Previous Chapter: I join the Territorials
Spring to September 1940
A few weeks later, I marched with the company to Perham Down ranges. It was a freezing drizzly day and a squad of us was squatting with rifles tucked under our ponchos, trying to keep ice from forming on the foresights while waiting our turn to fire. A small truck rolled up, a sergeant with a clipboard jumped down and bawled out a list of names, mine included, and then said “Get on that truck, you’re all going to join the RE’s.” That day I really did believe that the Army could fit a square peg into a square hole. My pals, about ten in all, covered various trades, all artisans’ trades of course. There was a blacksmith, a couple of carpenters, a sign writer (essential in the army even in those days!), bricklayers and one chap listed as a ‘pavier’. He turned out to be good at laying bricks or stone floors.
We went to Tidworth station, with railway warrants to Whetstone, North London. Some large houses had been commandeered for our occupation and there we joined 295 Army Field Company Royal Engineers. They had moved from Bethnal Green, where their drill hall was situated.
The full complement for a Field Company was 250 men split into HQ and No’s 1, 2, and 3 sections. It was a Territorial unit and must have been greatly below strength. In addition to our lot from the 4th Wilts, there were men, tradesmen all, from other TA Battalions, and shortly after we arrived a further influx of militiamen, called up willy-nilly in their age group. These chaps had done six weeks training at Dovercourt near Harwich and rather fancied themselves, but had no particular skills.
A certain pecking order was soon formed. At the top were those who had joined the TA, straight in to the REs at Bethnal Green. The officers and NCOs were all from this group. Indeed, the Quartermaster Sergeant, the Company Sergeant Major and a Sergeant were all related, and another one of the clan was serving as a sapper. The CQMS was wearing medal ribbons from the Great War and the Boer War, and knew a thing or two about running the quartermaster’s store, not always to our benefit. One notable exception to this Mafia like set up was Dean Jeffery. He lived in West London and joined 295 because he wanted to be a Royal Engineer. He was a PT instructor and already had two stripes and was fearsomely fit. As I puffed and stretched at his command neither of us knew that we would see unbroken service together in 295 Coy. until the war ended over five years later or that our families and we would be fast friends to this day.
Life at Whetstone was pretty grim. No one seemed to know what to do with us; we had no transport of our own, and a good deal of time was spent in marching to Hadleigh Woods and digging World War One type trenches in the clay soil, with enthusiastic instruction from our veteran quartermaster, in the art of forming parapets, fire steps etc. Even the dimmest of us felt that this was knowledge we could manage without. However, we were beginning to shake down and become a more disciplined unit, rather than the curious crowd we had been, and we began to make friendships, and recognise the officers. At this time we moved to Essex in the area around Saffron Walden where we were split up in our proper sections and given some transport of our own. What joy! Gone were the route marches and the pointless training. Now we were busy preparing defence lines against the threat of invasion, which, with Hitler’s invasion of Denmark and Norway, was now a startling possibility. Those of us listed as drivers were given trucks, and Cpl. Jeffery, hereafter to be known as Jeff, was swanking around on a motorbike, with knee breeches, gauntlets and helmet to match.
We spent our days in the woods around Audley End felling large trees and dragging them into positions to form tank obstacles. For this purpose we were using six wheeled Morris trucks fitted with winches. These were cross country vehicles driving four rear wheels, which were on a swinging bogie giving good traction on uneven ground, and it was possible to fit tracks over the wheels to convert them into a form of half-track. The steel winch rope was wound on a drum driven off the side of the gearbox and could be run out at front or rear.
We soon learnt not to use the front position because of the difficulty of passing the greasy wire rope through various pulleys, some of which seemed designed specially to jam the rope. These winches were very powerful, too powerful in fact, as became apparent when hauling large tree trunks. If the vehicle was not firmly scotched or anchored, the tree trunk would stay put while the truck winched itself toward it. Fixing the vehicles by chaining the front to a tree then usually resulted in breaking the winch rope. None of us knew how to splice a broken wire rope, and the demand for new ropes raised howls of consternation from the Ordnance people. An order was given forbidding the chaining of trucks to trees and the use of snatch blocks was explained. Thus we learnt by trial and error. I don’t think that anyone from the CO down through all the officers and NCOs had been trained in the use of the equipment we had been issued with. The rumour went round that we were going overseas, some said to Iceland, others to the Middle East. We moved to Aldershot and joined a huge crowd of other units in a large tented camp.
