Overseas in four countries
I took the night train from Euston Station on 16th November 1943 and found myself in a compartment with three men and the prospect of a disturbed and sleepless night ahead. Four bunks (or shelves ?) didn't offer much promise of rest. However, the morning came and I looked out on to quite a different landscape from that I had left. This was Scotland.
Arriving at Glasgow I asked for directions and there met my first taste of Glasgow generosity. Not only did the man I asked tell me how to get to Maryhill Barracks, he insisted on accompanying me part of the way to make sure I was on the right path. I was to find other cases of this helpfulness and kindness in Glasgow during the short time I spent there.
The barracks had been built in the reign of Victoria and looked it. Tall reddish-brown buildings, iron railings, a general feeling of cold hardness. What had I come to ? A week or two later I received a letter from Frank Davey, a cousin of my father, in which he said that he had been in Maryhill Barracks in the 1914-1918 war -- and they had been condemned before that !
The barracks accommodation buildings were of two sorts; very tall (four-storey ?) ones and stables with barrack-rooms above -- I was in one of the latter. Our platoon (number eight) consisted of about thirty eighteen-year-olds with one much older man whose reason for being with us I never discovered and we were in the charge of two corporals, a Scot who was reasonable and a corporal of the West Kents who was not. The first evening, as we sat around the 'tortoise' stove, there was a crash as a boy who had been on the top bunk fell off onto the floor. He must have been injured for four of us had to take him on a stretcher to the barracks hospital and he did not return to the platoon. The next day, of course, was taken up with the issuing of kit and uniform, the inoculations and various lectures on what we should and should not do. After that, life fell into a pattern which, if not enjoyable, became familiar and hence bearable.
I realise now, looking back, that the thirty others were just as unsure and apprehensive as I was. There were different ways of reacting to circumstances, some trying to show how tough they were, usually with language which gave me (with my sheltered upbringing) quite a surprise; some like myself becoming rather withdrawn and keeping a wary eye out for whatever might be coming next. Knowing that we were only together for six weeks was the first taste of the impermanence of army life.
The days started before dawn when we marched to the mess-hall led by an N.C.O. with a hurricane lamp. As soon as it was reasonably light training began; foot-drill, rifle-drill, Bren gun, bayonet, lectures. There were variations on this often-repeated theme. We had a route-march out to Bearsden and rifle shooting for real, in which I did quite well, though I preferred the Bren. We threw grenades, we crawled through gas-mask testing huts, we did all the things we expected to do and a few others as well. Once a week we paraded for our pay - a one-pound note, (Bank of Scotland or Clydesdale Bank), representing three shillings a day with one shilling held back in case of loss of kit. We also had an interview with a psychiatrist - some time later I discovered that his judgement on me had been 'Very intelligent but not very ambitious' which, at that time, was probably right.
When the day was finished we were free until 23.59 hours (or midnight). Although reasonably well-fed, we were using reserves of energy all day and we found the Salvation Army Canteen a great place to have an evening meal. I had been told by our minister to call on the Curator of the Botanic Gardens and on the second Sunday I did that. Mr. and Mrs. Banks and their daughter Marjorie received me kindly and I think I went to their home on all four remaining Sundays. When I was at home again after being demobilised Mrs.Banks and Marjorie visited us but sadly by then Mr.Banks had died.
The six weeks primary training over, the day of the passing out parade came. Our platoon was judged the best and after all our work we felt we deserved the trophy.
On the 30th December I was transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps and sent to Northampton for a six-week course on Army administration at No. 26 Northampton Technical Training Group. There we were billeted with people in the town and I went to stay with Mr. & Mrs. Williamson in Hervey Street. I had a little room to myself, I had meals prepared by Mrs.Williamson and apart from going to the Technical College each day my time was my own. It was one of the easiest times of my army life. Our instructor for most of the course was Serjeant Cragge and nobody could call him 'military'. We dealt with office administration, communication procedures, simple army accounting and we were also taught to type by one of the College staff. I found it far from demanding.
