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THE NAVY

Like the Army, the peacetime Navy had to make a rapid adjustment to the necessities of war, especially in view of early setbacks such as the loss of HMS Hood and HMS The Prince of Wales. Given the presence of Portsmouth and Southampton, the story of the Navy and the story of Hampshire between 1939 and 1945 are forever going to be intertwined.

A war-time love story: Mr Ronald Wilson of Upminster, born around 1925

Mr Ronald Wilson writes that his ‘Hampshire at War’ story is a love story. “I met my late wife Eileen when we were both at HMS Dragonfly, Hayling Island, in 1945. I was an ordinary AB [Able Seaman], having been medically graded Grade 5 and unfit for sea. Eileen was a Wren, stationed at the Suntrap Home building across the road. It had been a home for handicapped children.

“My wife was in Combined Operations from 1945 onwards. She worked on HMS Victory while back in barracks at Portsmouth. I had been on LCTs. In 1943, I was up in Scapa Flow on boom defence. We had anti-torpedo nets strung round the capital ships, and at each corner of the metal netting, which had a draught of 20 feet, was an LCT. I was on one of them.

Suntrap, Hayling Island: a contemportary postcard

“I came back to Southampton in 1943 to prepare for D-Day. Then in 1945 (I was 20) I had to go into hospital, the Royal Naval Hospital in Portland, with a serious ear complaint and was graded B5. I wanted to go back to sea - nobody likes being in barracks - but the doctor said that if I got ill again at sea and was away from medical attention, I may have died.

“So I went back to Portsmouth and met a friend who was a ship’s cobbler down at Plymouth. We had known each other when we were at school. And he said, ‘You can mend shoes.’ It’s true I have always been good with my hands. I applied to be a ship’s cobbler and it was granted. I did it and after a very short time I was sent to HMS Dragonfly on Hayling Island to be a ship’s cobbler. Part of HMS Dragonfly was where my Eileen was stationed. It was at the Suntrap Home.

“There was a fully equipped shoemaker’s shop - for the handicapped children, you know - and I started work. About the time the war ended, who should come in to have her shoes mended but Eileen! I looked at her and I fell in love.

“I had not had much contact with women. (I had been in action in the Navy. I had been bombed as a kid.) I couldn’t ask her to go out with me, I couldn’t find the words. But my mate got so fed up with my talking to him about this girl, he said, ‘If you don’t ask her out, I’ll ask her myself!’”

So Ron plucked up courage to ask and they went out together. But, he recalls, she said to him, “I’m sorry, Ron, I can’t feel the same about you as you feel about me.” He tried to forget her, then wrote a letter (a copy of which he showed to me) to say he was broken-hearted. So much so, he says, that when after this he used to play the piano at parties, he could not play sad love songs without weeping. He played for his brother’s wedding.

“Eileen and I didn’t see each other again until 1946,” he recalls. “She lived nearby at Hackney Wick, Plaistow, and her mother came to see my mother and said that she thought Eileen would like to see me again.” He says he was still heartbroken at 21 and he thought, “I can’t go through all that again.” So he told her mother that he would meet her outside West Ham United football club, but was purposely late. “I thought I’d give her every excuse to have second thoughts,” he adds. “But she waited.”

They were engaged a year later and married. “And we had such a wonderful life,” he recalls. “We had three children, two girls and a boy. We were not lucky, we were blessed! God blessed us. When she died I said, ‘I’ve never looked at another woman since I met you. I didn’t fancy anyone else.’”

When I first spoke to Ron in September 2002 it was eight months since Eileen died. “We stayed together, man and wife, friends, shipmates and most importantly we were lovers,” he said. “We spent 53 years and five months of wonderful life together up to the day she died, 28 January this year. She was 78.”

After he spoke to me, Ron was having a mass said for Eileen at the Hayling Island Roman Catholic church where she used to worship as a Wren all those years ago, he told me. It was a year since Eileen died and he misses her very much. When she was stationed at the Suntrap Home, her officer used to ask her if she was going to mass and if she said, ‘No, I’m on duty,’ the officer would tell her to go anyway.

Even in home waters, service in the Navy was subject to many dangers and pitfalls of war-time life. This is illustrated vividly by the experience of Phillip Bradley of Beaumaris, Isle of Anglesey

Phillip Bradley was a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy. He recalls an accident in about 1943, off Sandy Point. One of the LCMs was returning from firing practice back into Chichester Harbour and hit the sand-bar at low tide. In a strongish wind, the boat turned over. The lieutenant was thrown clear and swam ashore over to the Point. The COPP depot raised the alarm: both the mechanic and stoker were trapped inside the engine room. They banged on the hull to indicate they were alive, then both tried to swim out. There was a shield around the gun turret; the mechanic managed to get clear but the stoker was trapped under the shield and drowned.

However, not everything was doom and gloom. His unit got involved in the testing of some rather high-tech gear intended to be used in the event of a landing on hostile soil.

This group was from the main repair base at the yacht yard in Mill Rythe where the mechanics changed engines. Light relief was provided when LCMs broke their moorings once, during a gale and high tide, and had to be collected from Emsworth main street.

Phillip Bradley was involved in experimental trials with the Hedgehog. Spigots were fitted inside an LCA in four banks of six. Then fifteen-pound mortar bombs filled with sand were fitted over the spigots. He says that when boffins fired all 24 at once in Langstone Harbour, they split the bottom of the LCA and had to run to the beach - a near-disaster. Another test, on Wittering Beach, involved an LCA with a large tank inside filled with liquid explosive. On the rear end of the boat, on the stern deck, was a rocket-launching frame and a line, which was attached to the rocket and the fire hose, then the fire hose was blanked off at both ends and the explosive was pumped into the hose, with a fuse on. The LCA was backed off from the beach, the boffins fired the explosive electrically and the explosion blew a wide trench on the shingle. Phillip assumes this device was designed to clear a beach of mines.

Dunkirk, Pearl Harbour, D-day

Alfred Humphreys, born 1921, was a chief petty officer by the time he left the Royal Navy in 1959. He joined up in 1937. His early war service included sailing with Atlantic convoys.

“We went from Portsmouth to Dunkirk, in HMS Hebe, a minesweeper. Well, to Dover first. Dover then Dunkirk. We were originally sweeping the English Channel - magnetic mines - and we were badly damaged and had to go into Poplar docks, London, for a refit. When we went across to Dunkirk, we were damaged by shells and shrapnel. We were a fairly small boat, about 250 tons. We could get right up to the beach, for we only had eight-foot draught.

“When we got there, the men were swimming in the water and underneath the water. We took 450 back the first time. The second time, we had about the same, really. Another ship took Lord Gort back to Dunkirk to organise things, because we couldn’t. We were a target for the German planes. We shot down one.

“We had cargo nets. They [the soldiers] had to climb up onto the ship. We had to leave a lot in the water. It was a terrible sight. Heartbreaking. It makes me want to cry to talk about it. It’s a thing I try to forget, put behind me.

“We were so badly damaged, two tugs came down from London and towed us there. Thirteen or fourteen shell holes, one on the water-line. We had collision mats. We put them over the side and they clung. It let some water in, but not a lot.”

Leave was granted following Dunkirk: “I think each watch had six weeks’ leave during the refit. I came back to Portsmouth, drafted off the ship then. I was in barracks at HMS Victory, had six weeks’ leave and joined the Hunt class destroyer, HMS Lauderdale, and went out to the Far East. We went over to Sydney and I volunteered for the Australian navy.

“We were just going into Sydney when the Japanese done Pearl Harbour. It was a shock. I went off HMS Devonshire. We were taking supplies out to the troops, just coming into port when we heard about Pearl Harbour.”

Mr Derek Brightman, born 1925, of Cambridge, was second-in-command of an LCT on D-Day. He says he was trained at HMS Collingwood, Portsmouth, and volunteered for Combined Operations: “This meant my being trained as an officer on landing craft. I was posted to New Dock, Southampton, and joined LCT 809 and we were able to take nine tanks on board. We had two officers and eight to ten ratings. We practised for months on various beaches in the area, taking off tanks.”

The ever-present landing craft bridged the gap between the Army and the Navy’s expertise.

“We left New Dock, Southampton, on 4 June. You remember that D-Day was scheduled for 5th June but was postponed 24 hours? And we went to pick up our tanks. The banks were lined with people shouting and cheering. It was obvious they knew something was happening. We went to the Beaulieu River and took on our tanks and men of the, I think, 88th Battalion, Royal Engineers. They were all frightfully seasick and, you know, the first twelve hours of being seasick you think you are going to die! We set off into a rather violent sky, with massive lines of landing craft. We saw our battleships - HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson, I think - which had 16-inch guns, which are very large, and this was very comforting.

LCT854 (see p. 89)

“In a grey dawn, we arrived at the British Gold Beach. We had LCTs. Six went into the beach and unloaded their tanks. We went in the second six and unfortunately as we got near the beach we were hit by the mines of beach defences, and the door was blown up, onto my foot on board. It hurt. It hurt like hell.”

He explained that the first six of his flotilla’s LCTs had escaped snagging the beach defences because the tide was a little higher for them but had gone down slightly by the time he and the rest of his flotilla reached them in their other six craft.

“The thing I most remember about going onto the beach was the noise - particularly rockets from converted Tank Landing Craft [known as LCT(R)s] which they fired over our heads. We had not seen nor heard them before and did not recognise the noise.

“We were sinking fast and abandoned ship. It was so traumatic. I was only 19 at the time. I remembered being in the water, but that was the last thing I remembered for three weeks. The next thing I remember was being in a Survivors’ Camp at Lowestoft. I recall tiny little bits - little flashes of the Great Storm. I learned later that the tanks were recovered, when the tide went down, by our soldiers, so we did get our tanks there.

“We were lucky because out of our twelve ships, we lost only two. Our beach was not at all like the American one shown on the film Saving Private Ryan but the noise and confusion was the same. It was very realistic, the film, in that respect. I remember the excitement and the first six tanks coming back. And there we were!

“Earlier, at New Docks, we were living on the landing craft. There was a little ward room and mess and the crew lived on the mess deck. It was a Mark 4 LCT. They are quite roomy. There was a PO engineer and a cox. It was powered by two, about 500-horsepower, diesel engines. Our LCT course was to learn how to con it - basic navigation, berthing, turning. At Troon.

“On D-Day, on our new door we had Mulock ramps, orange, for the tanks to drop easily onto the beach. It was one of these which hit my foot. We were the 28^th LCT Flotilla, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Neiberg (or Neiburg). The Beaulieu River was where one loaded one’s tanks.

“I hate water. I joined the RNVR because it was the only part of the navy where you didn’t have to learn to swim! I was a midshipman on D-Day because you couldn’t be an officer until you were 20, although I was second-in-command of LST 809.”

One aspect we tend to forget when discussing the war is just how young some of the participants were. Brian James, born 1926, was only 18 in the year of D-Day. In 1942 Brian James was a Sea Cadet at a sea school run by a Captain Watts on the River Hamble.

“We could see the sky lit at Southampton when they were bombed at night. We used to count the MGBs going out of the Hamble at night, when I was a cadet, and count them coming back in the morning.

“I went to a salvage company because Captain Sands of the Merchant Navy wanted us to man salvage ships. On D-Day plus about 14, I did salvage work ‘over there’. Risden Beasley was the firm I worked for. I was on the Carmonita. We carried explosives to the Juno beach-head. I was a deckhand. I did training, so I was the gunner.

“Towards the end of my stay at the sea school, we had sub-lieutenants who were to pilot landing craft. We used to take them out learning navigation.

“We had four yachts, before my time, went to Dunkirk. The Mandolin is one. It had the marks of bullets in the side.”

(Interview courtesy of the Algerines, a veterans’ organisation for those who worked on minesweepers.)

Training in 1943

In 1943, Mr E Stott of Heywood, Lancashire, watched instructional films in an old cinema with a tin roof which the sailors called the “flea pit”, now the St Mary’s Street Post Office on Hayling Island. They did some marching and fell out at a local pub. After further training at Calshot, he remained with the training flotilla as an instructor and was on a landing craft which sailed past the Isle of Wight to lay cable. He was told it was secret but later found it was in readiness to provide power for the Mulberry Harbour. They returned to Hayling, taking all the landing craft, LCMs Mark II and IV, LCAs and LCVPs to be moored in an inlet across from Thorney Island. Mr W. L. Kirley of Penryn returned to Hayling later on a navigation course. He recalls that the Army ‘18’ type radios were bulky.

Sometimes, the cross over between Army and Navy got even more blurred, as borne out by the testimony of John Dunham.

Marine John Dunham, aged 20 in 1943, studied the theory of engines at HMS Northney II. He had previously been with a mobile company, trained to drive a Bren gun carrier. Driving a landing craft was quite different. He and his colleagues began to feel more at home when they were sent to HMS Northney III and went aboard them for the first time. Before this, Marines had never been expected to drive craft, but they were delighted to do so. After further training elsewhere, they picked up from Hove the craft they were to take to Normandy.

In training Royal Marines to take over the minor landing craft, a single craft was used to ferry each small group and their instructor to their moorings. It was very cold in winter. They were issued with duffel coats. On pulling alongside their craft, they had to jump; if they missed, they were in the water. Mr Stott did so once, he recalls; luckily he could swim.

Communications and signals was a key area where the success or failure of any operation could be determined. This is well illustrated in the story of Malcolm Robinson of Minehead, formerly of Royal Naval Beach Signals, Section No. 5 (referred to here as B5).

Beach Signals section served in several parts of Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight, Cowes, Calshot and Crondall. There is also the story of the Dieppe raid and the Hardelot raid and an extraordinary tale of fully armed sailors ready for the Normandy invasion having a meal at a Lyons corner house café in London. In addition to Malcolm’s own experience, he has collected the experiences of several others in his Beach Signals section, including the signals station set up by them on one of the Gooseberry block ships. He records the hardships they endured during the Great Storm, owing to their situation, in spite of which they coped efficiently with all the signals traffic there for about six weeks. It also gives a good idea of what it was like on and near the Normandy beaches following the Allied invasion.

Malcolm was a Leading Signalman of the Royal Navy, born at Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He had enrolled in the RNV(W)R - Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve: the W stands for Wireless - in June 1939 and had served two years in a minesweeping trawler. In April 1942, together with others, he was drafted to HMS Dundonald II, near Troon, Ayrshire, where, he says, “We discovered that our purpose in life was to land with advance troops on enemy beaches and there establish communications between the beaches, assault ships and landing craft. We were kitted out in khaki battle-dress, army boots and gaiters but retained our naval headgear. A motley crew we must have looked! After two weeks’ induction into the mysteries of Combined Operation [mainly square bashing], we were moved to Cowes in the Isle of Wight where a force was being gathered to carry out large scale raids on France.

“A considerable number of naval communications personnel, signalmen, telegraphists and coders, were involved, under the command of Lieutenant P Howes, DSC RN (later Rear Admiral), routine activities being carried out under Sub Lieutenant R S Evans, who had trained as a Beach Signals Officer. St. Nazaire and Bruneval, both very successful operations, were in the past. Dieppe was yet to come. Meanwhile, life in Cowes, with billets at the former holiday camp at Gurnard, was very pleasant, and thoughts of what the future might hold did not greatly trouble us.”

The Hardelot raid’s purpose, according to the obituary of Major Gordon Webb, who had taken part in the raid, was to secure some advanced equipment from a radar station said to be situated there, but in the event, the recall was signalled prematurely by accident, making the raid abortive. According to Major Webb, as the Commandos were returning to the boats they were fired on by the boat party. Only then did Webb recall that the leading Commando had a stutter and could not articulate the password! Fortunately no-one was hurt.

Malcolm considers this raid, much hyped by the press although it achieved nothing worthwhile, counted as “useful experience for the real thing.” The account below is simply, he says “a one-person experience of a very minor event in the history of RN Beach Signals.” (A later commando raid did capture examples of enemy radar equipment, together with one of the German radar operators. News of any raid which resulted in Allied troops landing in Occupied Europe at the time was a morale booster for the British population, which had since Dunkirk expected the Nazis would invade UK shores.)

“One afternoon in early June 1942, I was on the promenade with a friend, a regular telegraphist, survivor of the sinking of the cruiser Barham, when Sub Lieutenant Evans approached and said he had a job for us ‘on the other side.’”

They each thought he could only mean on the mainland, just across the Solent. “How stupid can you be?” he adds.

They were soon on their way, with several other telegraphists, in an ‘R’ (Eureka) boat which took them to one of the Belgian or Dutch cross-Channel ferries which had been converted to carry ALCs (later known as LCAs).