The German Army broke into Belgium and France and within a matter of days was on the Channel coast. The Dunkirk evacuation cast a gloom over the whole country, as it seemed we were very near to defeat. At this time I had just been sent on a Transport Sergeants’ course to the School of Military Engineering at Brompton Barracks in Chatham, one of the permanent Royal Engineers depots. This pleased me very much and I thoroughly enjoyed the first two weeks of what was supposed to be a six-week course. I began to learn the technicalities and the theory of motor vehicle design, things I had had no way of understanding before.
Unfortunately, after a fortnight of this, the whole school was paraded one morning, and told that due to the threat of imminent invasion, all courses were to be abandoned and we would be formed into small units and sent to defend particular spots where resistance to airborne landings could be most effective.
There must have been several hundred of us on parade, the greatest number being of the rank of sergeant or above. I, as a driver mechanic with no rank at all, was very much of an exception. I found myself with six others, the lowest rank being full corporal and including two sergeant majors. My inclusion in this august company was because I was the only one who held a driving licence. This may sound incredible today, but in 1939 in the village of Downton with some twelve hundred inhabitants there were not more than six private cars and a few tradesmen’s vans. Driving was not a universal skill.
The authorities had been out and about in the Chatham area and commandeered a large number of privately owned commercial vehicles, fifty or sixty I would guess. There were coal trucks, butchers’ vans, builders’ lorries, etc. Our party was lucky, for we were given a furniture lorry, which meant that we had a roof over our heads at least. We were kitted out with a couple of Bren guns, rifles and ammo, ropes, axes, rolls of barbed wire and sundry other pieces of equipment and set off to find our appointed map references. Our spot was a crossroads in a very rural part of Kent. The roads were sunken and the banks lined with beautiful mature beeches, which were in full foliage. There was a small hiatus at first while the various ranks and seniorities were sorted out and tasks assigned. I could view all this with a certain amount of amusement and some indifference, as my job was simply to drive the lorry and be responsible for it at all times. In practice this meant that apart from making the tea and doing some fetching and carrying, I was exempted from the arduous work, such as digging of slit trenches, and the long night hours of sitting in one behind a rifle or Bren gun: in fact I made a cosy bedroom of the ‘Luton’ that projected over the cab and slept comfortably most nights, while my betters were out there roughing it.
The two sergeant majors, both of ample girth, and unused to manual labour, were particularly annoyed about this, but there was nothing they could do. Each morning, about an hour after dawn we drove back to Chatham, replenished our stores, had a cooked meal and then slept in our barrack rooms until mid-afternoon. Then another meal and back to the crossroads. The beech trees nearest to the crossroads had been prepared for felling over the road. This was done by cutting them nearly through and supporting them with “dogs” – spiked iron bars bent to a wide “U”, and driven into the trunks to act as splints. The idea was that if necessary the trees could be dropped quickly by knocking out the dogs.
A further precaution was taken in that approach roads were protected by “Dannert” wire. This was barbed wire formed into a spiral hoop about one metre in diameter, which could be stretched across a road making an effective barrier. We carried a few rolls of this, and orders were that all vehicles should be stopped at the wire, identified and then let through by drawing back the wire. Any vehicle on those roads at that time was almost certain to be of military origin and everyone was supposed to know where the roadblocks were.
The only lights allowed were hooded cycle lamps which could be flashed, plus of course, the blacked out lights on the vehicles themselves which gave precious little light. In the absence of any other traffic, the noise of an approaching vehicle could be heard clearly, and the sentry by the wire had time to flash his cycle lamp as warning. One pitch-black night a truck was heard coming like a bat out of hell, and, completely ignoring the sentry, ran into the Dannert wire. It certainly proved effective. The truck, a Morris six wheeler, screeched to a halt, all wheels jammed solid with wire wrapped round the axles. The language used by the officer who had been driving was some of the choicest I’ve ever heard. It took a couple of hours for two of us to cut the wire and pull out the tangled stretch. Lying flat on the damp road with a bicycle lamp in one hand and pliers in the other is an exercise that can rarely be practised. The entertainment value is negligible.
All this fun and games ended after about three weeks when it was decided that invasion was not, after all, imminent and our little companies were disbanded. We were all returned to our units and the courses which had been interrupted were never completed, and my chance of becoming a sergeant gone forever.