I went to one of the two Methodist Churches in Northampton one Sunday and was greeted warmly by a lady in the congregation. Calling her daughter she said 'You must meet Lieutenant Brush'. I hastened to correct her, pointing out that I was not commissioned but was only a simple Private - I have never been dropped so rapidly! They vanished.
The six weeks passed and I was sent to a Holding Unit at Woking where I spent two or three days tidying the garden in front of the requisitioned house which was the Unit's Headquarters. (I had said during the interviews at Glasgow that I was interested in gardening and the Army never forgets).
Then, suddenly, I was posted to a Holding Unit at Barry Island where I only stayed one day before being posted to St.Mellons, outside Cardiff, and there I joined the unit with which I was to spend the longest amount of time. In the R.A.S.C. there was constant movement, men being posted elsewhere and fresh ones taking their place. Why, I don't know, but the long associations and friendships which one hears of in line regiments just didn't seem to happen with us.
My Unit was the 50th Field Butchery and Cold Storage Depot. In all the time I was with them (almost two years) we never had occasion to do any Field Butchery though we did for a time run a Cold Storage Depot. It was the sort of small unit which could easily be sent to do various odd jobs and that certainly happened. I worked in the Unit Office with Staff-Serjeant Stan Hiley who had been a laundry manager and (like Sjt.Cragge of Northampton) was far from military in outlook. We got on very well. There were two officers, Captain Donovan and Lieutenant-Quartermaster Richardson, with StaffQuartermaster-Serjeant Almond as the Warrant Officer.
The Unit was building up at St.Mellons. When we got to full strength we moved to Finchley where we took over a Dance Hall. This was for the first of our 'odd jobs' which was to run a Supply Depot. The Army had (and probably still has) several different sorts of Supply Depot, Bulk Supply Depot, Command Supply Depot, Detail Issue Depot, and so on. We had no such title, remaining the 50th F.B. We received food-stuffs in bulk and issued it to the various units around. Not particularly thrilling but the administration and accounting went on all the time.
Finchley was only two or three miles from Palmers Green and on a bus route. It is not surprising then that I frequently came home in the evening when I was not on duty. All I had to do was to get back to the Dance Hall before midnight, and I don't think it would have mattered if I had stayed out - but I wasn't prepared to risk it.
After some time, we moved to High Beech in Epping Forest. I am not sure of the date but it was certainly after Easter. In the Forest we slept in tents, so arranged over a rectangular hole in the ground that we had some extra headroom. We had our meals at what had originally been a tea-room. Though High Beech was some distance from Palmers Green I was still able to get home on some evenings by hitching lifts, mostly from lorry-drivers who would usually stop for someone in uniform. But this had to end when we were put on 24-hours notice to move.
The tattered remains of my Army Paybook shows that I was given two days Embarkation Leave on 8/9 August 1944. Within a few days we moved to Havant and embarked for France.
OVERSEAS IN FOUR COUNTRIES
Our Unit, with many others, were support troops, with the main purpose of establishing lines of communication from the bases. By the time we were required the beach-heads fighting was history and transports went to Mulberry Harbour. This was made of concrete sections and had been towed across the Channel and put together to make a long jetty for ships to land men and equipment without getting into the shallow water. As we walked from the ship to the shore there were crowds of German prisoners coming the other way, bound for England and internment. A poor lot they looked too, only boys, and from their appearance not much of a threat to trained troops.
Having landed we went to a field with bell-tents already erected near the village of St.Loup-Hors, a short distance from Bayeux. From this time on, it is difficult to remember how long we stayed at any one place, but we were at St.Loup for some days. It was there that I first tried out my school French and to my delight it worked. It was there also that one Sunday morning I went with Corporal Jim Close to Mass at the village church - the first time I had been in a Catholic church. I visited the cathedral at Bayeux during our stay there.