“We then realised that something was ‘on’. Briefing must have been minimal. We were told that a Commando raid was to be carried out near Boulogne and which craft we would be in. When we hit the beach, for what would have been a dry landing, it quickly became apparent that we had picked the wrong spot, because as the ramp was lowered, machine-gun fire erupted from both sides and tracers could be seen crossing just in front of our bows. The German fire was very accurate and to step out into that would have probably been suicidal. Consequently, the ramp was hastily raised and the boat officer, a sub lieutenant, decided to pull off, presumably with a view to trying a less unfriendly spot.

“However, we appeared to be well and truly stuck. Situated starboard side, amidships, I was keeping my head well down, the more so as my aerial seemed to be attracting attention from the German gunners. The ‘subby’ instructed me to radio that we were stuck, which I did, only to receive the terse response: ‘Pipe down!’”

By this time, Malcolm says, mortar shells had been added to the machine gun fire. They started to come “uncomfortably close, and it may have been this that prompted our kedge winch into effective action, because, at last, with the help of the engines astern, we managed to ease off the beach.” (This winch pulls on the kedge anchor cable and helps the craft to back off a beach.)

“By then it seemed that everyone else was withdrawing, so we also headed seawards. As dawn broke, an MGB [Motor Gunboat] or ML [Motor Launch] came alongside and took off the commandos, leaving the subby, coxwain, motorman and myself. We were offered a tow, which we accepted gratefully, but the speed of the MGB was too much for us; we had to cast off, otherwise we would soon have been bows under. Suddenly we were alone, with not another craft in sight.

“Then, acting as self-appointed lookout, I spotted over the starboard quarter several ominous-looking fast craft approaching. I called the subby’s attention to this with the words: “Don’t look now, sir, but I think we’re in for trouble!”

“Now, what I did not know then was that the Royal Navy had one flotilla of steam gun boats, commanded by Peter Scott. Much to our relief, we spotted their white ensigns. They hauled alongside, checked that we were OK and steamed off, leaving us to our own devices. It was a pleasant trip after all, one small ALC all by itself, bright sunshine, calm seas, not a plane or ship to be seen and incredibly no trouble on the way.

“We beached at Hastings to find reporters and photographers waiting. I ducked down to ensure my mother would not be shocked to discover what I was doing. She thought I was shore-based. Well, I suppose I was, in a manner of speaking! Even so, the camera caught the top of my head - evidence I treasure because it proves that at one time I had a reasonable head of hair!”

Malcolm, for a short period prior to the cancelled Dieppe operation, was in Calshot. His paper about the activities of his beach communications team, A Job on the Other Side, is quoted from, along with extracts from his letters to me and to Maurice Hillebrandt.

“The above operation in which I took part (Bristle/part of Lancing), was the Hardelot raid of 4th June 1942 - and morning papers of 5th June bore banner headlines in the London Evening Standard, which reported “Commandos are Home, Casualties Slight”, whilst the Daily Sketch declared “Commandos in Woollen Caps and Shorts Raid Nazis - Germans fire at Germans”. The newspapers painted a glowing picture of a successful raid, but I fear the truth was somewhat different.

“A landing was achieved by some, although not all, of the raiding force, but the recall was sounded prematurely before the objective had been attained. Photographs of the ‘returned warriors’ were in the two papers mentioned above. The event was fairly minor in the context of other subsequent activities in which we Naval Beach Signals people were involved.” (Malcolm Robinson.)

Malcolm offered this additional information about the Hardelot raid: “We started off from Cowes, and I am pretty certain that the ship we joined was the Prins Albert, one of the pre-war Belgian cross-channel ferries which had been converted to carry Assault Landing Craft, known as ALC. We chosen ones, from our base at Cowes, joined the Prins Albert somewhere in the Solent. I think Prins Albert carried about eight of these craft, each capable of transporting thirty or forty commandos or infantry together with crew, normally a Sub lieutenant, a coxwain and a motorman, with possibly an additional seaman. There was no training as such for this particular job - we were just, literally, plucked off the street.

“On the Hardelot raid, the commandos were reported as wearing woollen caps. As to the shorts, it was high summer, so shorts were for comfort in the heat. Also, doubtless, less material to get soaked when wading ashore. How did I feel when there were just four of us left in the landing craft on the trip home? Well, a degree nervous, I suppose, but certainly wary, and fully expecting at any moment to be attacked from the air or sea. But I think the predominant mood was that we had got away from Hardelot unscathed and were making reasonable headway in calm waters.

“The degree of training received by Naval Beach Signals personnel varied considerably, from the brief induction I had at Dundonald, coupled with some practice in the use of a .45 revolver, to the more extreme, virtually commando assault courses in the wilds of Scotland. Beach Signals personnel comprised telegraphists, signalmen and coders, all of whom would have received normal naval training for their particular skills. Telegraphists, as such, merely had to be inculcated in the use of portable wireless sets, such as the Type 18, which I carried on the Hardelot raid, and the later Type 45, having crystal controlled channels. Signalling on jobs such as the Hardelot raid was kept to an absolute minimum, for obvious reasons. Visual signals would be used only when necessary and wireless only when instructed.

“As to navigation, on raids such as the Hardelot, the landing craft heading in to the beach after having been dropped from their transport, would usually be led in by one of the coastal Motor Launches or Motor Gun Boats, which would also be on hand to provide fire support, since the armament on an LCA was a single Lewis Gun. A Motor Launch was about 110-120 feet long with fairly light armament.

“After Dieppe, the large conglomeration of communication ratings gathered at Cowes was divided into Sections, each of about thirty men, and the Section I came to be in, then, RN Beach Signals Section No. 5, had, prior to Normandy, participated in the North African landings, the invasion of Sicily and afterwards the toe of Italy and eventually the Anzio landings.

“At the time of Dieppe, I was one of six communications ratings attached to Commander [later Captain] Ryder, the St. Nazaire VC, whom we were to accompany aboard HMS Locust, an old China river gunboat, and we embarked on her from Calshot. In the event, after a week of kicking our heels moored in the Solent, crammed full to overflowing with troops, Mountbatten came aboard to tell us the whole thing was ‘off’. Everyone had been fully briefed on their tasks and the intended destination, Dieppe, so it was not surprising that when the operation was reinstated for the same destination in August 1942 the Germans were well aware what was afoot.

“But after the cancelled event in June, leave had been granted - ‘disappointment leave’ we called it - and the hundred or so communication personnel from Cowes returned to their main base, HMS Dundonald, near Troon, Ayrshire. Towards the end of July we were all moved down to - of all unlikely places - Crondall, in Hampshire, where a couple of weeks or so were enjoyed with occasional route marches, communications exercises, and plentiful visits to one or other of the local pubs. Little did we know what was in store for us!

“The day before the operation, we were transported down to the coast, most of us to Newhaven, where we were allocated to various ships and craft, depending on what tasks we were intended to do, some to landing parties, some to join fleet vessels, destroyers etc. for signals co-ordination purposes, some to the principal landing craft and others to the close support Coastal Forces MLs and MGBs. Our destination was to be Dieppe.

“I was one of the lucky ones, to join an ML, thus missing the carnage on the beaches. Upon our eventual return to Crondall, we were much saddened to find that out of the one hundred or so who set out, something around thirty were missing, killed, captured or wounded.”

Operation Neptune was the code name for the naval part of Overlord, the sea-borne invasion of Normandy, on 6th June, 1944, when Allied armies landed on the beaches of Normandy.

In the naval side of the invasion, 7,000 vessels - of which more than 4,000 ships and landing craft, were engaged in the initial assault and follow-up stages; 1,200 warships were to protect the invasion fleet and to blast enemy defences; in support were 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant supply ships. Malcolm says that in the context of this mighty assemblage, the part played by one small naval unit of 30 men can only be regarded as infinitesimal, yet every unit, large or small, and every individual had its, or his, part to play on the day. His section, Royal Naval Beach Signals Section 5, RNBSS5, was no exception.

In the weeks preceding D-Day, B5 was based at HMS Vectis at Cowes, and billeted in the former Gurnard Pines holiday camp.

“When B5’s personnel were despatched to their respective craft and duties, probably at least half the section formed the party for the Gooseberry. As well as the Mulberry harbour utilised off Normandy, there was another form of harbour, designated Gooseberry, which consisted of a row of old merchant ships sunk in position nose to tail, so to speak, to form a protective shelter for the smaller craft employed on the beaches. For certain reasons B5 was employed in a subsidiary role for Normandy, its main function being to set up a Signal Station on the Gooseberry off Juno Beach, although some of us, myself included, where given other functions.

“Which reminds me that two of our telegraphists embarked from HMS Tormentor into an LCI [Landing Craft Infantry]. One of four such craft, loaded with infantry and/or stores, was destined to take part in the initial assault on the Normandy beaches.

“Detailed information is lacking but Lieutenant R S Evans was detached to act as Signal Officer to SOBG [Senior Officer Build-up Group] with Headquarters in LCI(H) [a minor headquarters set up in an LCI]. He embarked direct from HMS Vectis, in a Fleet Escort Vessel in company with an RN Lieutenant Comm who was to act as harbour master, controlling the anchorage off Juno Beach. The vessel in which he was embarked escorted landing craft into the beach. Later in D-Day he transferred to the LCI(H) already mentioned. The party for Gooseberry, under Sub Lieutenant M Garvey, included L/Sigs J Cummings and Johnson; Sigs Greenwood, Seldon, Grundy and Pirt, Tels. Challenor and A Chadwick; Coders Godsall, Wallbank, Jeffrey and Mapp. It seems likely that Yeoman Arnold and PO Tel. Spencer took passage in the Escort vessel in which Lieutenant Evans embarked.

“From HMS Tormentor II, Tels. S Edwards and B Stone joined an LCI(M), one of two destined as HQs for D/SOBG (M.T) [Senior Officer Build Up Group organising motor transport] and D/SOBG (Stores) [Senior Officer Build Up Group organising Stores: the Build Up Group were later arrivals to the beaches]. These craft, two of four allocated for Signals purposes, were to beach in the initial assault, but the two carrying passengers and stores, including the one in which Edwards and Stone were embarked, were knocked out when approaching the beach.

“I [Tel. M Robinson] joined an MFV [Motor Fishing Vessel, about 40-50 feet long] at Cowes, which ran errands round the assembled Fleet prior to setting off in the early hours of D-Day, navigating - one can hardly call it ‘escorting’ with armament consisting of one single barrel Lewis gun, two rifles and my revolver - a large number of LCMs across to Juno Beach, where I transferred to the SNOL LCI [Senior Naval Officer, Landing, in a particular part of a beach] late afternoon, D-Day.

“I do not know the duties of the remaining members of the section, It is probable that L/Tel. G Baker would have been in the Gooseberry party plus Coder A Knox, Sigs A Cruise, Sweeney and Emerson, plus one other whose name is forgotten. Tels. Jeffreys, Russel, T.Chapman and R.Scott may well have been allocated to other controlling craft but in the absence of firm information all of this is guesswork. Sig. G Pink seems to have been the only member of B5 to have made a beach landing, but why, how and when is a mystery. Various of the Section, who had occasion to visit the beach during their stay offshore, met up with him, together with a small number of Commandos. He complained bitterly that he was the sole Beach Signals rating there, with nobody to relieve him. I assume that, perhaps at the last moment, he was detailed to accompany a Commando Unit carrying out a special task. No record exists as to what this might have been.

“For reasons mainly to do with the worsening weather, the main assault on Juno Beach began later than scheduled and ran into trouble. The tide had risen over the first lines of beach obstacles with the result that instead of landing in front of them, the first assault waves found themselves landing right on top of the submerged girders and mines.

“Now, the majority of B5 knew nothing of this, being still in transit to their eventual destination, the Gooseberry. This main party had left Gurnard Pines on 2nd or 3rd June, crossed to Portsmouth on the old paddle ferry and thence took the train to Waterloo Station, London, to transit to Fenchurch Street Station for train to Tilbury, to join a ship for the trip down Channel to the Normandy Beaches.

“The party had some time to kick its heels in London. Incredible as it may seem, but nevertheless vouched by existing members of B5, the party was allowed to scatter for food and sustenance, each to his own devices, before reassembling at an appointed time at, presumably, Fenchurch Street Station.

“It is said that some members resident in the London area headed for home. Some, at the suggestion of L/Sig. Johnson, headed for the public house known as Dirty Dick’s in Bishopsgate. Les Seldon remembers hearing this suggested but himself, with three others, decided that food came first. Len Jeffrey remembers going to Dirty Dick’s - cobwebs, sawdust on the floor and stuffed birds on the walls - and says he can’t imagine going to such a place at any other time in his life!

“Les and three others headed for a Lyons Corner House where, arriving fully kitted and armed, to the surprise of a full restaurant, the manager found them a table and a very satisfying meal was provided on the house.

“How it came about that laxity of this kind was permitted in circumstances requiring utmost security is beyond belief. Certainly, had Lieutenant. Ray Evans been in charge, there is no way such risk of breach of security would have been countenanced. In fact, the whole party reassembled on time, which says a lot for the integrity of the individuals concerned.”

They took train to a part of Westcliffe-on-Sea, named HMS Westcliffe, and were accommodated in a semi-detached house overnight prior to going to Tilbury where their transport awaited them - a ship believed to have been the Asturias or the Ascanius (probably the latter as it was nicknamed “the old ashcan”) - which headed downstream to the Straits of Dover as part of “a sizeable convoy, part of the large follow-up force proceeding from East Coast ports.” The convoy was shelled by long-range German guns from the Calais area. “It was about this time that it was announced that Airborne Forces had been dropped during the night and that the invasion had started.”

The B5 party reached and boarded the Gooseberry in the afternoon of D-Day or D+1, when the block ships to form the Gooseberry were being scuttled. As B5’s ship came into the anchorage a vessel leaving ranged along her starboard side, and carried away one of her lifeboats. Their ship having anchored, B5 moved over to one of the block ships already in position. “This, with gear, was no easy task,” Malcolm recalls. Rope ladder down to a landing craft which carried them across to the Gooseberry, then up another rope ladder onto the deck of what was to be their home for the next few weeks. Once aboard, visual contact was quickly made with the Beach Signals people ashore and with other controlling craft.

“From the bridge of the blockship could be seen the scattered remains of landing craft of one sort or another that had been destroyed or damaged by enemy gunfire or by falling foul of the beach defence obstacles. Out of 306 vessels employed on Juno beach on D-Day, 90 were lost or damaged. Of these, the leading 24 became casualties. One of these was the LCI in which Bernard Stone and Stan Edwards were embarked.

“Bernard recollects,” says Malcolm, “that this LCI was carrying troops and equipment, about 50 in all underdeck forward and he and Stan were in a small hatch space in the stern.” They moved off in the early hours of D-Day together with “a stream of other landing craft, reaching the assembly area about 0715 hours,” ready to move in. “The weather had worsened during the crossing and, like many others, Bernard was badly seasick.” His condition was made worse by the smell of diesel fuel from the engine compartment. Shell and mortar fire met their approach to the beach. Their first attempt to get through the barrier of beach obstacles was unsuccessful and they pulled off to try further along. Shells from HMS Warspite passed over their heads, trying to silence a battery situated near the church in Courseilles, the tower of which was being used as a spotting station.

“There was a loud ‘crump’.” Bernard told Malcolm that he thought their LCI had hit another craft, but looking from their hatchway, “he realised the bows of the vessel had gone and it was fast sinking. He recalls that, despite the situation, he did not at that moment feel particularly scared, because he was so sick.” He remembered very little of what happened then until he was sitting on the deck of a destroyer with survivors from other craft, drinking hot soup. As far as he is aware, he and Stan Edwards were the only survivors of those aboard their LCI. He “has the impression that he spent the night on one of the Gooseberry ships but this is by no means certain.” He found himself next day, D+1, aboard the SNOL LCI, which I had joined the previous day, but his recall of the first few days is practically non-existent. “The fact that on that first morning, he gave his tot [of rum] - neaters at that - to me is something of which he has no recollection whatever.

“What brought this about was that, early in the morning of D+1, the fingers of my left hand had been caught between a hatch coaming and a falling hatch cover, not properly secured. The coxwain had dressed it with Elastoplast but I was in considerable pain. I well remember the beneficial effect of the rum, but Bernard, when reminded years later, could hardly credit how generous he had been!”

On board the SNOL LCI, Bernard and Malcolm were reasonably well provided for with food and accommodation. Working watches with SNOL, Malcolm says, “We felt we were fortunate compared with so many others at that time. Three of us watch keepers worked fairly long hours, four hours on and three off until 4.00-6.00 and 6.00-8.00 in the evening. We were receiving and transmitting radio signals.”

For those on the Gooseberry, where Stan Edwards had ended up, by all accounts, life was no bed of roses. In the early stages, rations and fresh water were in short supply; fresh water was a problem throughout.

