While we were there we put barbed wire on the Dorset beaches, particularly Weymouth, because the Germans were preparing for Operation Sealion, the invasion of England. We heard about barges being shot up by the Navy and R.A.F., and about dead Germans floating in the sea, but I have never met anyone who saw any, although many post-war books talk about it.
While we were at Blandford the London Blitz started, and many of our East End Londoners deserted temporarily to go home and help their families. Some of them came back with very sad stories.
We only saw one German plane while we were at Blandford. It came low over the Camp and we saw the bombs come out, but he was a rotten shot and hit nobody, or even a building.
At the end of Basic Infantry Training we all went off to Malvern in Worcestershire to join The 7th Battalion Royal West Kents (50th of Foot, known throughout the Army as the blind half-hundred - a Bingo call!) It was a Territorial Battalion which had come back through Dunkirk and lost half its men and most of its equipment. We lived in large tents and while we were there the Coventry Blitz happened. We could see it in the distance, and in the morning we went over there to help clear up. My Section was working behind the back wall of the Cathedral, and Winston Churchill came along and stood on the back of our truck to make a speech. All the houses around us had been flattened and I remember a man going into what had been a corner shop and lugging out his safe. He opened it and found that all his papers and money had been burned by the heat. He sat down on the pavement and cried.
We were not at Malvern for very long, and went to Pembroke in South Wales where we were to be for the next two years, off and on.
Although we were supposedly part of the National Defence and guarding the Oil Installation at the nearby Docks, nothing seemed to happen except drills, guards and route marches. It was quite normal to go 30 - 35 miles a day, but that didn't bother me very much. We once did 100 miles in 3 days, full equipment, and I finished up carrying two extra rifles, my Bren machine gun and someone else's haversack. When we got back I went to a dance in the Colonel's car with his chauffeur, but there weren't many of our lads there. I have always been able to walk long distances, being a country boy, but it was very hard on Townies' feet.
Sometimes we would go away for special training, for instance to the Black Mountains near Pontypool where we trained with an Indian Regiment with mules. While we were there I played a few games of Rugby for the famous Pontypool Club. We lived in a doss house, usually used by tramps and vagrants - it was full of fleas!
Commando training was done in Scotland at Inverary on Loch Fyne. We lived on the landing craft and were always getting soaked to the skin scrambling up beaches. One or two chaps were drowned because of the weight of their equipment. At night we would drop fishing lines through the portholes and have dogfish for breakfast.
Pembroke was a fairly quiet place and nothing much happened except an occasional German bomber trying for the docks or the oil tanks. One night when I was on guard at Freshwater West a bomber came over so low that I could see the crosses even though it was fairly dark, so I had a go at him with the machine gun, much to the disgust of the rest of the Guard who were asleep in the tent. The Corporal was annoyed because he had to account for the ammunition I had used.
Pembroke is known as 'Little England beyond Wales' because of the large number of English-born people who live there, and some of the men married local girls.
Some time in 1942 we went up to Scotland again, this time to Paisley near Glasgow. More route marching and training. Scottish hills are no different to Welsh hills when you have to climb them in full equipment, except that you get wetter! I didn't mind the physical side of it, but after nearly two years I was getting bored because we didn't seem to be taking part in the War effort. Other people in Egypt, Greece and Crete seemed to be doing it all. In the Army the watchword is 'never volunteer for anything' but I watched the noticeboards and volunteered for anything that came along, glider pilots, submarines, paratroops etc. One day they wanted people with good secondary/grammar school education and certain qualifications such as maths, physics, technical training. It didn't say what it was for, but what the hell, that was for me. Within a week I was out of the West Kents, but still in Paisley, learning electricity in Paisley Technical College, me, a gasman! I was billeted in a private house with a lawyer, Mr McGlashan, real food, sheets and a pillow in a feather bed.
The West Kents moved away, and I lost track of them until two years later when I ran across them a few fields away at Cassino. On the Course we were more or less independent, the Instructors were all civilians and we only had a Sergeant to look after us, only about twenty of us. One of them was 'Inky Ingram' who had been in my year at Hertford Grammar School. We would all go to the local pub on Saturday after the Sergeant paid us.