For the first three or four days in Normandy we were fed with 24-hour ration packs. These were cardboard boxes measuring about seven inches by five and about one and a half inches deep (17 x 12 x 4 cms if you prefer) which contained enough 'food' to keep us going for one day. The 'food' was in little blocks which when crumbled and hot water was added were supposed to turn in beef stew, or porridge, or tea (or other delicacies which I have thankfully forgotten). To heat the food we had a 'Tommy-cooker' which was a little tin stand on which we placed a block of an inflammable chemical called metaldehyde and then we placed our mess-tin with the mixture on top. It sounds primitive, but it worked. It was a relief though to get back to real food after some days.
We then received orders to move to Brussels, stopping the first night at Rouen and the second at Ath. It seems rather ridiculous now to consider taking two days over the journey but that was what happened. At Rouen we stretched tarpaulins between lorries and slept on the cobbled ground on our groundsheets with one blanket; at Ath we fixed the tarpaulins over park railings to give a lop-sided tent and the footpath was slightly less lumpy than Rouen's cobbles. On arrival at Brussels we went to the Anderlecht district and settled in to a building which had been a girls' school in the Rue Georges Moreau. It had been commandeered by the Germans and among other things we discovered that they had been keeping pigs in the cellars and that the bunk beds had wooden slats to lie on. Still, there was plenty of straw for palliasses.
Here we were given our first definite task on active service - and it was not a particularly military one. In some warehouses in Brussels were vast stocks of brandy and cigars accumulated by the retreating German army. Our job was to sort out the crates of bottles and the cases of cigars and despatch the undamaged ones to one of the NAAFI depots. It was understood that any broken boxes of cigars could be taken by the troops and for some time we saw all our smokers looking very affluent (and in those days I had not started smoking). What happened to broken cases of brandy I have no idea - I never went in the warehouse and was (as usual) merely concerned with administration.
About this time we were given our second task. The war by this time had moved up to Holland and we were sent to Oss where the cold stores of the Zwanenberg Meat Factory (Vleeschwarenfabriek) had large stocks of meat which were in danger of spoiling. Our job was to sort out the usable meat and despatch it to supply depots.
Once again we loaded everything into lorries and set off. We stopped for the night at Eindhoven. In a very few minutes everybody had vanished, the local inhabitants offering us beds for the night. The lorries and all their load were left to take care of themselves as far as I recall, no guard being set at all ! I, with one other, were taken in to the home of a barber and we had a pleasant evening talking Dutch and English and neither side understanding a word. At last we were led upstairs where, via a trapdoor, we were shown to two little beds in an attic. It made a nice change from the wooden beds and straw palliasses of Anderlecht. Just as we had settled down for the night my mate said 'What do we do if we need to get up in the night As if on cue, the trap-door opened and a hand appeared holding a decorated china chamber-pot. What hospitality. In the morning, miraculously, all the unit appeared by the lorries, all looking well-rested and well-groomed (especially my companion who had been carefully shaved by the barber as a farewell).
When we arrived at Oss we discovered that a Canadian Unit had moved into the Meat Factory and done our job for us.
While there, and it was only for a few days, I went on Sunday to a Dutch Catholic church. We were definitely closer to the front than we had expected for the Germans were making a stand at s'Hertogenbosch, but the authorities were (as usual) over-anxious and it was the only time I have ever taken my rifle with me to church.
We returned to Belgium, but this time to Ghent where we were in the Meulestede, part of the dock area. For a night or two we slept on the floor in a large room at the back of a cafe but it was not long before we were billeted on the local population. I went to the home of Jules and Marie-Jose Henau-Naeyart, which was rather hard on them since they had not long been married. They made me very comfortable in a little attic room. We had our meals at a requisitioned house which was used as a sort of central point and later it was adapted to take all the unit and the billeting ceased.