“Resting on the bottom, the vessel’s upper deck and superstructure were still above water. The original crew’s quarters at the after end, which had some wooden bunks and a mess table, were used as living accommodation. Toilet facilities were either inaccessible or out of action. To reach the bridge, amidships, involved crossing the well deck from the after accommodation, which created a problem when, later on, the weather deteriorated even more. It seems that the ship’s departing crew must have taken with them all items of food and initially the members of B5 were restricted to the emergency rations they carried, supplemented by the emergency rations, such as Horlicks tablets, from the lifeboats.

“The food situation improved when a naval party, whose job was to repair and maintain landing craft, came aboard with supplies and a cook; the galley was brought into use. Fresh water continued in short supply, being restricted to what was brought aboard from time to time. Personal hygiene was also a problem, with only sea water for washing and dhobiing purposes and a lack of soap.

“The section on Gooseberry was kept very busy. For the amount of traffic it was called upon to handle, not only relaying signals from the beaches seawards but also dealing with signals originating from the various Senior Officers who set up their headquarters either in or in the vicinity of the Gooseberry, it was understaffed, but by all accounts performed very efficiently.

“A notable aspect of the Overlord/Neptune operation was the almost complete absence of enemy air activity, markedly different from previous operations in which B5 were involved.”

However, towards night, Malcolm says that aircraft engines were heard and a single low-flying plane came into sight, from inland, carrying a smaller plane on its back, which detached itself and flew back presumably to its base. The larger plane went further seaward by itself and dived into the water with a loud explosion. It may have been intended to strike one of the major Allied warships beyond the anchorage, but no Allied ship was affected. He also says that at night, the Germans tried to infiltrate small two-man submarines and self-propelled motor boats filled with explosives amongst the shipping in the anchorages, not just at Juno beaches but elsewhere. These, he says “are believed to have had limited success, mostly being spotted and destroyed before they could do any harm.”

“A singular event recalled by those on the Gooseberry as well as by Bernard and me on the SNOL LCI, was the sighting of what is believed to have been the first V1 [“doodlebug” or “buzz bomb”]. This strange object with the body of a small plane, stubby wings and fire belching from its rear, flew across the anchorage seawards, with Ack-ack directed towards it by every craft within range, but without success. However, possibly diverted by a close shell-burst, it reversed course and headed back across the coast inland until it disappeared from sight. Everyone hoped that the enemy had scored an own goal!”

“On 19th June, with the beachheads secure and the build-up going well, the whole invasion coast was hit by a gale of unparalleled ferocity which lasted for three days, creating chaos amongst the ships and craft lying off or working the beaches. For the crews of the smaller landing craft and barges the effect must have been terrifying, with anchors dragging and even the shelter of the Gooseberries not at all secure. Even the Mulberry off Arromanches in the British sector was badly affected. [The American one became unusable.] The beaches became strewn with debris as more and more vessels were driven ashore. Had the storm arisen during the early days of the landings it might well have proved disastrous to the whole enterprise. As it was, ammunition stocks ran low, the Allied offensive was delayed, and Rommel was able to build up his defences.

“The situation for those on the Gooseberry was one of extreme discomfort coupled with an element of danger. Although ballasted down and lying on the sea bed, the force of the winds and heavy seas caused the vessel to develop a most disconcerting rolling motion, with much ominous scraping and grinding. At times it was touch and go whether she would turn over. In fact, Alf Grundy well remembers that one night, the vessel next to them started to roll over and the British Army anti-aircraft gunners aboard had to be brought onto the B5 ship hand-over-hand on ropes.

“Resting on the bottom as she was, the vessel’s well decks had little freeboard, and whilst the storm raged, heavy seas were breaking continually across the wells, so much so that it was too dangerous for anyone to cross except at low water, and even then with extreme difficulty and at some risk. Thus the watch-keepers on the bridge and those off watch aft were completely cut off from each other for long periods.

“Conditions on the bridge were atrocious, and visual signalling was a never-ending struggle against the elements, what with the force of the winds and driving rain lashing into the watch-keepers’ faces and soaking them to the skin.

“Conditions aft were decidedly uncomfortable, due to water swirling into the accommodation over the entry coaming. Ron Wallbank remembers waking up to find a melange of personal gear, kitbags, boots etc., floating around the mess-deck in about three feet of water.

“During the storm a signal was received that a midshipman had been washed overboard from an LCT and crews were asked to keep a sharp lookout. Some time later an LCA brought his body to the Gooseberry for someone to deal with. The body was in a bad state and very unpleasant to handle. An officer offered two tots of neat rum to anyone who would clean the corpse and tie it up in canvas. L/Sig Johnson (‘Johnno’) agreed to take on this task, and when it was accomplished, a landing craft was prevailed upon to take the corpse to the beach.

“At last, the weather eased. ‘The Great Storm’ came to an end and things started to get back to something approaching normal.

“Work began, to deal with the stranded craft, including the refloating of a Destroyer, HMS Fury.”

(Ron Miles in Miles Aweigh records that this had been swept broadside on. It was eventually refloated on the evening tide after a channel had been made for her by a bulldozer. In the process everyone got smothered in the jettisoned oil covering the beach.)

“Repair parties from HMS Albatross and HMS Adventure worked night and day on the stranded vessels and of the 800 which were put out of action, around 600 were repaired and refloated by the next spring tide on 8th July, whilst 100 were refloated a fortnight later.”

On the Gooseberry, during the storm, fresh water had had to be rationed and food supplies were practically exhausted. The story goes that in order to try to improve the somewhat monotonous diet, ‘Johnno’ decided to make a foray ashore in search of vegetables. With the aid no doubt of a bit of bartering, he returned with a supply of potatoes. To ensure that B5 would benefit from this welcome largesse, Johnno took personal responsibility for their preparation and cooking in a large fanny (type of kettle). When they were boiled, he handed the fanny to Sig. Greenwood, known as Jan, with instructions to drain them over the side.

“Now, Jan was a country boy who, having experience of driving tractors and other vehicles on a farm, had been responsible for driving B5 all over Scotland in a three ton truck. At this job he was superb,” but at cooking was a complete novice. Not being quite sure what Johnno wanted done, he asked: “Do you mean all of it?” To which Johnno, thinking of the water only, replied ‘Yes, the whole ******* lot.’ At this, Jan lifted the fanny and tipped both water and potatoes into the sea. The reaction of Johnno is best left to the imagination. Jan was lucky he did not finish up where the potatoes had gone!

“Nevertheless, pressure of work did not diminish and the B5 crew were kept extremely busy. The capture of Caen was preceded by an awesome air strike by RAF Halifaxes and Lancasters. Those on Gooseberry had a grandstand view of events, hundreds of these big four engined planes passing almost directly overhead to paste the German defences.

“The watchers could see the planes flying through a tremendous barrage of Ack-ack, dropping their bombs and turning back towards the coast and safety. Inevitably some of them did not make it, the aircraft being shot down but the crews mostly able to bale out, their parachutes descending into friendly territory. Sadly, now and again, parachutes were seen not to open, the airmen plunging to certain death.

“The beginning of July marked the effective end of Operation Neptune, but the beaches continued working until the end of July. When B5 had been on Gooseberry almost six weeks a landing craft pulled alongside containing a number of communications personnel, the advance of the relief for B5. To ensure continued smooth working of the station, half of B5 were to leave the next morning; the rest would follow later. The first party to leave were taken ashore by landing craft and instructed by the Beach Master to go back to Gosport in a landing craft which would be returning empty. They arrived in it off Fort Gilkicker around midnight and three Royal Marines (awoken from their beds) were detailed to offload the B5 party at Ryde Pier.”

A long wait ensued, with no transport available to run them back to Gurnard Pines. They told Malcolm afterwards that they struggled along the length of Ryde Pier in the dark, and Sub. Lieut. Garvey went off to find a telephone to arrange transport whilst the others took shelter under the canopy of the railway station. They heard a “doodlebug” pass overhead which was seen to fall “somewhere in the Southampton area,” as far as they could judge. Les, who knew Ryde well from pre-war, suddenly realised that the canopy above them was made of glass, which was not the best protection should one of these rockets fall nearby. A move was made quickly to the open seafront.

While they were waiting, several more “doodlebugs” came over, all going towards the Southampton area. It was cold on the seafront, despite the time of year, but the low temperature was alleviated to some extent by the new-style cans of soup they had with them, which had an inbuilt heating device operated by pulling a cord and waiting a couple of minutes for the contents to warm up. Still feeling chilly, one of the party broke some pieces of shrub and somehow managed to start a small fire, but no sooner had it begun to warm them up than an Air Raid Warden appeared and ordered them to put it out, threatening arrest if they did not comply. Fortunately a lorry pulled up alongside to pick them up. By the time they reached Gurnard Pines it was morning. They showered and changed their clothes and enjoyed a hearty breakfast, the first really good meal they had had for many weeks.

“Afterwards,” Malcolm says, “They met up with Bernard and me. We had returned to UK about 10/14 days earlier, crossing from France in an LCT which bowed between bow and bridge, up and down, in a most alarming manner. We were convinced the craft had broken its back; most likely it was the normal action of an empty LCT.

“When we arrived back at Gurnard Pines, nobody seemed to want to know anything about us. We settled into a chalet, slept in until 10.30 or 11.00 every day, emerging only for dinner and a gentle stroll down to Cowes. After about a week of this near-Nirvana, we were rudely aroused one morning by a Petty Officer checking the chalets, who threatened us with all kinds of dire penalties, which somehow did not materialise, but in no time at all we found ourselves down in Cowes scrubbing floors and performing menial tasks.

“The second half of B5 returned to UK shortly after the first lot, crossing in an LST loaded with wounded, German as well as British and Canadian. Prior to embarkation Alf Grundy and Len Jeffrey had helped to take some of the wounded onto the LST. Alf recalled that some of them, presumably tank crews, were badly burned and he helped the medical staff with the dressings on at least one of them. Len recalled that one young soldier took his hand and squeezed it so hard he thought his fingers would break. Shortly afterwards he was talking to men of 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, who told him that their 5th Battalion had suffered very heavy casualties. Len’s brother was in the 5th Battalion and was amongst those killed. His death was confirmed the day Len arrived home on leave.

After their return, members of B5 were granted leave. None of them are quite sure how long the leave was, possibly ten days, nor when it was. Some weeks later, the whole of the Section were in Nissen huts at Exbury House, where they were “at a loose end” says Malcolm. “Nobody quite knew what to do with us. Some of them somehow managed to take a few days ‘unofficial leave’ without being missed or repercussions ensuing.” Malcolm says he accompanied Johnno to Leigh-on-Sea.

Not long after the story of the Battle of Arnhem and the evacuation of the survivors was broadcast, B5 heard the section was to be disbanded. Malcolm, who had been offered the prospect of a change from Beach Signals by the CO of SNOL LC1, and had opted to remain with it, found this ironic. Some of the section returned to General Service, one went to another Section and some kicked their heels still more all through the winter of 1944/45. Two, Bernard Stone and Stan Edwards, joined B3 which went to the Far East, and took part in the assault on the Morib Beaches at Port Swettenham (Operation Zipper). “Fortunately for all concerned,” says Malcolm, “The surrender of the Japanese meant they landed as a re-occupation force instead of an invasion force.

“Alf Grundy had the vague idea that after B5 was disbanded he took part in the re-occupation of the Channel Isles but he remembers being demobbed in February 1946.

“Len Jeffrey found himself in Devonport, instructing on Type X Code/Cypher machines. He was then drafted to the destroyer Fame as Leading Coder.

“I was at Dundonald until the beginning of May ’45 when I was drafted to one of two flotillas of Beach Survey Craft [Eureka Boats] based in Argyllshire, working up for service in the Far East.” In the winter of ’44-’45, the cold bit into the damaged fingers of his left hand and what was worse, he had “some affliction which resembled glandular fever.” Life improved for him when he was joined for five months by his wife and two-year-old son. He was also joined at work by another former B5 member, Alan Chadwick. He was already in touch with Tom Chapman, who had his wife in Troon and who had suggested Malcolm invited his own wife and son to stay nearby.

Malcolm says their flotilla was not sent East, the war having then ended. He was demobbed in November ’45.

Malcolm adds that two former members of B5, not with the section during the Normandy landings but still in touch with those remaining, were Jack Payton, an RAF Wireless Operator, and Norman Weston, a Naval Signalman. Jack returned to the RAF and soon found himself in India. Norman was in B7 for Normandy and landed on Juno Beach. After three weeks there, his Section was relieved by a newly formed Canadian Beach Party and after a brief spell in UK, they went back to France with a party of civilian intelligence people, for whom they maintained communications through Belgium, Holland and Germany, finishing up at Flensburg, Denmark.

It quickly became evident when the fight proper was joined with the German Kriegesmarine, that air power was going to be a crucial part of the struggle for the dominance of the seas. The attack on the Bismarck by the stick-and-string biplanes of Eugene Esmonde’s Swordfish squadron was a classic illustration of the way in which a sleek, modern battleship could be hobbled by older technology, if caught out in the open by air attack, and undefended.

The story told by Lieutenant Humphrey Dimmock is no doubt typical of many.

“I was, before the war, a professional pilot, giving instruction. I volunteered. I trained at Eastleigh - the war-time training. We flew TAG - Telegraphy, Air Gunners. We took them out. All we had to do was fly them and back again. I suppose we were learning how to fly naval aircraft, and naval discipline. After that, I volunteered for first line work and my name went up amongst others, and I was sent to a place where we learned to fly Swordfish, and drop torpedoes and bombs. And I passed off of that, I know, with top marks. Then I was posted to 823 Squadron in the Orkney Islands, where the work I was doing [was] searching for German submarines with depth charges on your wings, up in the Arctic. We flew open aircraft. We had to wear gloves. You couldn’t do any writing on paper, you were flying all the time. You had to do all calculations in your head and I’m good at that.”

He was posted to 781, flying VIPs, mainly because before the war he had been a professional pilot.

“I always considered myself top of my rate. I was cocky in those days, you know? Then I was posted to 781 where I was senior pilot immediately and eventually became CO and told others what to do. But I had to lead them on and I taught a lot of people some of my ..tricks if you like; sort of how to do things. Training. Good training.

“I lived in Gosport at the time. I was at Bangor on the front. Had my own little boat and would go fishing at night. I was posted to Number Three Wing.” [Number three wing was flying Spitfires.]

“When did you learn to fly Spitfires?”

“Oh, years before that. There were six of us. All the Spitfires in the country, from the Royal Air Force, and manufacturers, and took them to a place in Scotland, where they were training Spitfire pilots for dummy deck landings. Which meant you hit the deck pretty hard. And I hadn’t done dummy deck landings in a Swordfish. I knew what they were up to: they were breaking them at a rate of ten a week, then having broken them, they were mended there. And we took all the Spitfires, after breaking and temporary repair, we were flying back to Royal Naval Air Repair Yard at Fleetlands, or to Hamble, where they had hooks put on and they were called Hookfires for actual deck landing. And they had the strength in them to stop them crashing, I’m sure.

“The six of us collected all those Spitfires, and flew some of them as many as three times there and back again and back again, and we never had an accident. We were never late on going places. We were totally dedicated. We made an ETA [estimated time of arrival] before we left, and we jolly well stuck to it. We had a female pilot flew from here down to Cornwall to see her boyfriend (before I’d taken that Hurricane for delivery at Manston in Kent). A shocking thing to do! We heard it afterwards, mind you, but she should have been strangled. Fancy doing anything like that in war-time!”

“What’s the Spitfire like to fly?”

“Much better than Hurricanes. Hurricanes, you had to fly it all the time, as if you were in a link trainer. If you flew in cloud in a Hurricane, you had to watch the instruments all the time. Because the nose, without you doing anything, it rises more quickly, it goes down more suddenly. Got to watch the instruments carefully, and try and fly it straight and level. The Spitfire, it was well balanced; you could take your hands and feet off it and - no bother, she’d carry on flying. Spitfire’s a beautiful aeroplane. Much preferable than a Hurricane, to me. I didn’t get Seafires at all, that was postwar. Seafires really are modified Spitfires.”

“So, this was all at Daedalus. What was Daedalus like then? Was it the same as it is now?”

“It hasn’t changed much in the field and the buildings all are as they were then. And the runways as well.”

“So what was your involvement with the rest of the war? Did you continue flying to France?”

“During the rest of the war? One of my junior pilots said to me: ‘We keep going across to France to all these things. It would be better if we kept a flight in France.’ I said: ‘Yes, I agree with you entirely. You’ll be in charge of it.’ And he was Anglo-French, French mother and an English father. He was completely bilingual. I’m still in touch with him, in France. So he had charge of a flight, which followed the armies through - his first posting was up the Seine. First big town you come to. What is it?”

“Rouen?”

