My brother painted this little picture of the scene, with Hope's Nose and cliffs below us on the right and the wing of a German plane over our heads. A very good momento of this occasion.
Witness: Mr J T Newton
I was the third of four sons of J W (Bill) Newton, an ex-regular soldier, injured and invalided from the Sherwood Foresters (North & Derby Regiment) early in the century.
All four of us joined the Royal Engineers, three of us as boys of 14-16 years of age, in the regular army. One of my older brothers was killed in a road accident during service in 1938. My other elder brother, after serving in the B.E.F in France and surviving the evacuation from Dunkirk, served in Madagascar, India, Iran, Iraq, Trans-Jordania, Egypt, Libya, Sicily and Italy where he was killed by an exploding mine on 18 February 1944.
Early in 1943, at the age of 19 years, I was posted from the School of Military Engineering at Brompton to 184 Field Company, Royal Engineers and then began a period of intensive training for the invasion of Normandy.
Beach assault landings, demolitions, mine lifting, booby traps and bridge building - from the west coast of Scotland to the south coast of England included the clearance of the mine fields laid at Hengistbury Head in Hampshire as part of the British anti-invasion defences. Two of my pals lost their lives during this operation.
The west coast of Scotland and the coast around and in Poole Harbour in Dorset were the principal areas for beach landing manoeuvres. We also did training on the then new bailey bridge, which was to figure prominently later on the canals and rivers of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
As D-Day approached, we were moved to the troop concentration areas around Portsmouth, where every roadside was lined with tanks and vehicles parked nose to tail for mile after mile. I had never seen such a concentration of transport.
I remember being surprised to receive our pay in francs, on the last pay day before embarking (notes printed especially for the troops).
We embarked on 2 June ready for the invasion originally planned for 4 June, but postponed due to bad weather in the Channel. Our accommodation from then until the morning of 6 June was an assortment of landing craft. I was one of the lucky ones, on a L.S.T (Landing Ship Transport) carrying tanks and other vehicles.
During the waiting in the Channel we had to find whatever shelter we could in or under the vehicles, which were mostly full of stores. In the L.S.T there were a few bunks in the areas designated for personnel, but not nearly enough room for all, and in our vessel, the Canadians were first to board, so we didn't get a look in. Most of the leisure time during the wait was taken up learning from the Canadians how to play crap (dice) and then joining in to gamble our francs. The Canadians were a great bunch of fellows.
In the actual crossing we sailed past a floating mine. Shots were directed at it, but without success. We hoped it would not come into contact with any of the many craft behind us.
Our company supported the Berkshire Infantry Regiment and we were attached to the 3rd Canadian Division. We formed No. 8 Beach Group and it was our job to clear the beaches and surrounding areas of obstructions, mines and booby traps to enable supplies to be off-loaded and stored. We started landing shortly after H-Hour on D-Day and continued until we were all ashore.
We landed on Nan Section of JUNO beach at Bernières-sur-Mer.
The L.S.T had large doors in the bow and towed alongside it a huge metal raft, known as a "Rhino". Due to size, weight and load the ship grounded well short of the water-line. The Rhino, driven by a system of outboard motors was brought to the front of the ship and with the doors open the transport was driven onto it. When loaded, the Rhino was then propelled to the beach. I said earlier that I was one of the lucky ones, because I was able to cadge a lift on the roof of one of our trucks, which meant that I didn't get my feet wet, a valuable consideration as it was almost a week before I was able to remove my boots for any length of time.
Assault craft were everywhere and vehicles littered the beach above and below water level. As we travelled up the beach, three or four of us on the roof of one vehicle, a German plane approached, travelling along the line of the beach. Bombs could be seen clearly below it. We leaped to the ground and the bombs passed over the truck and exploded a short distance up the beach to our right. Then the journey continued to our designated area. German prisoners were put into beached assault craft. I remember thinking what a hard and grim lot they looked.