At last we were doing the job we were formed for - a refrigerated cold store. Consignments of frozen meat (mainly beef and lamb) arrived by train on the dockside where the 'Frigo' was and our unit stored it in the cold store and then later issued it to local units. The Unit Office, which was my base, was part of the office accommodation of the cold store. The chief Engineer of the 'Frigo' was named Torrekens. A most disagreeable man who seemed to resent our being there at all, he was none the less a hero. We learned that when the Germans had left they had placed explosives all over the store, timed to explode after they had got well clear. Torrekens, not knowing when they were timed to explode, had gone round the depot and personally removed all the charges. That was the sort of cold courage which we could all admire.
We stayed in Ghent for some time. After a while I left the home of the Henau-Naeyarts and moved to the home of the manager of the cold store but before long all billeting ceased and we were all together in the house already mentioned. By this time the unit was well-known locally and I had met the Naeyart family and through them Commissaire of Police Van de Haagen and his wife and daughter. They lived in central Ghent and I often went to spend a pleasant evening with them. They had a little fluffy dog which had been given the name Freddy and it was amusing to see how earnestly, but not always successfully, they tried to remember to call the animal Teddy when I was there.
In 1945 the war finished. Demobilisation began, working on the Age and Service Group principle so that the older men with longer service would go first. My group was 57 so I still had some time to serve. At the end of 1945 I was recommended for a War Office Selection Board with a view to a commission and sent to Buckeburg near Hanover. Over a few days there we had tests of different sorts and various exercises to assess our suitability as officer material. Again, I was not selected and I spent Christmas Day in the old Panzer Barracks at Hanover, my train leaving the following morning. I returned to Ghent.
In May 1946 I became a Corporal (War Substantive) after passing through the usual stages of Unpaid Acting and Paid Acting. I was also posted to HQ 9 Lines of Communication, in the centre of Ghent, and it was there that three important
things happened. One night, when only one A.T.S. Private was on duty there was a telephone message to say that a Corporal of the HQ staff was to be posted immediately to the Far East. The A.T.S. girl said there must have been a mistake, there was no available Corporal but there was a Private of the right age. The order was amended and next morning Private X left. When I walked into the office the A.T.S. girl looked up, shocked. "I forgot about you !" she said and explained what had happened. So my military career had been altered once again, this time because a girl had forgotten my existence.
Then one morning I was called into the Colonel's office to be told that my father had died. I was given compassionate leave immediately. When I got home I found that all the arrangements had been made and there was little I could do. David had suddenly ceased to be 'little brother'. He was at that time at the Hornsey College of Art, showing promise in painting and sculpture and had, in many ways, grown up as suddenly as I had.
Back in Ghent it was not long before a bad session of sinusitis landed me in hospital at Brussels. Fortunately after a few days it cleared up without needing the suggested operation and I returned to Ghent where I was sent to 138 Detail Issue Depot in the big Hall where the Ghent Floralies exhibitions were held before the war. I was not long there either - in the Summer I was sent to Toulon.
Toulon Supply Depot was in two parts, one at Marseilles on the Docks and the other near Toulon at a crossroads near to the village of La Crau known as Carrefour de La Gard. I was only one night at Marseilles and then went to La Crau. It was hot. The camp was exposed to the sun all day and khaki drill shorts and shirts were the only possible wear. The atmosphere of the camp was, to put it mildly, relaxed. Staff-Serjeant Grant kept the wheels turning and Captain Kimber provided the necessary figure-head. At first there was a certain suspicion at my arrival. To have a corporal suddenly posted to the Unit made some wonder whether their little habits of 'liberating' supplies for their own use had been found out. Was I Special Investigation Branch ? Fortunately they soon realised it was their guilty consciences and nothing to do with me.. There was a Canteen called the 'Merry Fiddlers' and I was told that one of my jobs was to obtain and tap the beer. This was brewed by a French firm in Marseilles so every so often (I think it was every week) some barrels had to be collected and after standing for a time one would be tapped, by the old method of driving in a wooden tap with one blow of a heavy mallet. I got quite expert at this until one night when the tap split and I was drenched in a torrent of beer.
I can't remember how long we were at La Crau but a pattern soon established itself of work in the morning and swimming in the Mediterranean in the afternoons. There was an Army Post Office unit on the site and I soon found the three Post Office staff very good company; we made a congenial quartet.