“Rouen? Yes, that would be it. And right into Germany in the end. And here was another very emotional thing. As my flight moved forward taking stores and aircraft parts and people, I went over there too. If I could go, I took them. I loved going. And as Germany was being beaten and they had prisoner of war camps, as the prisoners of war were released, the freed personnel were collected by my flight and brought back to Daedalus”. Here he documented them and sent them on their way “in two hours”.

“On D-Day itself [does he mean VE Day?], celebrations were terrific and a message from the Admiral came that, ‘there were three German POWs; would I get them away home by air as usual?’ It was virtually impossible. I said, ‘Yes, I think I can do that.’”

There was difficulty finding a serviceable aircraft. Also he was told, “‘Wherever you go in the country, you can’t land at any aerodrome with permission, you can’t take off with permission, and you’ll get no assistance whatever. You break down, they might have a fire crew, they might not. The whole country will be drunk!’ [Laughs] Well, certainly I was, in the morning. I was carried home and put to bed to recover and I had permission to take my two boys aged 12 and nine with me. My older boy, before the war he, at age five, had flown with me always. The ex-POWs were interested and I just expounded myself with all their questions. It was quite something. And having done all this I took my two boys over the invasion beaches to see what had been going on there. I was flying till after VJ day. Right up to 1946.”

“When did you actually learn of the invasion?”

“On D-Day. Mind you, we knew something was up, because every road from beyond Winchester, every minor road was full of army vehicles. And on the front at Lee-on-Solent, both sides, you could just drive one car at a time. A few gaps to let other people pass. All along there, full of vehicles. Gallons, vans, shell carriers, little vehicles. In fact, something big was happening here and we knew it.”

“So how did you feel when you knew it would actually happen?”

“Oh, terribly thrilled. It’s what we’d been aiming at, all the four years we’d been thinking of it and at one time, in the Orkney Islands, with seven weeks’ expectation of life, we had no hope of life. We thought Germany was going to win the war and we’d be killed anyway, so why bother. That was the attitude.”

“So the invasion was a great morale booster?”

“Ooh, terrific.”

“On the 6th of June, could you run through your first sortie of that day?”

“Well, we took off in pairs. Number one was the spotter pilot, number two, that was me, was the fighter pilot behind him, to keep enemy aircraft away from him. And while we were in France, we notified a ship, name of Sunshine: ‘We have arrived in France, What target, please?’ and it said to us ‘Target Number 1’. We’d been briefed as to what this target was, we both had maps, and as soon as my number one had found it - he was called Skylark and I was Skylark 2 - he called ‘Sunshine, I’m over the target now, what instructions?’ So the ship said: ‘Flash, 17 seconds.’ That means that in 17 seconds a pair of shells will hit the target, or miss it. Five seconds before it was due to hit the target, he says: ‘Flash, five seconds.’ That gives the spotting pilot time to tip his aircraft on the side and look out of the window at the target and look where the shells hit. The first shot he said, as best as I remember, ‘About 200 yards overshoot but direction good’. So Sunshine said, ‘Right. Stand by. We’ll try again.’ His next shot landed. And I wasn’t watching the shells until after they had burst. I could see from the smoke. Skylark 1 said, ‘Jolly good shot. Right on the target! I’ll go down and investigate.’ And he went down to investigate at a very low level … and, ‘Bloody Hell, they’re shooting at me. I’ll go up again. Give them some more!’ That is very literal. I think we had two more targets and after that we go home. I’ve no idea what the targets were. A farmhouse on the map. We were all good at map-reading.”

“Now, you were flying over the invasion fleet, so what was that like?”

“Oh, the Channel was full of ships going back and going forwards and anchored near the shore. The Mulberry harbours and the ships sunk along with them - we had full vision of all that. And tanks - a hell of a movement on the ground, we could see. But it wasn’t our job to look at that; our job was to do [what] we were told to do, and we did it. We were frightfully, frightfully, conscientious - and thrilled. We flew only one sortie that day, because an ex-CO’s squadron had been shot down and he decided that, as they’d been cannon fodder for the Germans, he’d not let the experienced pilots go in. And I was experienced fully in what I was doing. I mean, had I met a German aircraft - I did see a group of three but I shot at them a long way away, they would have seen the tracer bullets going past them. But they just didn’t swerve, they just go shshsh - gone. I didn’t think of chasing them either.

“I was on communications, taking people to and from France and landing in France. The Americans were all ready for it. They had little carpets they put down on the fields. There were metal carpets on which you landed. That was very clever. And then I was taking people and stores there and back and that sort of thing.”

“You actually flew to France?”

“Oh, yes, a lot. Two days after going there, a most extraordinary thing happened. They had WAAFs and Wrens and Army females and nurses, and they threw a dance in a big marquee, with floorboards and band and we were dancing there and shells were screaming overhead. All lights on and no thought of any danger, just dancing and - happiness.”

The navy was another service which saw the war transforming the lives and prospects of women recruits. At the beginning of the war, it seems that those called up for the WRNS were mostly used for traditionally female roles - as cooks, stewards, typists and to look after other people. As time went on, it becomes clear that a number of very young girls were given key jobs of strategic importance and coped. The first of these interviews are by the author, with later short extracts from interviews from ‘The Vital Link’ exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum by Dr Chis Howard Bailey, used courtesy of the Royal Naval Museum.

One such was Wren Patricia Balfour, born 1919

“On 3rd September, the day war broke out, I was on Portsdown Hill with my boyfriend and we heard the 11 o’clock news and within a few minutes there was an awful noise and we thought ‘My Goodness, they’d got here quickly!’ But it wasn’t [the enemy]. It was a thunder storm!

“I applied for the Wrens and they didn’t have a place for me at first, so I did VAD training at the Cottage Hospital in Emsworth. Then they called me up for the Wrens so I went to HMS Vernon in Portsmouth. I lived at home with my mother, so I had to travel in by train every day. They had the Hayling Billy then [steam train] to Havant. There was a bomb on the line once, Hitler bombed the Portsmouth line, you see, but I managed to get in to work, because somebody I knew from Hayling came along with a car, which was full but I managed to squeeze in. It got me to Portsmouth. I had to sit on a sailor’s knee! I got in to work all right. It was quite a long way. What did I get? About 12s.6d. a week, it may have been 15 bob. I think my friend had 12s.6d. a week because she was mobile. She lived in quarters. My mother helped me with the fare. I was 21 by then - I had my 21st, you see, in 1940.

“I hadn’t done a job before I went in the Wrens, to be perfectly honest. At Emsworth Hospital, I suppose they paid me my fare or something. I joined the Wrens in May and they gave me the uniform and I took it away and said I was having it made to fit, and come September, I put it on. It was rough naval material, ‘Pusser’s serge’, [Purser’s serge], you know? So I duly put it on and we had a heat wave! They were black cotton stockings, black shoes. As an officer I had brown gloves but I can’t remember what I had when I was a rating. When I was commissioned, I came back to Portsmouth to do my Cypher training and first of all I had to go to Chatham and the tunnel. Cyphering is encyphering words. First of all you put them into groups of figures and then you recypher them, with more, to keep it secret. It was hoped the Germans wouldn’t be able to de-cypher them, you see. They changed the cypher books regularly. I did coding first, as a rating, and when you get a commission then you go on to cypher.

“So I worked in Vernon. It was so nice at first, because, you know, the officers, they didn’t know how to treat us, really, so they used to open doors for us. I was the lowest form of animal life, a messenger, and it seemed … they were charming. I was in the SDO they called it - Signal Distributing Office. These messages came in by telephone, I expect, in those days and they were written down and you had to take them round wherever you had to go, in Vernon. Our Chief Yeoman, who ran the SDO, he was deaf, but he could hear on the telephone, whereas we couldn’t hear, because there was a noise going on in the office, so he could hear with one ear and didn’t bother about the other. I was only a messenger - I didn’t have to learn Morse - mostly I walked but I did have a bicycle. I think it must have been their [the Navy’s] bicycle.”

Pat recalls the day the Free French arrived: “I hopped on this bicycle and off I went - it had no brakes - and I saw this horde of men, you see, and they had sent me to ‘the Commander’, the English commander. So I went up to a nice looking commander and said, ‘Please could you tell me which is the Commander?’ and he said, ‘I am it!’ so I had picked the right one! The French were swarming all over the place. I didn’t take much notice of them …

“And then there was the other occasion when I was delivering the signals and I had to go to the mining shed and … I always go clockwise, so I went to the mining shed first of all, and then I went along to the quay, to deliver something, and I was walking back past the mining shed when there was a very loud bang. Part of a German mine they were taking to pieces to find out how it was made, exploded. If it had been the whole mine I think the whole of Vernon would have gone up, but as it was, it was only a part of it. So I’m afraid they were killed, poor devils, the men who had been doing it. I just left and went back to the office, to get another message to take.

“And when we went into the air raid shelter, which we didn’t do very often, I was known as the Wren with the calm face, because I didn’t show fear or anything. I didn’t really think a lot about it, to be perfectly honest. And I remember walking along the road from Vernon towards the station with, I think the Commander or Captain or something, and there was an air raid on but he didn’t bother much about it Just walked on.”

Similar experiences were shared by Margaret Lilian Wheatley, born 20th October 1919

Margaret joined the Wrens in the summer of 1941.

“I was a Messenger first, in the Wrens. And then I got up-rated to a Writer.” Born in Portsmouth, she was living on Somers Road when war began. “I lived with my mother and sister and grandmother. I was a machinist for a while. I wanted to be a librarian but my mother was on her own and she needed the money really, so I didn’t do what I really wanted. I did get on a little bit better in the Wrens.”

“Was Portsmouth being bombed by then?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. Badly that year, January 10th 1941.”

“Did it affect you personally?”

“It did. Eventually we did get bombed out. We moved more into Southsea.”

She was in Portsmouth when the D-Day landings took place. “I remember people went down to the Guildhall, because that was a focal point in those days. They’ve built all round it now - it was ever such a big space there - any big event, people would go to the Guildhall. I met some relatives when I got there. People just talked of one topic at the time, you know.?”

“Can you describe the day you joined up? What was it like?”

“Oh, there was a place called Bowlands in Southsea - it was a naval nursing home. Which I eventually went to when I had my second child - son. But I went there for training two weeks, then I went to the naval barracks in Queen Street, it was HMS Victory then - it’s HMS Nelson now. I went there and I worked in the mail office for a while. Then I went to drafting office and they had taken over several private houses (I think that belonged to naval officers - they had let them out to the Admiralty) and Woodford’s School, that’s not far off Palmerston Road. And I worked there for quite a while, moved from one house to another, and I was just a Writer ‘G’ which was ‘General’. I wasn’t a typist, you know. I did go to night school for a while but not for very long … That was the Navy, you didn’t have to pay, you could go and learn anything. I started French and didn’t stay long on that. I did it eventually in later life but … oh and typing. I didn’t keep that up.

Welcome news arrives, from home or family!

“I know something I did do while I was in the Wrens. There weren’t many staff on the telephonists - they had a couple of girls and so they taught some of us and we did that for a while and we were all a bit nervous …because it wasn’t our job, you know - but there was a nice Wren, I think she was a PO Wren, she was very patient and she got us all through it. We did all right. She was so patient and nice. If she’d bullied us into it we wouldn’t have done so well, but she was very good.

“I think we used to work [as telephonists] when we were on duty in the evenings. It wasn’t very often. And there was a direct line to the Admiralty and I was a bit nervous - ‘Will it ever go when I’m on duty?’ And it did! I managed to get through that all right. I didn’t deal with it, of course - the senior rating would have dealt with it, whoever was in charge on that duty night. I just had the call and then of course I passed it over to somebody senior …

“I became a Leading Wren. And I was offered to …for the officer course, but by that time I was engaged to my husband and when he became a PO I think the Wren officer in charge of us wanted me to come up as well, but I didn’t because I didn’t think I was qualified enough, really. I thought, ‘Oh dear, I’ll be in charge of people,’ and I was a little bit worried about that. I might have accepted it after, but then I got married in 1943 and there was over a year, I think, and then I became pregnant with my daughter and I left in 1945.”

“Did you have to leave when you were pregnant?”

“Well, yes. I used to get very sick, that was the trouble. I didn’t show. I think you could stay till you were five months, but if you… “

“You wouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting or anything?”

“Oh, no, I used to sit down. But I used to get so sick. So I left then.

“I’ve never met a Wren yet who didn’t like it [being a Wren]. I’ve met some very nice people, very nice. There’s only one that I know that worked where I was, we didn’t work together, either. You always hoped… friendships have been made since leaving the Wrens, with other ex-Wrens because they share the same background.”

This ex Wren Ship’s Cook, born in Portsmouth, prefers not to be named:

“I have lived in Portsmouth all my life, apart from going over to Lee-on-Solent during the war. I would have been called up, I was in private service as a cook but …I didn’t like the other uniforms, that was it. I didn’t like the khaki [ATS] or the blue of the Air Force, so I decided to apply to the WRNS. I went into the WRNS in 1942 as a cook and I didn’t actually work in barracks at all, because where I was at Lee on Solent, all the houses were commandeered for the Wrens’ Quarters, because they had too many men in the barracks and we used to have two houses either opposite each other or next door to each other that housed about 75 to 100 Wrens. One actually slept most of them and the others used to victual them, feed them. And there was two cooks and two ordinary waiting cooks and two officers’ cooks, because we had two officers sleeping there. They were WRNS officers. We used to work on shifts, there was the officer’s cook used to help us as well, but she was mainly to do the officers meals. I was only an ordinary - what they called a Ship’s Cook. I used to do one long duty day and one short duty day. Half past six in the morning to eight o’clock at night. And the short duty which was alternate days was half past six in the morning ‘til two. So it was more or less a day’s work every time.”

“Did the officers have different food?”

“No, it was the same as our food but it was presented differently. While we used to have ours on big trays they used to have theirs like you would at home, on a small tray. And of course, they had officer’s stewards to wait on them and that. They [the Wrens] had to come to the hatch to get their own food. But it was good fun. And we made a lot of friends there.”

She had never before worked with a large group of women. “It was a big shock when I first went in and when I came out in 1946, I was asked to go back to the same place as I was in service [before the war] and I refused. I couldn’t go back to being a ‘one person’. So I went into catering and I’ve been doing catering all the rest of my life. I was able to do restaurant cooking, and they used to do outside functions, you know?

“Well just before I went to Lee [Lee-on-Solent] it was when one of our own shells backfired and went right through the mess room of the girls having their supper. And of course - one of our own shells, went the wrong way. Kind of came back, sort of thing. That was about a couple of months before I went there. And that was pretty horrific.

“After doing a day’s work, being called to staff, we had to do the firewatching as well, so I am off duty at 8 o’clock, ten o’clock the sirens would go and you’d have to get up all night. You were very tired at the end of the time but you just coped.

Everybody else had to cope. Yes, we had quite a bit of gun-fire, not a lot of actual bombs over Lee because it was Portsmouth and Southampton, we would only get plenty bombs on those two big places, we did get the occasional one but nothing very much.” Asked about gun batteries nearby, she recalled, “Oh, yes! They were all round.”

“It was more or less the Wrens there. ‘Cause, Fleet Air Arm was a part of the Navy you see, we were separate parts of the Navy. The Wrens worked with the Navy, it wasn’t until the recent years that they’ve been integrated with the Navy. Of course, they’re not called Wrens now. They’re Navy people, You make a lot of friends and friends I’ve kept over the years, I’ve still got one of my quarters assistants that I still write to.”

“What about food shortages? How did you manage in catering?”

“Well, one thing was that we used to be on rations the same as everybody else. And we used to have 94 girls I think it was - 94 girls to feed every day. I had seven pounds - this is one thing that’s always stuck in my mind - we had seven pounds of butter a week, no it must have been 80 girls because each pound of butter had to be cut into 80 squares, you were taught how to cut it, you see. I don’t know if I still could do it. We didn’t used to have fridges or anything. To keep butter cold, we used to have cold slabs in the larder; these were all very big houses with all the old-fashioned slabs and larders you see.”

“Meat - did you just put a grid thing over it?”

“Yes, yes. And milk? I think - the milk used to come every day. We used to have a churn…no, sometimes you used to have to go and collect the milk because most of it was tinned milk…used to have a lot of tinned milk. We used to keep the fresh milk just for tea, if they had cocoa or anything, that was all made with tinned milk, cocoa, coffee … No snacks between meals. ‘Cause the girls weren’t in the quarters a lot you see. They used to go out at work. They were more or less doing split duties and used to have certain times for meals, and they all worked in round their duty hours.