The 6th of June has been described as "the longest day". For me the day went quickly, but the night was certainly the longest ever. At the end of the day when our work was done and we had established our company lines, I managed to dig myself a trench partly covered with a sheet of steel (discarded waterproofing from a tank) and a few inches of sand. I was tired and hoping for a few hours shut-eye, when the platoon officer arrived and said "grab your rifle and follow me". "Sorry, Sir no rifle - I have a bren gun". "Better still - come on". He took me to the corner of a field on the perimeter of the platoon lines where someone had dug a trench about 4 feet by 11/2 feet' and 3feet deep. I was told to jump in and to be extremely watchful for any event. He walked off into the darkening night, back towards the lines. It was about 10.00pm.
At about midnight he returned, my relief, I thought - not so. Just a check and another warning to be alert, a relief would be supplied as soon as available. There was some activity from a nearby AA gun, and a truck, obviously containing some ammunition, was on fire about 50 yards away, apparently abandoned. The waves could be heard on the beach and noise of movement of vehicles in the distance.
The hours dragged by. I braced my legs against the sides of the trench to keep myself upright and awake. I was relieved at 6.00am on DH. I virtually fell into my trench and into a deep sleep. I was woken and told to report for duty. I was much refreshed and rather surprised when I discovered I had been asleep for just over one hour.
Most of the next month was spent lifting mines, servicing detectors, demolishing dangerous bombed or shelled buildings, clearing roads and lifting more mines, clearing areas for stores etc.
Some of the minefields had to be cleared with "prickers" ( a wire like a knitting needle with a loop instead of a knob) because they were alternate anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. The anti-personnel mines were made of concrete or wood with the only metal being the detonators. These were not easily detected with the metal detectors and where the grass was long, impossible. This work was tedious and tiring both physically and mentally. Some fields were marked "Achtung Minen" but contained no mines - but we still had to check.
When the Falaise Gap was closed things moved fast, and so did we. Our main function now was "lines of communication". Road repairs and bridge building, through France, Belgium, Holland over the River Rhine and on to the River Elbe and then the surrender of the German Forces.
Most of 184 Field Company were returned home to England to form part of a new assault force for the far East, but when the A-bomb was dropped we were virtually made redundant. The Corps was split up and we were posted to wherever we were needed. By this time I had been joined by my younger brother and we were posted to Italy then Greece and eventually to Egypt where we both completed our service, in the Canal Zone.
Besides us four brothers in the Royal Engineers, our father was Chief ARP Warden, one sister a nurse in the V.A.D (her husband was in the RAF) and our other sister was married to another Royal Engineer who served in France (including Dunkirk, N Africa and Europe).
I am proud to have served my country and to have been in the Royal Engineers. I am also very proud of my family.
Witness: Mrs B.F.Patterson
I have a very special war-time memory, which will live with me until I die.
I had already been through the dreadful Coventry Blitz, where I had been sent from Brixham to go on munitions, this was 1941.
In May 1943 I came home to Brixham to nurse my sick mother, by then I had married and had a baby of 8 months. We lived at Number 5, Greens Court, Higher Street. The Courtyard had six cottages, which had a wall about six feet, where we could stand, and look down to the harbour, across the bay, and out to Berry Head. It was a peaceful quiet Sunday morning, sunny, and so calm, the time was about 10.45 am.
A few neighbours, myself, baby, and brother, were gazing down at the harbour, when the peace was broken by the loud drone of planes. We could not believe what we were seeing: six planes, so low, they seemed to skim the water, were making for Torquay. My brothers said, "My God, they are low" never dreaming they were not ours. The next minute we knew differently; the dreadful "thud-thud" of bombs which were all too familiar to me.
I raced indoors clutching my little one, ran upstairs crying, "Mam, Mam, what can I do?" I knew she was too ill to be moved, and I shall never forget her reply. She said, "Hurry to number three, they have a Morrison shelter, you will be safe there. Don't worry about me, I am going to die anyway".