In the Autumn, the unit moved to Toulon and settled in to the Caserne du Mourillon, an old Foreign Legion barracks in the Toulon docks.
Here I must digress for a moment and go back to the days before the war when I was in Form 2Q at Minchenden. Hoping it would encourage us to learn more and better French, Miss Smith had arranged a link between Minchenden and a school in Aix-en-Provence. My correspondent was Paul Peytral and he lived at a
house called 'La Gantese' outside the village of Puyricard close to Aix. We corresponded, he in English, I in French, until the outbreak of war and then, For a short time, I was still receiving his letters but obviously mine did not get through to him for he was asking why he had not heard from me. hen letters both ways stopped.
When I was posted to Toulon it struck me that I was by happy chance within reach of Aix and hence, I hoped, Paul. I wrote to him at La Gantese and received a reply from his mother, in which she said that Paul was in Canada, training with the French Air Force, but she would be happy to see me if I could come to Puyricard. There was no difficulty about this, a weekend pass was granted and I went to Aix by train. On my arrival at the station at Aix Paul was there to meet me. Between his mother's letter and my arrival he had returned from Canada. We took to each other at once and as Paul said "It already feels that we have known each other a long time.”
After that I went as often as I could for a weekend at Puyricard. I got to know some of Paul's friends and some of his relatives and it was an experience I shall never forget and for which I shall always be grateful. After I was demobilised I took my mother to 'La Gantese' for a holiday and the following year Paul came to Palmers Green and stayed with us.
It was while I was at Toulon that David, my brother, unexpectedly turned up one day. He had joined the Royal Marines but something had gone wrong (I do not know what) and he had been discharged. He then joined the Palestine Police and towards the end of 1946 he was on his way to Palestine by sea when the ship put in to Toulon for a few days. You can imagine my delight. I got permission for yet another weekend off and the two of us went to Puyricard. Then, on the Monday I think it was, he went back to the ship and I never saw him again. He was killed just over a year later.
At Toulon we had contact with a French P.o.W. camp from which we employed some German P.o.W.s. The camp had a quartet of musicians and we 'borrowed' them for dances, which became very popular. Indeed on one occasion some men from a neighbouring unit became quite offensive when we said that no more could be admitted and I had to use my Serjeant's stripes, unusual because I didn't pull rank as a general rule.
Time passed and in March 1947 I was given nineteen days leave. It meant travelling by train to Calais, a most wearisome journey, and then crossing to Dover. It was not the time of year to expect calm seas and when I was due to return there was a message over the radio to the effect that my sailing was postponed. (All soldiers on leave listened for these announcements - they were broadcast every evening).
In the event I had a week's extension and returned eventually to Toulon seven days late. As I walked in through the entrance of the Caserne du Mourillon I was greeted by Staff-Serjeant Jimmy Cartwright, with a friendly shout "Where the hell have you been; you're going to Algiers."
(It was at Toulon that I was promoted to Serjeant, first a local appointment as Education Serjeant - which was a sinecure in which I did nothing - and then as Acting Serjeant for the prescribed probationary period. I was actually made War Substantive - that means 'permanent' - on 16th of March 1947.)
"WHEN I WAS IN ALGIERS...”[1]
The French Army had decided to form an Airborne Division and had asked the British Army for help and instruction and so it had been arranged that a training team should go to North Africa to organise this. I had been picked out of the hat to go, with the necessary officer and two privates, to deal with supplies of all sorts.
We sailed from Marseilles in the "Ville d'Oran” and had a rather rough crossing. At dinner on the day we left one after another got up and disappeared, eventually leaving only the C.S.M. and myself sitting at the table. I finished the meal and left just in time.