You never knew actually what they were doing, ‘cause all of us when we went into the Wrens had to sign this Secrecy Act. I remember one girl who did happen to say…she came in most upset one day and we said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Like ‘Aren’t you well?’ Like, asked after her, you know? And she said ‘No, I’ve just had some …’ She was the one girl, this time she told us, her mother had … she had been upset for several days, and she was still upset because she’d been home … and as she was home her mother had got the news that her father had been killed. She was the person in the signals office had taken the message that her own father had been killed - but she wasn’t able to go and tell her mother, even, because it hadn’t become official. So there was all that kind of trauma that a lot of them had to put up with, and no counselling services like they have today that are supposed to make things better, we used to help one another, more or less.

“D-Day, we could … The morning of D-Day we got up at half-past-four in the morning, ‘cause we had an idea that … we couldn’t go ashore, like, we could go out but you couldn’t go on leave. We were bound in Lee. But we got up at half-past-four in the morning, we weren’t supposed to but we did, and went down on the seafront and saw all the little ships go. It was a wonderful sight. Most of the families were either civilians or serving ashore, because you didn’t get many married people, and of course, the men, we wouldn’t know where they were.”

As with the soldiers on Hayling, social life seemed to have miraculously co-existed with the harsher realities of war.

“We were near Lee-on-Solent - where Lee-on-Solent aerodrome is. We were quartered all along the sea front and all the houses all round. We used to go into the base for pictures, NAFFI canteen and all that. We had lots of dances and social evenings and everything. Well, we went to the Old Time dancing and that and then we had … we used to have social evenings and singalongs in the Rec Room.

“On duty, it was all ordinary everyday cooking. You never really stopped. You used to have fun in between whiles, ‘cause you had to … to sort of have a laugh and a chase around and I chased a girl once because she’d sort of been cheeky, and I said ‘I’ll get you!’ sometimes, like you do when anybody rubs you up the wrong way. And I chased her and she slipped on the polished floor and sat on the top of the fire extinguisher and set it off! We were always up to mischief. I think you would have got fed up with each other … You had to sort of make a laugh of it.”

Different social strata were also brought closer together by the pressures of war-time. This is the tale of Wren Pat Balfour, born 1919

“Another thing which happened was, I was invited to supper with friends on North Shore and Mrs Crawford - she’s Admiral Crawford’s wife - said, ‘Are you going to the dance next Saturday?’ and I said, ‘No, I haven’t got a partner.’ So she said, ‘Captain Hasler, will you please find Miss Barton a partner?’ That was Blondie Hasler, the submarine man. So that’s how I met my first husband. He rang me up and asked if I would like to go to the dance and I said, ‘Yes, thank you.’

“He was away in the East for about three-and-a-half years, then he came back in 1944 and we were married three-and-a-half weeks later. Really a bit on the fast side! It lasted, we had two children. I still have them and they’ve each got two children.”

Of course, inevitably, for many, there was also the sense of being present at the outset of great historic events. Such a person was Mrs Kathleen Kearley, born 1923

Mrs Kathleen Kearley was interviewed about her service in the WRNS before, during and after D-Day. She worked at Fort Southwick, where the D-Day plans were made and orders prepared for Operation Neptune by Wrens who typed and Gestetnered [duplicated] them:

KK: “It was this hut 103 that we worked in. That’s where we worked out this fleet that went over….each ship that went over, all the landing craft. If any of them were sunk or damaged we’d have to write it all on this - on the cards, keep them up to date.”

CHB: “That must have been a bit painful in some ways?”

KK: “Yes, it was. You know, quite sad.”

CHB: “Did they keep the landing craft in one box and the destroyers in another, like that?”

KK: “Yes. Landing craft and then LST’s and then LCTs…”

Wren Marjorie Hepworth, at HMS Vectis (Isle of Wight) in the run up to D-Day, was in charge of a staff of six Wren officers. Her office dealt with all the smaller ships:

MH: “And just before the end [of the build up to D-Day] you see I was FMO, [Fleet Mail Officer] and also ‘FMO’ was ‘Force Medical Officer’, and the signal was sent to me for the date of the invasion! And, of course, I returned it to the Force Medical Officer, because I knew I wasn’t supposed to know the exact date. But the Solent was absolutely full of ships. We had army, all these big consorts. A friend in the Army was on an American ship and he once brought a loaf of white bread ashore and that was simply wonderful for us, and we saw all these caissons being assembled [for the Mulberry Harbours] and drifting away.”

Olive Baker was a Leading Wren in the Fleet Mail Office at Cowes in the run-up to D-Day. She suffered from stomach trouble, possibly brought on by eating the fried food provided for the girls, but possibly, she realised, from the stress of a bereavement in 1942. When D-Day came, she felt depressed, from hearing that a lot of people she knew formed part of the Beach landing party for Juno Beach, and that several of them were killed.

“When we woke up the next morning I remember the first thing that I saw was the St David’s hospital ship going up the Southampton Waters and that was the day I was off. I was a bit upset because I wasn’t in the thick of it, so I went down to the office and hung around and I remember seeing the postman of a small Canadian ship, ‘cause the Canadians went over from there. And I remember this Canadian coming in and he was always a cheeky chappy and he was absolutely shattered. I remember the change in him overnight. I think - we were obviously worried about casualties.”

Some of the Wrens who were on duty were invited into the Radio Room from where they heard sounds from the Normandy Beaches - guns, men’s voices. They found it very emotional and most did not stay long, although afterwards this recollection was uppermost in their minds. They felt that it was a privilege to have been there. It had been tragic when one of their force ships was lost. But they were proud to have played a part of the operation, even a small part, and delighted it had been a success. A special communion service held the day before D-Day was recalled, together with the keyed up feelings associated with it. Then sailing was postponed because of the weather. Staff had to work, but there was not much work to do. They watched the ships sail, knowing what was going to happen, and felt very emotional.

Isobel Holmes, BEM, born 1925, was recruited in Londonderry and worked there in the Supply Branch. This extract from Chris Howard Bailey’s interview with her for ‘The Vital Link’ exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum is included because, although not in Hampshire, it shows the attitudes of the Wrens and the sense among them, that each day might be their last. Her work involved making sure ships on convoy duty received quickly the stores they needed when they docked.

Isobel recalls the day she was told that the war was over; she was on a ship and thought the sailor who told her so was joking. Then, ships in harbour began to hoot and a huge cheer went up. She was offered a tot of rum.

IH: “I was very proud to be a Wren. Perhaps we didn’t appreciate how important our part was, because everybody’s part was important during the war. And perhaps this is the reason that we felt there were others doing things that were much more important than what you were doing. But my job was just as important as the next one. Other Wrens used to say ‘Goodnight and God bless’ because one never knew if you were going to see the next day.”

The war brought not only danger, but also new skills, enforced travel, and a chance to see the world. This is former WRNS officer Peggy Kent (née White), born 1919:

“When I joined the WRNS my name was Peggy White and I lived in the north of England. Joined first of all as a Wren living at home, and then I was made an officer and sent up to Greenock as a cypher officer. I went to Glasgow as a cypher officer then I was sent down to HMS Mercury to do the signal course. I was the second one to do it. It was an RNVR course - mostly men but a few women were allowed on this course. There was one course before mine and I think they had a year between to see if it worked, and then we were sent off and when we finished (it lasted for about four months) it was frightening because we had all these things with flags and signals. We had to learn Morse code, you see.

“And you had these awful … In the classroom you had a buzzer, and we all had our names - call signs - and mine was WIG. The instructor would send a signal to WIG and I had to reply to it. It was all rather frightening, but we survived. I expect they were desperate. We used to do this flag signalling - out on the terrace with battlements round and a sailor would stand sending signals in semaphore. We used to be in pairs and one would have her back towards the semaphore, and the other would be writing down. And when we had sailors, they used to say, ‘Would you like me to say what he’s making or would you like to say what you think he’s making?’ Anyway, somehow we survived.”

“Did you ever use semaphore?”

“Only on these marching manoeuvres. It’s a long time ago.”

“Do you remember your first day there?”

“I’ll never forget when we arrived at Petersfield Station. We were picked up by some sort of transport and it was December - terrible, terrible weather. I don’t think there was snow on the ground but my memory of this transport going up the A3 … we couldn’t tell where we were going. It was absolutely wild, and when we got to this enormous house, we were met by a man with a hurricane lamp because all the electrics had gone. They had no heat and no light. I think there were four or five women, we were taken up to what used to be the scullion’s quarters - iron bedsteads, two of us in bunks. And we couldn’t believe it was so cold! It was absolutely awful. We had blankets and of course, with the rationing, we were always desperately hungry for something like a piece of chocolate, which you couldn’t get. And a friend of mine, we shared a cabin and we used to rush in at break-time and we had a jar of Ovaltine and two straws and we used to spoon it in and crunch it in our mouths. And then after that I was sent off to Dover: I was doing signals for D-Day. And afterwards we were sent off to Ceylon.”

“So in the 1940’s, you’d be 20ish?”

“Yes. I came back to Hampshire because of course by then, 1946, the war in Europe had finished. I was on the staff and I met my husband who came to do his long course and we married in 1948. And we went full circle because we came back, years later, to the same quarters. When we were there during the war you used to see when you went home on leave if there was a pork pie or anything you could take to your family, because we got very much better fed. So you went home where the fatted calf was laid out. We had leave for Christmas, but coming back we couldn’t get out at Petersfield. The train went straight on to Portsmouth and I had to spend the night at some awful hotel and try to get back the next day. In those days, when the snow was very thick, we used to come across the fields on tractors.”

Wren Muriel Townley-Jones, born 6th June 1924, shared her 20^th birthday with D-Day itself. Muriel recalls being “marched up and down across the parade ground, an instructor teaching us all what we had to do.” She remembers the instructor and was amazed that she recognised him many years after the war when she happened to meet him again. “He’s 90 next week and it seemed strange.”

“Of course, my mother was very strict. We had these galvanised Anderson shelters, and we went down there and it was sometimes three or four times a night. She made sure that every time you got back in bed, and even if you’d just got back in bed and the siren would go off again, and she was so nervous about it that we had to go down with her. And I used to say, ‘Oh, Mum!’ - you know. We used to have something to sort of relax on. Sometimes it would go on for hours, and we were always drinking tea. Well, there was only my mother and I mostly, because the others were away, you see. My father was in the navy. He came out when he was 40 but he was recalled when the war started and they put him up to Scotland. He was there for the whole war. He came down when we got married.”

As with so many other things about war-time life, questions of accommodation and clothing seemed at once both strangely random, yet important, especially to people like Wren Ellen Rose Johnston, born 20th June 1922:

“I was born in Portsmouth, lived here all my life, and was stationed in Portsmouth. I was what they called an Immobile then, so that I went home every night and I had an allowance to live ashore. Well, when I joined in 1941 there wasn’t an awful lot of quarters for the Wrens. So I used to leave Portsmouth and go over on the ferry every day, to Gosport and then go over Haslar toll bridge. We called it, ‘the pneumonia bridge’. It was very, very, high and cold. There was a lot of the girls in Portsmouth who were Immobile and we all used to meet from the ferry before we went round to the base; we used to go in a little cafe and have a cup of tea, and a gossip.

“I wasn’t trained. I was a steward, but I was in the Chief Petty Officers’ Mess and we went straight from the recruiting office, straight to the Mess. I didn’t cook, I just served the meals and then once a week they would give us drill and divisions. Divisions? Once a week, they assembled the whole of the ship’s company and then the Captain comes round and inspects you to make sure that you … the Captain was most particular that our skirts were the right length. He didn’t believe in Wrens showing their knees [laughter] so they - he used to come round with a little ruler and measure so many inches from the ground to the hem of your skirt!

“Oh, I liked wearing the uniform. Oh we really felt something. When I first joined, which was in March 1941, we had the little tiny cloth hats, not the sailor caps, and we spent many, many hours with a kettle, trying to steam the brim into different shapes so that we’d got our own shape. It was frowned on, but still - to make your hat look a little bit different. Your hair didn’t have to touch your collar, and of course, we didn’t want our hair short, so we used to have a scarf and we’d tie it round into a ring then put it on our head, then we would roll the hair round it so you sort of had, like, a halo around your head.”

“No dyed hair in those days?”

“No, oh no, no, No. Regulation stockings were very thick lisle stockings. We only wore them for special parades. We used to have the artificial silk stockings. We didn’t have coupons [for clothing] in the WRNS but we had an allowance. You didn’t have any money but you were allowed to spend so much a year on your clothing, so that if you wanted something big, like a new raincoat, then your shirts and your pants and your stockings went by the way. We used to pull the stockings together with black cotton and hope they didn’t show. You kept one pair of stockings for when you were going ashore, so that they looked quite nice.

“Underwear?”

“We used to get them from the store and we weren’t allowed to wear underslips. We only had to wear black knickers, which we called ‘blackouts,’ and then we had a bra, your shirt and your skirt. Oh, some people wore vests, but I never did. I never wear a vest anyway. The shoes were regulation lace-ups, flat ones and you’d get them from the stores. You wouldn’t be able to get the flat ones ashore. So we had to get the regulation ones.

“Did you miss out on some of the social life, with living out?

“No, occasionally, I worked in the CPOs mess as a steward, which was serving their meals and very often they would have a dance in the drill hall, so we would go to that. And we would pester the Wren officer to allow us to wear civilian clothes to the dance instead of uniform. Short dresses and the shoes; well, you’d just have shoes that you’d borrow from your sisters or anybody else, that you could go around in. Clogs? The wooden-soled shoes? You could dance in those - but then, I think the youngsters now dance in something very similar, don’t they? I met my husband, over at Hornet. We got married 1944. It was very, very difficult to get the wedding dresses then, but I was fortunate that a neighbour’s daughter had got married so she sold me her wedding dress, but they used to be able to get the wedding dresses on loan from lease-lend, sort of thing. The Americans brought a lot of wedding dresses over. But the girls were so friendly then. They helped one another.

“First, when we joined, we couldn’t get used to the collar and tie. But we soon got used to that. Girls didn’t used to wear collars and ties.”

One of the interesting paradoxes about D-Day is that, for such a secret operation, quite a large number of people seem to have known broadly when it would happen. Witness the tale of Wren O. Boskett:

“We did work very, very long hours. In fact, at times the different shifts would over-lap. We would all be together. It was a very hectic time and we were very tense. You knew what you were doing of course; you never talked about it, so otherwise nobody knew really what was going on but you knew there was a lot …You could get a good idea of what was happening. More or less knew everything but the exact date at the time.”

This is also borne out by the experience of Marigold Steel, one of the D-Day Wrens.

Rear Admiral Sir M. Morgan-Giles tells me (based on an article by his late wife, Marigold Steel, originally published in Hampshire Magazine in 1996) that Marigold joined the WRNS in 1943 at the age of 18 and was drafted to Admiral Ramsay’s staff at HMS Dryad, Southwick.

She wrote that, with four other girls, “We had to type all the naval orders for D-Day. Because we, therefore, knew the whole story, we were not allowed to sleep in the WRNS dormitory - in case we talked in our sleep!” Instead, they were billeted in a separate cottage in the village and were guarded by a Royal Marine sergeant, who always carried a rifle. They learned that this Royal Marine, should the enemy mount a parachute raid on the headquarters, had orders to shoot them in case they fell into enemy hands.

“During my time at Southwick,” she wrote, “we were typing endless orders one night in the Middle Watch, when the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, came into the office. I had fallen asleep with my head on the typewriter. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Gee, you girls must be tired!’ and he went personally to get us some coffee. No wonder we liked Ike.” General Eisenhower was known as Ike and “I like Ike” was a slogan at the time.

Following D-Day, she was drafted to HMS Mastodon at Exbury, a Combined Operations Headquarters, and was billeted in The Stables at Exbury House. She recalled walking with Commander Stassen, United States Navy, whom she believed was one of the President’s representatives, and with Captain ‘Red’ Ryder, VC. She also recalled that General Smuts once visited the base. “Many strange characters belonging to SOE (Special Operations Executive), mostly Free French,” she adds, “were accommodated at Exbury, waiting to be despatched into occupied France by sea or air. There were small, fast naval craft based in the Beaulieu River for this purpose.”

Some time after leaving Exbury, she was detailed to join a party of WRNS being sent to newly liberated Paris. “The kit issued to us for this included black pants - and a canvas bucket each!” she writes. But, unfortunately the draft to Paris was cancelled, and she was sent back to England.

Some of the WRNS were able to arrange their own drafts by having access to teleprinters in the Operations room. On this basis, she obeyed orders and moved to the Fleet Air Arm station at Ayr, where by chance her husband was stationed. A fortunate posting indeed!

Mrs Evelyn R. Carpmael, née Leeder, was born in 1903. She writes that she was in Hampshire during the war and went from a Pay course at Highgate College to Southsea - HMS Victory III, which was a holding depot, for two days, and then to Lee-on-Solent on 30 July 1943.