I did hurry to number three, but I just could not leave my mother alone, so I went back to her. Thank God, within minutes the all clear sounded, but the Germans had done their cruel work, a bomb had fallen on St Mary Church, Torquay and killed 21 little children as they were at Sunday School, this was 30 May, Rogation Sunday, 1943.
My dear Mam died in July.
Mrs B.F.Patterson
I have a very special war-time memory, which will live with me until I die.
I had already been through the dreadful Coventry Blitz, where I had been sent from Brixham to go on munitions, this was 1941.
In May 1943 I came home to Brixham to nurse my sick mother, by then I had married and had a baby of 8 months. We lived at Number 5, Greens Court, Higher Street. The Courtyard had six cottages, which had a wall about six feet, where we could stand, and look down to the harbour, across the bay, and out to Berry Head. It was a peaceful quiet Sunday morning, sunny, and so calm, the time was about 10.45 am.
A few neighbours, myself, baby, and brother, were gazing down at the harbour, when the peace was broken by the loud drone of planes. We could not believe what we were seeing: six planes, so low, they seemed to skim the water, were making for Torquay. My brothers said, "My God, they are low" never dreaming they were not ours. The next minute we knew differently; the dreadful "thud-thud" of bombs which were all too familiar to me.
I raced indoors clutching my little one, ran upstairs crying, "Mam, Mam, what can I do?" I knew she was too ill to be moved, and I shall never forget her reply. She said, "Hurry to number three, they have a Morrison shelter, you will be safe there. Don't worry about me, I am going to die anyway".
I did hurry to number three, but I just could not leave my mother alone, so I went back to her. Thank God, within minutes the all clear sounded, but the Germans had done their cruel work, a bomb had fallen on St Mary Church, Torquay and killed 21 little children as they were at Sunday School, this was 30 May, Rogation Sunday, 1943.
My dear Mam died in July.
Witness: Capt. R.Smith, Tamerton Foliot, Plymouth
I was a member of Monty's 3rd Infantry Division. We were falling back to Dunkirk. My platoon with Bren gun carriers were ordered to hold the main crossroads onto La Panne until approximately twelve midnight when the last vehicle would be the Medical Officer's, then to make our own way to Dunkirk after destroying our vehicles.
We came under mortar fire and lost three men but held the position until three a.m. Instead of destroying the vehicles we used them to see if we could get through La Panne, but we were unable to get through the town. There was fire all along the streets with burned out vehicles and wires criss-crossing all over the place. We had to leave our Bren gun carriers, not without a grenade near the engine. I told the men, "This is it, make your own way along the beach." You could see Dunkirk from the fires of ships and the red glow in the sky from the town.
Dawn found us on the sand dunes of La Panne. There were three of us in our group but thousands on the beach and forming queues into the water where the navy boys were coming in with small boats picking up as many as they could.
Then the bombers came in - Stukers dive-bombing the queues. We were watching as the bombs dropped into the men. The ranks closed up where the crater was. It was hellish. We couldn't stay in the dunes, so had to take our chance in the water. There was a destroyer laid off about 300 yards. I said we could swim to her but Darkie, our chum, said, "You two go ahead. I can't swim." We said, "We'll take you with us. Just hang onto a plank of wood, you'll be okay." He wouldn't have agreed but fighter planes came along very low and started machine-gunning the troops in the water, killing many. At last we had him on a large bit of wood, part of a hatch cover. We were doing well - half way there - when five Stukers attacked the ship and nearly blew her out of the water.
So it was back to the dunes. Later in the day we found a motor-boat well up on the beach. It was undamaged. I said "Do you think the engine will work?" After checking around we found the engine was okay; all we wanted was petrol. That was no bother as there were scores of vehicles all along the beach.
We worked to clear the sand from behind the boat so that the tide would come up to float her. She was about 22 feet long. There were some French coloured troops dug in near the boat. The officer spoke a little English and we told him that we intended to try to sail the boat to England.. He said "You'll have to wait about six hours for the tide, so have something to eat and drink, but we only have roast potatoes and wine." They were burnt black but tasted great after so long without food.