The following day we approached Algiers. We docked and the cargo was unloaded. I think we had six months supplies of everything including frozen beef quarters and frozen lamb ("telescoped mutton " as it was known, since the hind quarters were pushed inside the front half of the carcase to save space). All this was piled on the dock side while the necessary formalities of entry were concluded. We waited. The French Army was cooperative but one must remember that this was 1947, and peace-time French bureaucracy had been well and truly re-established. As it happened that summer was the hottest in living memory in Algeria; by the time official permission had been obtained to import the foodstuffs the meat was starting to thaw.
At that time the French had re-started their conscription of all young men and a lot were sent to Algeria for military training. The meat was handed over to the French Army and it was arranged that we should draw meat from them as and when we wanted until the equivalent weight had been received. They would be able to use our (doubtful) beef and mutton rapidly with their conscripts. This arrangement worked perfectly satisfactorily though the meat we received seemed to have an unusual amount of bone and some of it (it was whispered) might have been horse.
The Training Team was installed in a French Army camp at Maison Carree, a village a few miles outside Algiers. It was a hutted camp with a more solidly built headquarters building. Our supplies stores were under my charge, the only exception being the flour we had brought for bread-making. This was handed over to a local bakery and a Corporal Barker had the oversight of the bread-making and its supply to the cooks. I was also in charge of NAAFI stores which included large quantities of whisky, gin and other drinks for the Officers' and Serjeants' Messes. We discovered weeks later that a good few bottles had been broken during the unloading but as the cases were still fastened I was fortunately not considered to be responsible for the loss.
Life settled into a routine. In the morning I went with a truck into Algiers and bought fresh vegetables and fruit. On returning this was issued to the cooks, together with the groceries from our stores, and the rest of the day was free. Sometimes we went swimming, sometimes into Algiers if a truck could be arranged, sometimes we just regarded the afternoon as a siesta period because of the heat.
On Sundays a truck was arranged for those who wished to go to the English Church and on one or two occasions I played the organ there for the service. It was not a complete success - the hymns were all right but the music for the psalms had me at a disadvantage since I was not familiar with them and it was a relief to the congregation and to me when they were finished. The English residents welcomed us very kindly and I particularly appreciated visiting the home of Mrs. Ross and her daughter Margaret. They were involved with a school for blind Arab girls and were wonderful people. Their house was called "Dar Na'ama" and was in the El Biar district. It had been built many years ago for a notorious Algerian pirate, Surcouf, and was of typical Moorish style, with a colonnaded courtyard looking out over the sea - Surcouf's favourite vantage point for surveying the Bay of Algiers. It was appropriate that the address meant "The House of Grace" in the "Place of Wells"; the Ross influence was one of peace and refreshment.
The general situation in Algiers than was very relaxed but there was always a feeling that it would not be wise to take risks. Under no circumstance would it be sensible for a British soldier to wander about alone, least of all in the Kasbah. Although there was no animosity shown there was always a wariness and I can appreciate how easy it was a few years later for the Algerians to turn against the French.
The time approached when I was due for demobilisation. As I said earlier, I was in Age & Service Group 57 but I had agreed to stay for an extra three months since to be released at the correct time would have meant a very short stay of about a month in Africa. Having heard nothing from the office I thought I had better make enquiries. “But you've signed on for another three years" was the answer. Panic ! It took a little persistence to get things straightened out, but at last the office and headquarters in Paris acknowledged that the period was three months, not three years, and arrangements were put in train for my release.
On 8th September I signed over responsibility for the stores to a Serjeant Clarke who had been sent out to replace me and I left Algiers two days later. The Feuille de Deplacement issued by the French Army authorised me to travel to London via Paris and Marseilles at a cost to the French Army (probably reimbursed by the British Army) of three hundred and eighty-eight francs.
The last two or three days of my service were full of activity and I cannot remember all the details. In the end I found myself on the 14th of September at Aldershot where some items of equipment and clothing were taken from me and I was given a rather nasty blue suit and various bits of paper, including a new identity card and a new medical card. I was granted paid leave until 15th December.
On the 16th of December 1947 I was once again a civilian !
Shared by Pippa Brush Chappell, his daughter, and Henry Chappell, his grandson
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