“We lived in a lovely house called Seafield Park which I think had been a boys’ private school. It had a most beautiful staircase. I think this was burned down after the war because some years later, I went back and had tea there, but although the area was still used by the Royal Navy, there were only Nissen huts. We walked across fields to Hillhead, where cottages whose gardens went straight on to the beach were used for the Pay office.

“Before the days of computers, all pay was done in ledgers in duplicate. They were called ‘Rough’ and ‘Fair’ ledger. These ledgers were added across and down every so often (it is a long time ago but I believe every three months) and all copied out again. These ledgers were large and very heavy but they had to be carried up the road to be put away for safety’s sake. Being an early riser, I was asked to go round the house ringing a bell - a large one, like the old-fashioned school bell - to wake the stewards and cooks for breakfast. One day, I didn’t wake up myself, so although it wasn’t a definite job, I wasn’t very popular!

“Whilst there, there was an epidemic of German measles and as the sick bay was full, we were taken to Portsmouth Isolation Hospital and two of us were treated most royally. In the Solent were moored funny square objects. I imagine these may have been parts of what was afterwards the Mulberry Harbour.

“Having spent my childhood in east London, that walk from Hillhead to Lee-on-Solent, the airfield, along the coast road on a sunny winter’s day after a frost, with the sea so calm, I never forgot. I also brought my bicycle down, so was able to cycle into Fareham and even round to Portsmouth. One wouldn’t do that on the M27!

“In April 1944, I was transferred to Lancashire and then to Combined Ops in Scotland. I heard afterwards that all were soon transferred to Midhurst in Sussex. I would imagine that this was because the cottages on the shore and Seafield Park would be used for D-Day personnel.

“I never went to sea during the war. I am constantly told that the WRNS were all volunteers. Actually, I was lucky to be in the WRNS as I went for an interview when I was called up in 1943. The WRNS was closed at that time, but I went for an interview and was accepted although the girl I went with had to go in the ATS. This may have been because I had credit in Maths from school, because I found myself in the Pay Office. The WRNS at that time until some time after the war was not under naval discipline and to a certain extent had its own rules, e.g. one could walk out only if calling-up age, would be forced into something else and not back into the Navy. Those who volunteered, especially earlier in the war, had more choice of the category they wished to be in.

“I am now 79. I was able, last year to attend the yearly reunion of the LST and Landing Craft Association. (I was eligible because of Combined Operations Pay.) Last year’s was at Mill Rythe, Hayling Island - we really enjoyed it there, the position and the food - and our service was in Chichester Cathedral.

From D-Day - a Day To Remember, published by Borough of Havant, June 1994 and used here by courtesy of Mrs Marshall.

“It was amazing that with so many preparations going on, and all that was known by so many people, the Germans remained convinced that the invasion force would land in the Calais area and were totally unprepared for the landing in Normandy. In this, the discretion of the people resident along the south coast must have played no small part. We all knew what was happening, but we didn’t talk, not even amongst ourselves.”

Dr. Chris Howard Bailey interviewed members of the WRNS for ‘The Vital Link’ exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum, which told the story of WRNS participation in D-Day. Many of them were stationed at Southwick House.

Miss Hester McClintock was one of a good many WRNS who worked on boats, but few worked as stokers, as she did. She recalled serving on HMS Vosper, taking officers up and down to various naval establishments along the Hamoaze river. Occasionally she was lost in fog. She recalled being used as a decoy in a storm when sent to fetch Winston Churchill from HMS George V. She also collected four of Rommel’s generals who were brought to England as prisoners of war. The latter appeared ashamed at being rowed by Wrens.

Mrs Elizabeth Carter was a despatch rider in the Wrens during the time of D-Day. Some of the time she was at Fort Southwick:

“And I had a very interesting time because of having to carry dispatches. We worked from Portsmouth to Plymouth to Dover to Birmingham and we never knew where we were going until… we had to build up for the Dieppe dispatches; we were very busy, and after and up to D-Day, and then when there wasn’t much work, I went to HMS Boscowen at Weymouth and I was there for D-Day.

Edna Foxon, a Signal Wren, told her story, a strange mix of war-time action and a peaceful maritime setting. She organised the signals (at Medina?) Isle of Wight. She was a wireless operator and visual signaller with flags and Aldis lamps, Morse and radio telephones. A lot of small ships had no wireless operation, she says. Her training was at HMS Cressy (or Cressey?) in Dundee and HMS Cabbala at Leigh, Lancashire, each for six months. Flags were run up a mast. One flag might mean a whole sentence. She worked on the Isle of Wight, at Culver Cliff, near Sandown, during the war. The Wrens lived in old coast guard cottages.

“We worked at Fort Bembridge, worked with air-sea rescue. We sent messages in code, but we did not know what we were sending. We would be involved in sending messages to X-craft on D-Day. Our call sign was a coast guard operation - GQQ. I was in the Wrens four years, at Culver just under two years.

“Social life? The Army was there as well and the Army put on concerts and dances. Ours was only a small station - about 20 in it, all in the WRNS. We had a cook and a Petty Officer. It was a lovely place to be stationed, a beauty spot. We had to keep watch through 24 hours.

“There were more signals flying about just before D-Day. The Royal Marine Commandos used to practise on the cliffs. It was noisy when the Royal Artillery fired six-inch guns. They would let us know when they were going to practise, so we could tie things down, but when they fired in anger, everything fell off, ornaments off the mantelpiece.

“After D-Day we could wear civilian clothes when we went into town, in 1944.”

Mr Ellis, born 1902, also shows how peacetime occupations coexisted with the war: his hairdresser’s shop was at the Naval Club, Portsmouth. While the Wrens were stoking boilers and sending signals, somebody had to keep up appearances at home.

“The Navy had taken over the old Sailors’ Home Club in Queen Street. They made it into a naval club and the Commander was resident. The committee was elected by various establishments - Vernon, the old Victory … the naval establishments and the ships all had a representative, and they decided one of the things that they wanted was a hairdresser’s.”

He kept his own shop open but started a new shop at the club and was there for 16 years. “I got to know all the people coming to the club to meetings. The Royal Yacht, the Victoria and Albert, was it? The one before used to have concert parties in the club. The outcome was that they used to say ‘We’re not coming in for a haircut, but you can come on board and do it.’ and I said ‘Yes, I’ll come on board.’ Over the years, I went and cut several Commander in Chief’s hair.”

Rear Admiral Sir M Morgan-Giles recalls a rather different type of war effort made by the women of Portsmouth. He was away serving in the Mediterranean for most of the Second World War, but recounts the following:

“There were a lot of one ring chaps - sub lieutenants - doing courses in Portsmouth early in the war and, in those days, the Pompey Hippodrome was allowed to have young ladies stand naked on the stage, provided they did not move. But one evening, a mouse appeared on stage. Well, pandemonium broke out and the ladies were climbing the curtains and so on. I wouldn’t say that the mouse came on stage, I think it was probably put there …

“The manager arrived and when the lights went on in the auditorium he saw that the front row was full of clergymen, and the second row… and the third row. They were all sub lieutenants with their collars turned back to front!”

Chief Petty Officer Desmond Townley-Jones, BEM, born 16th February 1922, interviewed with his wife, Muriel, recalled the days of training the Wrens:

DTJ:”I was down here in Portsmouth and met a man whose girl friend was in Chatham” [where he was stationed]. “We [Desmond and Muriel] were married, and she was in Portsmouth, so I did a swap with him and that was reasonably easy, wasn’t it, Muriel? I was training Wrens, but not my wife, at the Royal Naval Barracks while I was waiting for another ship. The tearful twenty, I used to call them, because, in those days, when you shouted, they used to be a bit nervous, weren’t they? Some of them were hard.

“It was no trouble training Wrens. They were excellent, they were, and they were all girls from civvy street. You know, when you shouted at them they thought, ‘What’s he shouting at me for?’ They got the treatment. I used to treat them just as I’d have done blokes. I used to blow my whistle, when we were training, and point to the square and if she wasn’t in the square, I’d say to the girl, ‘Get in the square!’ I’d say ‘Stand still, my girl. I mean stand still!’ They didn’t dare answer back. During the war, the girls did guard duty. They didn’t do field training. Wrens, they weren’t on ships during the war, except perhaps moving little craft around the harbours.”

On being asked what his BEM was awarded for, Desmond said he got it in China. His principal recollection of that period was that he had been away from “her and my two kids. I saw quite a bit of action. The African invasion - I spent two and a half years in the Mediterranean. Malta convoys, Malta to Alex … I was away from home for two years and seven months. Away from her and my kids. You just wait for the mail to come aboard. That was basically the only way you got in touch with your wife and children. And the Russian convoys… nothing was very pleasant, during the war.”

He is grateful to have survived it. “Many didn’t,” he says.

Mr R. G. Hylands, Royal Navy, was born in1914, and when called up in 1940, joined the Navy to avoid going in the Army.

“In early 1940 we were in a terrible mess with the war and as I was 26 years old and would have been called up in my group I wanted to avoid going into the Army … So I wrote to the Navy and said I would like to join and had a reply right away. About two weeks later I was sent to Fareham for my training, May 8th. I was quite a bit older than some, who were teenagers. One other who joined the same class as me was from Jersey where the Germans had taken over and another from Sussex. The other 22 were from Scotland, all about 18 and what a lazy bunch they were at first, but soon shaped up. I did six weeks and got my first leave to get home, Saturday and Sunday 12.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m. I got married at the Town Hall in Eastbourne June 15th, no time to marry in the church. At the end of my training in HMS Collingwood I was drafted to RNB [Royal Naval Barracks] Portsmouth and was there for two weeks, sleeping in the shelters after getting turfed out of our hammocks.

“When my draft came through it was for IST [inter-services training]. When I asked about it, I was not given any answer to my question. The lorry that took a couple of us ended up at a South Hayling camp just for housing sailors until other places were available for us.”

After two weeks and two days’ leave he remembers, “On my return, I was not allowed to enter the camp after midnight and could not walk there by that time. Soldiers who patrolled the bridge were kind enough to let me and one other sleep in their stores tent until 0700 the following day. We could enter the camp at 0800. Eventually we were taken to Northney who were not yet very well ready to take the ratings they were going to train on landing craft; this was the cause of the secrecy of the camp.”

Mr Hylands helped to man the telephone exchange until sailors were replaced by Wrens in 1943, when he was transferred to the Boat party, which took training crews to the landing craft “which were slowly beginning to arrive from boat builders. They had to be moored, and roped to the shore over the very muddy area at low water.

“In early 1944 there was a need for men to be transferred to other parts of the forces. We had about 400 different types of craft. We had to take boats to and from Portsmouth and Southampton and at one time took 12 LCAs to Southampton and loaded them on the Daffodil, one of the two boats used for carrying the LCAs. These were used by the Canadians but were sunk as they approached France.”

When a German invasion appeared to be imminent, “The Captain arranged that personnel would be employed to try and hold the Germans back. The army on Langstone Bridge were going to blow it up and all we sailors and Marines were going to do what we could in trying to stop the advance. My duty with another rating was to get to the railway and place sleepers on it at various places.

“When I was a coxwain, I was on duty one night when an officer got me out of my bed to go to see if we could help a plane that had landed short [of the runway at Thorney Island]. We had a very fast boat with twin engines and a mate stoker down below the deck but when we arrived south of Thorney, all we could trace were magnesium flares floating on the water like candles. We waited for half an hour to see if we could pick anyone up but were unlucky.

“Another time I was called during the dark hours because a sentry had been found shot and we were sent to see if we could locate any enemy, in a boat of sorts, but we saw no-one and on our return I said to the sub officer, ‘What have we got in the way of guns to protect ourselves?’ and he said ‘I’ve got a pistol!’ I said ‘What about me? I’ve got no armament.’ He just shrugged. I learnt my lesson. I would have refused to take off in future without a gun.

“One thing I did not mention, was that an officer and myself and two ratings went to Littlehampton to collect a new LCA which was built there, and as we approached Selsey Bill, we had to go out to sea a bit more, to avoid a ship that had been sunk and the masts stuck out of the water about 20 or 30 feet. It looked very eerie.”

Mr Arnold Sharples was drafted as L/S Coxwain to LCI(L) 171, a troop carrier.

When beached, “We had two gangways on each side of the ship which were run out on to the beach, to disembark personnel. I was drafted to this particular ship, leaving all my pals in the Boat Party after our being together for two and a half years. It was a bit daunting at the time, taking charge of a ship with seventeen crewmen plus the Captain and 1st Lieutenant, issuing rum and taking charge of the victualling. Our arms were Oerlikon guns and machine guns. Our sleeping quarters were also our living quarters, called mess deck. I had to allocate duties like watch-keeping, wine splicing, shore leave etc. It was made a lot easier by having a very good crew, who were very helpful to me. As coxwain I had to take wheel at action stations and on entering harbour - not good for anyone who was claustrophobic because I was in the tiller room, all in darkness, portholes covered. I had to listen for the captain’s voice down the pipe giving orders, ten degrees to port or starboard and keeping an eye on the compass. A bit nerve-wracking when guns were being fired.

“One thing I did notice while transporting troops of different nationalities, Americans, Poles, and our Tommies, was that the rations that our Tommies carried were far less in quantity than the other forces had. It amazed me that the coloured Americans were far more polite and interesting to talk to than the white Americans. Not all, of course. They liked to play dice.”

Arnold recalls putting in at the Royal Pier, Southampton to pick up supplies as his ship was going somewhere in a convoy. “We collected all the supplies plus rum, took them down to the pier-head but unfortunately the lorry was too tall to get on to the pier, so we unloaded them at the entrance so that the lorry could go back to its depot. Looking around outside the pier entrance, we found a small van with keys in the ignition [that was an offence, in war-time]. We waited about 15 minutes, then I ordered the three crewmen to load the van with our supplies. We made three journeys, and had just put the van back in its place when the owner turned up … there were a few words said but when I said I would give him a wine bottle of Navy rum, and not report him to police, he went away quite happy.”

Landing craft in line astern: LCS(M) 92 ahead of Mk1 LCM’s

Earlier, Arnold recalls a visit from Lord Louis Mountbatten to HMS Northney I. “We cleared lower decks, in other words, all personnel assembled on the parade ground. Mountbatten inspected us and spoke to me, wanted to know my age, because my hair was grey. Hereditary - I was grey when I married. I was dressed in overalls plus duffel coat as most of the Boat Party were.”

Arnold also recalls Meadowsweet, the canteen run at their home by local ladies in Hayling: “They were lovely ladies,” he says, “and made the servicemen and women very welcome. Excellent meals and chit chat.”

Brian Bignell, a member of the LCT and Landing Craft Association, volunteered for the Royal Navy when he was 17½ and joined HMS Collingwood at 18; did his training, went to Stockheath camp at Havant and after two weeks’ leave came to HMS Northney III on Hayling Island, which was a training centre for those who would man landing craft.

Meadowsweet, Hayling Island

“We loaded up on 3rd June at Stokes Bay. We had Bren gun carriers on, and two or three sort of mobile guns - Buffalo tanks? On one of the pictures you can see the barrel on the left hand side. I think they were three-or four-inch guns. I was told by an ex-Marine sergeant what they were, as he was on one and on D-Day they were given specific targets to knock out before we got in. Most of the troops were the South Lancashire regiment. When we were loaded up, we anchored in the Solent with hundreds of different types of ships, all in lines, from Portsmouth to Southampton.”

“The troops had been paid in French francs and as the operation was postponed for 24 hours, they played cards with some of our crew. When we got hit on the beach, one must have been a driver. He was very unlucky, because when we got in to Portsmouth next morning, 7th June, before they cleared what was left of the carriers and of the bodies in them, from among all the debris on the tank deck, I picked up a two-shilling piece which was bent and had indentations of other coins on it. I still have it.

An informal group of officers and men of a Mk1 LCM caught by the camera

“I was a Seaman Gunner AA3. There were two of us; we had two Oerlikon guns on the stern, 20 mm. I joined 854 at Felling, just before D-Day. We had degaussing gear installed to counteract Magnetic Mines. When I got on board, the cook of the day was a stoker. He had made a milk pudding, with insufficient milk, so it looked like a sheet of rubber. The cox’n said, ‘As you are the last one in, you can be cook.’ We only had a crew of twelve so never had a designated cook like the bigger ships. That turned out all right, as I got out of doing watches. I must have done something right as I have been in touch with seven of our crew and two more were alive but never contacted me. Out of a crew of twelve that’s not too bad, is it? The cox’n lives in Australia and the first lieutenant who was wounded on D-Day got an MBE last year. I met him three years ago, the first time I had seen him since D-Day morning, when he was hopping about on one leg after being hit directing the armour off the craft.