It was soon summer and the cricket season came along, so I went along to the local ground to see if I could practice, and they let me join their Club straight away. They played in West of Scotland League and I opened the bowling for them all that season, going by car at weekends to such towns as Ayr, Kilmarnock, Gourock and Greenock. One of the grounds we went to was in Glasgow itself and had several hundred spectators sitting round the boundary drinking heavily, and throwing the empty bottles at the nearest fielder. It was a different life in all respects.
The next port of call was the Radar Training School at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where I met Jimmy James for the first time. From now on you will meet him several times, but later. The first question we were asked was "Do you know anything about Radio?" People who answered "Yes" were thrown off the course because Radar theory is opposite and they would have had to unlearn everything they knew. The training was very technical, and at the end of the course all our notes and manuals were taken away for security reasons. We had to learn everything by heart, circuits and all. There were over 50 valves in an A.A. Gunlaying Set, so it was quite a task.
The only thing of any note in Gainsborough is the 'Bore' on the River Trent, a tidal wave which happens twice a day, similar to the one on the River Severn. People would stand on the bridge watching it to see if it would be different from the day before but it never was. Luckily at that time there was a Repertory Theatre there with a different play every night, and it was quite popular with rude soldiery, who were fairly well educated, otherwise they would not have been on the Radar Courses. There was also a secret experimental section within the School, far too advanced for the trainees to even go through its doors.
From there I went attached out to a searchlight site at Mickleton near Evesham. Typical Army, no-one at Gainsborough had bothered to say that Radar was used on searchlights - perhaps it was too secret for them to know - they had only taught the gunlaying circuits. However the principle was similar and fortunately the Troop Sergeant had a manual, so I got by. It was a small section, only twelve of us including the Sergeant and myself, all living in a Nissen hut in a field miles from anywhere. Luckily we had our own full-time cook and food was much better and more varied than it had been in the West Kents. I remember one occasion in Pembroke when we came back to find that all our cooks had been shaved bald and their heads had been painted purple with Gentian Violet by the M.O. Apparently one of them had head lice, or scabies or similar, and the Doctor had done the entire cookhouse staff for luck. Nobody was very hungry for a few days, especially when the bristles started to sprout through the paint. Nowadays punks pay good money for the same effect.
I had a bicycle to get to other sites which I also looked after, and could get out and about, but the others could only get off the site two at a time in daylight hours and had to be back before dusk to be on watch. We could get to Evesham, Leamington or Bourton- on-the-Water by a two-carriage train.
Everyone was on duty at night, and in the daytime there was not a great deal to do except catch up on sleep and play Rugby of a kind. All the other lads were Yorkshire coalminers apart from Henry, who was a university type from near London. Naturally there was a great deal of mickey-taking with Henry who thought he was a good player. It was during a game when I damaged my left knee, which came up like a balloon. The Sergeant couldn't get a truck to take me to the R.A.F. Hospital about 5 miles away so I rode there on my trusty bicycle. They did the necessary and I stayed there about a week, sheets and pillows and fried eggs for breakfast every day. Heavenly!
When the M.O. unwrapped the plaster he said "O.K. back to where you came from, but whatever you do for the rest of your life be very careful, no football, cricket, going up stairs etc." I was 22 years old and it didn't sound very encouraging. Then "How did you get here?" "Bicycle, it's just outside the window, I can see it where I left it," "Oh, well, that will save the trouble of getting a truck, go back on it but be careful. Remember what I've just told you." I came to the conclusion that the R.A.F. was no different from the Army.
I spent Christmas at Mickleton, went back to Gainsborough for a refresher course, met Jimmy James again, and was posted to St Asaph in North Wales. Headquarters was in a large house not far from the Cathedral, and it turned out to be a mixed regiment with A.T.S. It was just like that film with Sid James. 'Carry on Sergeant', and there was I, volunteered to get out of the Infantry to take some part in the War. So I volunteered again within two days of getting there for overseas service. "O.K., we'll put it through but you had better go out on site while you are waiting."
They sent me to Battery Headquarters at Pen-y-Pwll Hall in Holywell. It was the same sort of job as at Mickleton, going round the searchlight sites in the daytime on a bicycle, boring again because there wasn't much enemy activity. There was an assault course in the grounds and I used to go round it to keep myself fit. The searchlight wallahs thought I was barmy. One night I went down the town, and in the Hotel Victoria saw Marjorie and the boredom went away.