As we were watching the incoming tide a batch of bombers came along the beach. One turned back dropping a stick of bombs which blew our boat to bits.
On the last day of the evacuation we made our way along the mole at La Panne. It was about three a.m. Ships were burning and the mole was pitted with craters. I thought we would never make it. Near the end of the mole I saw a British helmet rise over the side and then he shouted, "Anyone for the Skylark?" I crawled along and he said, "You're lucky, we were just going to push off." It was a small trawler with a two man crew. The skipper said, "We can't use the engine, so push along the mole
with your hands, and if any of you know your prayers, start saying them." They were pouring everything in to stop craft getting in and leaving. There were about 120 men on that boat; you could hit the water with your hand easily. We were lucky and after a while we heard the skipper shout, "Okay Geordie, start her up, and get the hell out of here!"
... When I came to we were unloading in Swansea, Wales.
I was also involved in the landings at Arromanches; that was a picnic compared to Dunkirk.
Note: Capt. Smith was mentioned in despatches after Dunkirk and then granted a commission for D-Day and the remainder of the War.
Witness: Mr A Trevail. Resident in Plymouth
On the night of Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th June 1943, I awoke to the mournful wail of the siren. Mother had shaken us out of our sleep, and with urgency in her voice, started to dress us. "Come on we've got to hurry, the German planes are coming." I sat on the bed, and started dozing off again. We all ran down the stairs and into the cool night air, keeping close to the Reservoir wall as we ran to our shelter, which was next to the ARP wardens shelter. Mother carried baby John in one hand, and held the respirator in the other. My brother and sister had our gas masks slung over our shoulders attached to string in a cardboard box.
We reached the shelter in a couple of minutes, and slammed the reinforced concrete door. The muffled sound of the siren sent shivers down our spines. Soon afterwards the night sky was made like day, as an enemy aircraft path-finder dropped flares; a little later a force of about 20 bombers came in over the city. My father John was in the A.R.P. shelter with the other wardens. Bombs were raining down on the city as before, and the explosions were terrible; the ground shook with each onslaught. The Bofers gun in the back lane was pounding away, and the already bright night sky was lit up with tracer bullets from all over the city. Suddenly a shout went up with one accord from the wardens post, "He's been hit, ... he's been hit ... hurrah."
My elder sister Jean and I opened the huge door between us and shouted to father, wanting to see what had been hit. He beckoned us out, pointing to the sky and there, caught in the beam of a searchlight, was an enemy bomber, huge tongues of flame belching from the fuselage. Mother stayed put in the safety of the shelter. The plane was headed to wards Dartmoor, but as we continued to watch, it swung round at 180 degrees and came straight for us, getting lower and lower all the time. Father shouted, "It's going to hit us." and grabbing us both, he ushered us back inside the shelter, against our protestations. We all heard the plane roar overhead at about 100 feet, and a few seconds later heard a terrific explosion as it crashed in the garden of a house that was being used by some W.R.N.S. in Penlee Way.
Within minutes some of the wardens were on their way to see whether there would be any survivors from the wreck. Rene Lamble, an ARP warden suffered badly with arthritis in her legs was way behind the others, and when she did arrive she went into the garden, where bullets were still whizzing around from the plane. "Get out Rene you will get your head shot off." a warden shouted. Arthritis or not, she moved out of danger so quickly, they said later that she beat the speed record for the 100 yard dash.
The plane was a Junkers 88 bomber, and just before it met its destruction, one of the crew baled out, and fell into the trees, his parachute failing to open. The rest of the crew were killed where they sat, and in the horrendous heat there was nothing that anybody could do.
The R.A.F. and the local police were quickly on the scene, as well as the AFS, and cordoned off the area. When father returned some hours later, we wanted to know all about it. I could just imagine all that shrapnel lying around, and made up my mind that at the earliest possible moment, I would try to get some. The next morning, Sunday 13th; Mother was getting my two sisters and me ready to go to Sunday School. We always wore our Sunday best clothes, and as a seven year old I was fidgeting as she dressed me in my light brown serge jacket and trousers (which came down to just below my knees) my hob nailed boots and long stockings. "For goodness keep still Tony, you have never been in a hurry to go to Sunday School before, what's up with you."