“We set off for France about 2.00 p.m., 5th June. I honestly don’t think any of us were very scared at the time, probably a bit apprehensive. I know I slung my hammock and went to sleep. I didn’t even hear the paratroops go over. I was a bad sailor and was often sea sick. The LCTs were flat bottomed and the front was blunt so they went all over the place in a rough sea. If it was very rough, you could stand aft and as the bows hit a wave the tank deck would sort of ripple, but I was all right on D-Day although it was rough. I expect I had more to think about at the time. We took the tanks right in to the beach; provided we didn’t hit a sand bar when we dropped the door down, I don’t expect the water was much more than a couple of feet deep. The bigger LSTs drew much more water than us, so mostly they got in as far as they could and if they had water-proofed tanks on then they could go off but I believe most of the time they dried out first, which I suppose made them sitting ducks for the enemy.

“As we went in past the big battleships, who were quite a way out from the beach, we went close under one of their line of fire and she let a salvo go. The dust flew on the mess deck. It was so loud that it damaged the eardrums of the other AA3 chap. It did sound a bit eerie, as on the way in we could hear the shells go over. We had, like a lot of craft, a barrage balloon above us and the cox’n told me he thought that helped the Germans to range us. Now as for the cox’n having a camera, he was older than us and probably a bit more streetwise. I suppose if any of the top brass had seen him he would have been in the rattle. Our officers knew, as he took photographs of us all after we had loaded up and were out in the Solent, but they were OK as naval officers and as long as you done as you were told they were not too strict.”

“All of us young ones, I was 19 at the time, had to leave our ditty boxes, personal things, and our goodbye letters back in Portsmouth. That took a bit of thought at the time, as you didn’t know what to say, as the top brass were expecting huge casualties, they thought we stood a good chance of not coming back. Our officers were RNVR and mostly, while at sea, we looked like a load of pirates. When we came in harbour, it was proper Rig of the Day. It was different on the bigger, general service ships. They were stricter than us, Combined Operations, and had to wear the Rig of the Day.

“We got 3d. or 6d. a day extra, what they called hard layers money, because of the conditions on board. The deckhead was corked and then painted over, so with several hammocks slung on the mess deck, the body heat and the cold deckhead above us caused condensation so the water used to drip on us. Once you got in your hammock, you took the stretcher out and let the canvas fold over you. As soon as the tanks hit the beach, they had to get clear off the beach area, to let other vehicles and troops come in.

“I remember the beach master on Sword Beach. He was a Lieutenant Commander - big chap with a beard. He was the hero as he had to stop on the beach and direct the off-loading of troops, tanks, etc. and to keep the area as clear as possible. He was not a man to argue with. You must remember that all along the beaches were the iron girders and tripods with mines on the top of them and the landing craft had to find a spot where they could get in and manoeuvre between them. Being very rough, some hit the mines. The skipper had to line the craft up and drop the kedge anchor so many yards out from the beach so as we didn’t drift round broadside, and also it was handy to pull us off again. That was the proper way we were trained. A lot of LCAs didn’t do that and were swept on to the beach; where they thought they were saving time, it didn’t come off. We got in all right and dropped the door down. The sad thing is that the orders were that no dead were to be touched. It was, ‘Get the live ones in and get off out of the way.’ Any dead troops lying in the water had to stop there. When the LCTs came in, they had to drop the door down (about two tons), regardless of what was in the way. Nothing could be done for them.

“After we got hit, we pulled back off the beach and on the way out, an LCI came alongside and put out most of the flames with their hoses. Us winch party didn’t see it as we were pinned up in the winch space for quite a while. As soon as we put our heads out, the ammo in the carriers was going off; we tried to tow another LCT who had engine trouble but the tow broke so we had to leave her.

“After we were repaired, about ten days, we were off again, taking troops and stores across to France. On one of the trips, we unloaded. We went to Oiustreham and the German prisoners of war loaded on parts of the gliders which landed at Pegasus Bridge. We brought them back to Portsmouth. I expect they were used again at Operation Market Garden. We done several trips across, took some stores for the Americans on their bad beach; that was good as we nicked some of the rations and we had tinned chicken and best of all, soft toilet paper. Their rations were far superior to ours. On another trip we unloaded troops and vehicles and as we came astern the wind took us onto a pontoon, so we had to wait until the tide went out and back in again to float us off again.”

“Two or three of us cadged a lift into Bayeaux on a DUKW and back while we waited. I bought two post cards in the Cathedral while there. When we got back there was a jeep up on the sand and the lads went up to join the tooops gathered around and they said Churchill, Montgomery, Smuts and more top brass were there. I didn’t see them as I was on duty [cook]. Another trip we unloaded and were just off shore and the RAF came over with a thousand bomber raid on Caen. That was a sight to see! They went in very low and the flak was pretty heavy for a while but by the time our boys had finished with them there wasn’t so much.

Glider parts being transported back after D-Day

“The replacement officer who took the place of the one that got wounded on D-Day done several trips with us and then one morning, shot himself in the wardroom. In November. I think he was 19 or 20. We went ashore and buried him in Haslar cemetery. I put some flowers on his grave when I was in Gosport two years ago. What a waste of a young life! When we were doing the trips, we left Portsmouth about 2.00 p.m. and got to France next morning. As I wasn’t on duty after supper, I used to sling my hammock and sleep all night. Never worried that something might happen and I didn’t know until a long time after, when I got in touch with the crew, that on one trip an E-boat tried to torpedo us and as we were shallow draught, the torpedo went under us. When I think back, I don’t recall any of the crew saying that they were worried. We all thought the same as a lot of servicemen: that it was always going to be the other chap that was going to cop it, and that is what keeps you going, I think.

“Eventually, we came to a stop. We left Portsmouth to go on the Walcheren Operation, got outside the harbour and were sent back. I suppose due to being damaged on D-Day, our craft was a bit weak amidships and wouldn’t be a lot of use. After the operation, we heard of the casualties there. We thought that was a bit of luck for us as the LCTs took a battering and we might not have got away with it a second time. Just after that we took our craft to Southampton and paid off. We got different drafts and didn’t meet up again for at least 40 years, well six of us anyway.”

The Walcheren Operation was a major amphibious landing on the former islands of Walcheren (now a peninsula) at the mouth of the Scheldt, Southern Netherlands, and their continued occupation by the Germans meant that the Allies could not use the port of Antwerp. It was a bloody and expensive battle.

Sub Lieutenant Peter Douglas Bird, born in 1923, was in the 1st Flotilla LBV (Landing Barge Vehicle):

“I was at first sent to the Isle of Wight (HMS Medina) then went to Whitehall as a Staff Officer for Exercise Jansen. We were unloading coasters across beaches. A dozen barges swamped and sank in the sea. That was the kind of thing we wanted to find out. After that, back to London, and I said I wanted to go to sea. HMS Medina was at Puckpool, between Ryde and Bembridge.”

“You arrived in Langstone Harbour, October 1943?”

“Yes at Langstone Harbour from HMS Manatee the base at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. Well, if I may go back, perhaps: when these personnel craft arrived, they were really Thames lighters which had been converted and they put in the twin Chrysler marine engines and of course Jim [Jim Jarman, author of Those Wallowing Beauties] can give a lot more detail than I have given here. And we more or less were drafted to HMS Medina which was at Puckpool House in Ryde on the Isle of Wight and of course the Thames lighters, which had been converted, were gathered in Wooton Creek. I remember my earliest days, having been appointed to HMS Medina, I was taking these barges out and learning how to handle them and … “

“Were they difficult to handle?”

“Oh, yes. Top speed was 6 knots. Of course they were flat bottomed, designed for river work. So having them on a choppy sea … But we learned to manage them all right. Another factor is that when they were converting them, they put a ramp in the stern of the vessel, and two engines and a rudder and things like that so that when we went into a beach we had to turn round, drop an anchor and go in astern. A kedge anchor, yes. Well of course if you’ve got a wind coming in at an angle it called for a considerable amount of seamanship to beach her and to hold her, until the tide dropped sufficiently. Well we went in on the top of the tide usually, or better still, you could be neaped if you didn’t watch out; that is to say that the subsequent high tide is as high as the one you went in on, so it is best to beach about an hour after high water. But we went in on the beach, let the vessel dry out and army lorries, technically, would come and unload us, and take the cargo off to the depots. We started as LBV, which is Landing Barge Vehicle, with the idea that I think we could get in about two three ton lorries fully laden.”

“You see, Lord Louis Mountbatten realised that the demand for a second front and pressures from Stalin were so great in 1940, 1941 to relieve the pressure on the Russian front (we did not have any - or very, very few - purpose-built landing craft, in those days), so Lord Louis commandeered, I think in the first phase, about 600 Thames lighters and initially was prepared to have them towed over with tugs, loaded, to invade with three barges at a time …” (Peter Bird agrees that would have been “very dangerous”.)

“But you know, needs must when the devil drives. And when America came in the war, we obviously got a considerable number of Chrysler marine engines, and it then became a priority to convert these dumb lighters into powered craft, who could manoeuvre and go around at their own speed.

“Well the next stage, of course was to gather them together at HMS Medina. As they were converted they were sailed around from the Thames and formed, roughly, into flotillas - 12 craft.”

“And your flotilla was called?”

“Well then, there was no flotilla, we were just a hotchpotch. At that particular juncture, if you want my story, I was ordered to go up to Whitehall, on the staff of Captain Landing Barges - Captain LB - who was a Captain Harrison-Wallace. And this was for planning for a very large exercise called Exercise Jansen and this took place at Tenby. We commandeered hotels, we set up a naval headquarters in the harbour at Tenby and then three flotillas were sailed round from the Isle of Wight, round Lands End up to Tenby to take part in this big exercise. Coasters were brought

up and anchored a mile off the beach and our craft had to unload them, with, obviously, dummy ammunition, stores, food, and land us on the beach and supply an army which technically then invaded as far as Birmingham.”

“It was a lot of supplies!”

“Yes, 36 barges, working away. Of course it was a learning exercise and there were gales! I mean, if the tides are in the middle of the night, then of course, we went on the tides. But there were things like gales, on one beach six craft, I think, were swamped, and on another beach I think I’m right in saying five craft were swamped and had to be recovered.”

“And were the people all right?”

“Yes, Jim Jarman recounts in his book. But we got a bit wet on one or two occasions, had to swim ashore, that sort of thing. But lost quite a bit of gear, I suppose. You see it was a learning exercise and to my mind it was a very valuable exercise because it was virtually a full scale exercise before D-Day. It was in July and August 1943. It was a rehearsal, so far as we were concerned, as to how much stores … The significance of this, to me, happened after D-Day, because our flotillas were putting a thousand tons a day over the beach, of ammunition, food, stores and things for the army. Everybody in the world has heard of the Mulberry, but due to gales and things like that, the Mulberry wasn’t operational for six weeks until well into July.”

“That was the one that was working?”

“Yes, one was wrecked completely. Now, during that first six weeks or more, we were putting ashore a thousand tons a day. Nobody’s ever heard of LBVs. You see, in 1943, when the Americans came in the war, and Lease-Lend became … [obsolete] we then got large numbers of purpose-built landing craft, which were specialised, doing different jobs.”

“Were they designed by people here or by the Americans or ..?”

“Oh, both, I think. I couldn’t vouch for exactly who designed them. A lot of them were built in America. The LCTs were.”

“Some early landing craft, somebody was telling me, were designed by local Marines and lost on the Norwegian expedition.”

“Well, the Marines ran the LCMs. They were a type of craft which was Landing Craft Mechanised. I don’t know why they called it mechanised, but they manned LCMs. We… when the purpose-built tank landing craft and things came in large numbers, LCTs, then of course Admiralty decided that we were better fitted for unloading stores. So the vehicle part was cancelled, so we didn’t carry any vehicles. They were always known as LBVs and so they stuck to that title. But by the time we headed up - well, from Exercise Jansen onwards - they realised that we had a much better potential in unloading ship to shore. So that’s how we came to revert, as it were, to carrying stores.

“So that was basically what LBVs were all about. HMS Medina continued in being and I think people were drafted there initially and did some training there. You see from my deck-log that HMS Manatee was where we finished up, after the voyage back from Tenby and then we were definitely formed into definitive flotillas: First Flotilla, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. And I notice in the log that we went back to HMS Manatee for training. On 30th January 1944, and from 1st to 9th of February, the whole flotilla was under training instruction: exercises, medical and dental inspections, things like that. So that’s what… so obviously Manatee was well equipped and Dragonfly (Hayling Island) was where we did our operational sailing. But we had to go to Manatee for that intensive training. “

Captain Barrie Kent, born in 1922, entered the Navy by a more conventional route:

“When did you first come to Hampshire?”

“Actually, before the war, when we used to go to the Isle of Wight - to Bembridge - every holiday, where we sailed. We used to go to Navy days. That was where I also got interested in the Navy. This was in my young teens, or earlier than that because I then went to Pangbourne Nautical College and from that entered the Navy in 1940.”

“Was that in this area?

“Not to start with, because I went to sea . The war was on by then, so I spent some time in the Mediterranean. Came back from the Mediterranean in 1942. We started doing our sub-lieutenants courses and that’s when I first went to HMS Mercury at Leydene, Hampshire.

“Petersfield is the main town. Leydene was a big house, a so-called stately home, built during or after the First World War . But we came over to do our sub lieutenants courses. We were actually based here on HMS Excellent, where we lived, and we were bused up to Leydene every day, while we were doing the Signal course. Leydene was a house started in 1914 and finished about 1924, built by the Peels - L. Peel, who was the grandson of Sir Robert Peel and was a Member of Parliament. And the Peels built this house right on the top of the hill called Leydene, after a little hollow in the hills nearby which was called Leydene Bottom. Right on top of the hill, on the walking route along the ridge to Winchester.

“Now, that was my first visit to Hampshire as such and we were youngsters then. We used to go up to Leydene every day. The wardroom mess was in the main house, but all our instruction took place in Nissen huts. Of course, during the war, it expanded madly, first with tents and then Nissen huts. These were pretty uncomfortable - they were either hot in summer or cold in winter. They had an awful coke stove in the middle - it pushed out fumes and smoke.

“But the reason that the Signal School was there was, it used to be in the barracks at Portsmouth, but when the bombing got heavy, it became evident that all the schools would have to move out of Portsmouth and so they looked around for somewhere to requisition, and came across Leydene, and Lady Peel, of course, was the sort of old girl who wasn’t very happy at being taken over. Didn’t think her way of life should be disturbed.

“However, this was about August ’41, before I went there, but it was taken over as the Signal School. One of the outcomes of this was that the Signal School down at the barracks had been not only for the naval officers, but also for the naval scientists. And they had worked together in the barracks for many years, in K Block, and this association of the scientists and the naval officers was quite unique and they built up a great rapport. And unfortunately Leydene wasn’t big enough to take the whole lot, so the naval side, uniform side, went to Leydene and the scientists went off partly to Haselmere and partly to Witely, where I think they occupied one of the schools which were evacuated.

“Anyway, Leydene then expanded throughout the war, not only were there these awful Nissen huts, but they began to put in proper buildings. The first thing they put in was an enormous great Nissen hut as a cinema and dance hall. It was entirely for training really. It was a slope - well, no, the cinema was for recreation, the sloping floor of the cinema was used for dancing. Which was quite funny. And of course they then erected masts for wireless training and masts for flag signalling training.

“One of the things that happened at the signal school was, when you were doing your parade work, you tended to do it all by signals. That’s the course leader, instead of saying right turn, he would say ‘Blue Nine’ which was the signal which you would say to a ship by wireless or by flags, in those days, mainly.”

“So you began to think in signals?”

“Yes. The course instructor would say, instead of ‘quick march’, he would say ‘George 15’, which means ‘speed, fifteen knots’ and you would all put out your arms horizontally, which represented the answer at the dip while you thought about it and when you understood it you put your answer pennant close up, you see, in the ship. So you all put your hands up, then he said ‘execute’ which meant you hauled down the signal and you all start marching. And of course, on many occasions, the instructors or the course leader got in an awful muddle and did the wrong thing or gave the wrong signal and we all pretended not to understand it anyway and the whole object … And then they would say, ‘George 25’, which meant ‘stop’, and so you would double off and while he was trying to think of the next signal you managed to go galloping through the flower beds and that sort of thing.”

“So it was all quite fun but … Lady Peel would be delighted about that?”

“Yes, quite.”

“Was she still in the house?”

“No, she evacuated to Scotland, where they had an estate. Her husband had already semi moved out. He lived in London a lot or went to Scotland for the shooting. And they didn’t really live together very much, I think. She had a horror of children and her grandson, who still lives at Petersfield, he said he only met her once, he had an interview for about five minutes when he managed to force his way in. And that was it. She was a very eccentric lady. We didn’t see much of her, of course, because she had gone, but there are all sorts of stories about her. For example before the war, she had had a house party for a weekend and they were snowed up at the end of the weekend - and her guests had to stay for an extra two days. So she sent a bill to the Rural District Council for several pounds because they had failed to clear the snow! So that was my first war-time experience in Hampshire, for six or eight weeks.”