She saw us all off and Jean was in charge, being the eldest. No sooner were we out of sight of the cottage than I let go of her hand and said, "I'm not going to Sunday school, I'm going to see the German plane." and with that I was off like the wind. "You come back here, or I'll tell father when we get back." I heard the words and weighed up the odds of getting some shrapnel, or a hiding from father, but this time the odds were in favour of the shrapnel. On my way I met my best friend, Gerald, who had had the same thoughts and was heading towards Penlee Way. We could smell the burnt oil and wreckage long before we got there, and my stomach retched a little.
There were many people there; some R.A.F. men were sifting through the wreckage, some policemen were making sure that no one went where they shouldn't, and a lot of onlookers. As we wandered about we saw some bits of parachute in a tree, and underneath there was a mound of sand covering the remains of the airman. We were horrified by the sight and were told to move off. We went up a little way to see if we could spot any bits of plane, but we couldn't see a thing. We were straining on tip toe, when a man asked if we wanted a lift up. We both nodded and he was able to stand us on the wall which ran around the garden. From this vantage point we had a super view, and saw a man taking photographs of the smouldering heap. "That man just took our photo, Gerald." "Don't be silly, he was taking the plane." "Well we were in it, ... I bet you a piece of shrapnel." We could still hear, now and again small explosions, underground, as bullets went off in the heat. The man dropped us to the ground, and we went up around the corner where there weren't so many people. "Gerald, please pump me up the wall so I can crawl through and get some shrapnel." Gerald pushed me up the wall and I saw a large piece of shiny, jagged shrapnel about ten feet away. I slowly made my way in through the undergrowth.
Suddenly I felt large hands grab my ankles and drag me backwards. I looked around and saw the biggest policeman that I had ever seen in my life; Gerald was nowhere to be seen. I was so scared at that moment that I wet my best Sunday pants. I began to cry, and the policeman seeing the effect that he had on me, told me to go home and not to come back to such dangerous places.
On my way home Gerald was waiting around the corner. Look at your clothes, Tony, you are covered in dirt, and what's that wet patch on your trousers.? I was in a state, and realise that I was in for a good hiding when I got home. "What happened to you Gerald?" "When I saw the policeman coming, I didn't hang around."
When I eventually arrived at the cottage I got two hidings, one for not going to Sunday school, and one for nearly ruining my suit.
The local paper, The Western Morning News ran the story on the 14th June. It read: "German raiders paid a high price for a sharp attack which they made on a South West coast town during Saturday night. Out a force, four are believed to have been shot down. One of these machines crashed ... in a residential district of the town, and was burnt out, together with a number of the crew."
On the same day the 14th, I had to be sent home from school after vomiting in the playground. I told mother that I couldn't get the smell of the crash out of my nose. The dead airmen were buried with full Air Force honours at Weston Mill Cemetery.
As for me, I never did find that piece of shrapnel.
Witness: Mrs. Marjorie Wild, Devon resident nursing in Somerset
In 1943 my husband (who was in the army) and I (a wartime nurse) managed a few days leave together and revisited a favourite holiday venue, which was a farmhouse at Instow, North Devon. We got about by bus and on foot and one hot day we were on the cliffs somewhere near Hartland Point, when I spotted what looked like the body of an airman on the beach below. Ted went down for a closer look, and confirmed that it was an unfortunate airman, whose body had been in the sea for a long time. I said that we must prevent it from being lost again to the incoming tide, feeling that whatever the man’s nationality, he was some mother’s son, and she would want to know of his death. Ted refused to let me help him try to move the body, so we set off on the longish ascent, in great heat, back up the cliffs until we came at last to a house with a phone from where we rang the police, giving them the number of ou