“What sort of signals were you dealing with? Did you do any radar?”

“No. Radar in those days … There was radar, just, it was called RDF - Radio Direction Finding - and there were very, very few ships fitted, but these naval scientists that I talked about were collocated with the signal school but had to depart to Haslemere and Witely. They were very involved in the development of radar. One of them had actually, in theory, invented radar about ten years earlier. He produced a specification for a thing that we now know of as radar but at that time (1928, I think) nobody took much notice. I think he failed to take out a patent and so nothing happened. But the naval scientists later got re-involved and had quite a lot to do with developing radar, particularly for ships. I was in a ship in the Mediterranean in 1941, HMS Valiant, which did have one of the very early radar sets. The type 79, I think it was called. And this actually did play a part in the Battle of Matapan, when three Italian cruisers were sunk. And we were one of the ships which had radar and one cruiser I think had radar, and that was about all at that time.”

“Was it long-ranging radar or did you just manage not to bump into people with it?”

“No, this was theoretically long range. It was really meant to be air-warning radar, but it could be used for surface warning as well in a very elementary way, but it did plot these Italian ships ahead of us in the dark and gave us enough clues to get in the right position to attack them. So it played its part in the Battle of Matapan. But they were very early radar sets.”

“Where did you come from, to that job?”

“Well, I was at Pangbourne College, which was a nautical training school. I joined the Navy from there in 1940. We actually did two terms at Dartmouth because we should have gone to a training cruiser, but the war had started and the training cruiser had been diverted to other things, so we did two terms at Dartmouth and then went to sea as midshipmen. I started off in a cruiser, HMS Southampton, in the home fleet for a few months then we went out to the Mediterranean and that was in 1940. Then in 1941 the Southampton was sunk between Malta and Crete - we were sunk by dive bombers - and I ended up then in HMS Valiant, which was a battleship in the Mediterranean fleet. And in about another fifteen months I was in her before coming home to do these subs courses.”

“That must have been a very unpleasant experience, being sunk. How did you get away?”

“Well, funnily enough, we were bombed out of the sun by these dive bombers and hit in two or three places. The ship caught fire, because the bombs went into the engine room, and actually the fire got out of control. All the fire mains, the pumps had gone so there was no water to pump. I can remember the funnel getting red hot and they eventually decided there was a danger of one of the magazines blowing up so a destroyer actually came alongside, or bow to bow, HMS Diamond, and we put mess tables across and those of us who were OK walked across. The injured were carried across and we lost about seventy people. The Diamond took us to another cruiser, the Gloucester, which took us back to Alexandria. So we actually didn’t get our feet wet!”

“So there was no question of abandoning ship by jumping over the side?”

“No. We were lucky. Going back to this house at Leydene, the Peels had a business, which was linoleum manufacturing and the elaborate rose garden on the south side of the house was laid out, or said to be laid out, in the pattern of the most popular linoleum.

“The Navy no longer owns Leydene and the rose garden has, I believe, been resuscitated. The house was requisitioned during the war and after the war. In theory, estates that were requisitioned were meant to be handed back in the state in which they were bought. Which would have been awful, because the whole place was totally changed, and not only Nissen huts over the garden, but they put in some more permanent buildings.”

“And people had marched into the flower beds?”

“Oh, yes, the place was totally different. Luckily, the Peels didn’t want it back. At least, they started by wanting it back, then Lady Peel died and so, in 1949 I think it was, the Admiralty bought it for a surprisingly small figure by modern standards. I think it was for £60,000, and it’s a big estate. And of course from then on, it was developed over the years, buildings were put up, proper instructional blocks, mess blocks and so on and it lasted. The Navy held it until 1993, just over 50 years.”

“When you were at Leydene, did you engage in these dances?”

“No, because I was only up there briefly during the war, for the summer term’s courses. I went back shortly after the war to do the long signal course and from then on I was back and forth. We were both back and forth - my wife was a Wren signal officer - for the next forty years. I ended up as Captain of the Signal School, and of course we were very involved with the locals in those days.”

“Did you go in any craft except the ones you have mentioned?”

“I was in a destroyer, the Candela, in the Mediterranean. Then back, yes, after my subs courses, I went off to a destroyer called the Racehorse, but then we went off to the East Indies for the rest of the war. I was mostly in the East Indies station and I don’t think I actually went back to Leydene during the war.”

“Did you experience any kind of alarms or bombings when you were in this area?”

“Not much, because the Signal School at the Portsmouth barracks had closed down by the time I got there. We certainly didn’t up at Leydene, which was about seventeen miles north of Portsmouth. There had been a landmine dropped somewhere in the grounds, before it was taken over, but that was the only hostile act against Leydene. Part of the time, when we were doing these courses, we were also living at Roedean School near Brighton - not exactly Hampshire. We were there during the Dieppe Raid, so there was quite a lot of activity going on, but we weren’t really bombed there. It was a question of aeroplanes flying overhead. We were still doing our instructional courses. I think my war experiences [in Hampshire] are limited to that time in 1942.

“One other thing I was going to say about Leydene House: it was reputed the walls were covered in expensive tapestries. They were covered up by the Works Department when the house was taken over. We were there after the war, when these panels were removed. They turned out to be some quite ordinary material. It was wall covering, not wall paper, but nothing expensive about it, and of course it was full of holes where the lights had been fitted.

“The Peels had Leydene decorated by a Dutch firm. The house has a lovely big hall and a figure-of-eight staircase and this staircase sort of bounced as you went up it. Everybody got very worried, so only a few senior people were allowed to use it. But it was an extraordinarily beautiful staircase. Long after the war somebody thought it ought to be strengthened - put a piilar underneath it. So of course, it was quite the wrong thing to do because instead of bouncing it tended to crack it. So they took the pillar away again!

“The other thing that happened was that with a lot of sailors up there, they had ended up with up to 2000 people at a peak during the war. There was an awful lot of pigswill left over from the sailors’ mess, so they started a piggery. That was a great success. They hired a proper pigman - a paid piggery man, civilian. He was helped by sailors from time to time, and those days it produced quite a good income, which was used for the Welfare Fund and various activities were paid for - by the pigs! And this went on right until about the 1970s when it became uneconomic to have pigs.”

As with other forces, The Fleet Air Arm was not above a bit of improvisation when it came to acquiring and training personnel, as recalled by Mr Arthur Butterfield of Portchester, born in 1920. He was originally recruited in Skegness, Lincolnshire, and served in a Butlins holiday camp there. “They asked me if I wanted to go to sea. You had to go to Russia on supply stuff. Then they asked for volunteers to go in the Fleet Air Arm. That appealed to me!”

In November 1941 “they sent me along to Pensacola” [in Florida] where we had to wear civvies because they were still officially neutral, to learn to fly. Twenty-seven of us. I didn’t know the first thing about aeroplanes. While we were there, they had Pearl Harbour, so we went into uniform. Three passed out as pilots and were sent to the Far East. They were all killed. But they said I would be a pilot later. We all got back to Britain, the rest of us. They said ‘we want observers and officers’. Well, that suited me. We had 18 months’ training and I was appointed to the aircraft carrier, The Implacable. We patrolled the North Sea at 100 knots with the wind behind us. The Germans couldn’t believe we were so slow and always fired ahead of us. We had changed to Barracudas.

“I became a training officer. They were so frightened, the students. I used to hear them talking to themselves, ‘We’re too far down, what shall I do?” and I’d be quietly getting into my parachute in the back seat.

“They said ‘How would you like to be an Intelligence Officer?’ was promoted to Lieutenant, NAIO. I spoke several languages. That’s two gold rings, and they sent me home to await to go out to Japan. I got compassionate leave to get married. By VE Day, I was to go to sea again. But, the war ended. I became an editorial assistant to various publishing firms. Eventually, with three other editors, we formed our own publishing company.

“I interviewed some very interesting people. Like Bader [Sir Douglas Bader, the Battle of Britain ace] and wrote some books, all non-fiction. My father went out to South America. He was an accountant. My mother went out to join him there. I was born in South Amercia, but when my mother was expecting me, she realised the state we were in had conscription, and we moved to the next state, Uruguay. I met my wife at Sunday School.”

As the war grew and spread, it became clear we were in for a long haul, so the Navy encompassed many new units which would not even have been thought about in peacetime. Like the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Marines were called upon to develop new skills and specialities.

John Cook, Royal Marine, tells his story:

“I was in the Royal Marines from early 1942 at the age of 17 (just) until the middle of 1946. After training at two camps in Devon I, with many others, were posted to Fort Gomer, Gosport. We had volunteered for SBS [Special Boat Service] training. At this fort we lived in the dungeons and life was unbelievably hard.”

Men trained, non-stop, in full kit. “You had to climb up a brick-built flat roof air raid shelter, without any help. You went everywhere at the double and the parade ground was the end of life for some. I saw two die on the square, so how many more did not last the pace? Not known.

“The galley/cookhouse was overtaken with cockroaches, the food was eatable, just about, if you could eat it before the cockroaches did. We were actually being trained to be crews and gunners on Landing Craft Flak [LCFs] and Landing Craft Gun [LCGs], which we eventually joined in very early 1943 and sailed to Gibraltar, North Africa, and invasions of Sicily and Salerno in 1943.

“Christmas 1942, I spent a four hours on, four hours off duty, in a pill box at Fort Gomer, overlooking the Solent, Isle of Wight. It had been terrible weather and there was over a foot deep of snow inside the pill box. 4.7-inch guns were used by the Army/ATS on their Ack-ack gun batteries, which were situated in parks, open spaces, etc., during the war for antiaircraft use and also used on merchant ships and all Royal Navy warships. They were also used in south-east England during the Blitz, as mobile guns in the streets, roads, etc. When they were firing outside your front door, the noise was terrific.”

At Fort Gomer, there were such gun emplacements at each side of the pill box in which John was on a spell of duty on Christmas Eve, 1942, which lasted four days and four nights. The only guns that could be fired from a pill box were a .303 rifle, .303 Bren or Sten Guns, or a PIAT antitank gun, if you had a lot of room for recoil.

“It was a soul-destroying place to be, Fort Gomer, and in early 1943 we left to go to Southsea where some of us were in the guest houses on South Parade, which had all been taken over by the Royal Marines. Whilst there we marched to Eastney Barracks to be kitted out with our tropical kit. It was then we knew we were not staying for summer sun-bathing on the beach and seafront, but heading for hotter climates. In a few days, we joined the LCFs and LCGs.

“After the Sicily/Salerno invasions, half the craft had to return to this country so we could prepare for Normandy, 1944. We came back to Southsea after leaving the craft in Scotland and were again at South Parade and in occupation of rooms above the Cumberland Arms public house in Eastney Road, not so far from the barracks at that time. As there were so many Royal Marines in the area, we were put into civilian billets. I and five others were in one bedroom of a family in Albert Road. There were also at least five in the family, so meals were taken in relays.”

The iron bunk bed with which each of the men was supplied were from barrack stores. John describes them as “so uncomfortable you were almost glad to get up at 5.30 a.m. and have breakfast, then to parade on Southsea seafront!”

“About two months before D-Day, many of us were taken by lorries to fields near Hythe, overlooking Southampton water. In the fields, many large tents had been erected. There was eight of us to a tent, we only had dry rations, tins of what was going. To have a mug of tea, we had small blocks like Oxo cubes, which contained tea, sugar and milk. We had an oil-stove on which we were able to boil the water, which was brought by lorry every day. There were no toilets anywhere so you had to make do, and the water was for making tea, washing and shaving only. One cupful per man, daily. All was going well until one day the rains - or should I say the monsoons? - came.”

The field was on a hill, sloping down to the sea, John recalls, and his tent was at the top, with all equipment being on the ground. Everything was washed out of the tent and down the field.

“All the tea cubes just disappeared. Water became polluted, which did not matter as we were not allowed to light the stoves after dark, in case of air raids, which we did have. After rations and water delivery the next day, we were able to have a mug of tea. Towards the end of May 1944 we were all moved out to Southampton Docks, where we became part of the crews of LCFs or LCGs. I went onto LCF 30 and away to Normandy for months to come. I was also at the Royal Hotel, Hayling Island. As to Fort Gomer, I was only 17. It was a hard life but that was all right for me, because I had lost my parents in the Blitz, so no home, but it did become easier after Gomer.”

John Frayn Turner describes, in his book Service Most Silent, the oyster mine, which was kept by the Germans as a final “secret weapon” when invasion was expected. The Royal Navy had oyster mines too, but had not used them because they were considered unsweepable. Oyster mines reacted to the change in pressure on the sea bed when a ship’s bow wave passed over them. This effect was used with a trigger that reacted to the sound of a ship or to its magnetic field (in acoustic or magnetic oysters respectively). It was especially difficult to sweep mines which lay on the sea bed among ships.

Allied supply ships vital to the continued assault on Europe began to be sunk shortly after D-Day. The Allies had sent experienced naval officers with the invasion force to look out for mines. Luckily a German mine-laying plane, in a gale and under fire, accidentally jettisoned his load of oyster mines over land at Luc sur Mer, and part of one exploded. SubLieutenant Young, RNVR, recognised the remaining part as a mine, with a mechanism he knew, but with an extra fitting which he did not recognise. He recommended to his CO that it should be looked at by Vernon, and it was taken back to Thorney Island by a Spitfire, where a team from Vernon examined it. It was recognised as an oyster by its external rubber fitting which indicated it was a pressure mine. They examined it, taking every precaution not to blow themselves up in the process. It was found that acoustic sweepers with vibrating hammers (see description below of work with a Kango Hammer) would detonate the remaining oysters, which had been spoiled by the high swell, for the latter triggered the pressure device without a ship being present. Similarly, a magnetic Oyster could be spoilt by swell, as ships at reduced speed caused a drop in the magnetic field they produced and so failed to fire the magnetic side of the mine.

By July 3rd 1944, almost 500 mines had been swept and further vital supply ships were saved from Oyster mines.

For all the weird and wonderful devices of the “boffins” however, there was still the more traditional experience of Naval warfare, as shown in the recollections of John Murray, Royal Navy, born 14th June 1921. John was in Hampshire from October 1938 and in a Portsmouth naval ship until 1947.

“I joined the Iron Duke as a boy seaman in 1938. Having trained in Scotland, I was a First Class Boy. In October, I went to Portsmouth and to HMS Berwick in December 1938. We sailed from 5 January and went to the West Indies for Bermuda where we took over the flag ship HMS York. We toured the east coast of the USA and Canada. This flotilla was later in the Battle of the River Plate. But by that time, we had already been and escorted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they visited in the Empress of Britain. Before they left us, they came on board and met the crew.

“We did an ice patrol for them because at that time of the year the icebergs moved south. We continued from New York up to Canada, Newfoundland. At the outbreak of war we were at Bar Harbour, Maine, but we had to get out of there because we were in the USA.” As the USA was at that time a neutral country, British warships could not use their harbours.

“From there we took a convoy from Trinidad and we were damaged on the way back in a hurricane, so back to Portsmouth for repairs. It was the first time we had seen the blackout, and there was also snow on the ground, which we weren’t used to. I was eighteen, I had my eighteenth birthday in Canada.

“We joined the Home Fleet and did service in Norway, Denmark Strait patrol and Iceland. Actually, we participated in the taking over of Iceland in May of that year, returning to this country with 100 German nationals from Iceland - embassy people and families - and brought them back to Liverpool where our ship went into repairs. I left it and came back to RN Portsmouth in time for the end of Dunkirk. Everything was chaotic. They sent us over with a tug and lifeboats to near St Valerie, to where the 51st Highland Division were lined up. Unfortunately the Germans had got there before we were, so we had to turn back.”

Back to gunnery school, HMS Excellent, Whale Island, Portsmouth went John and his colleagues: “And we had another scare. We were detailed to take over the French fleet. About 4.00 a.m. and all the ships were boarded and taken over by the British navy. Our crew from Whale Island took over the French warship Paris.

“I did my gunnery course and after about a month I was drafted to Ack-Ack 1 Guard on merchant ships for Channel convoys. We plied between Southend on Sea and the Bristol Channel. We set our guns up on ships and we were in the Channel opposite the Isle of Wight when they shot down 175 German planes.” A score reported in 24 hours at the height of the Battle of Britain. “They were attacked in our convoy. I did this job from July 1940 to September 1941. Back via Victory to HMS Berwick for a number of years, mainly on the Russian convoys. I left her in ’43.

“We took the first Russian convoy towards the end of ’41. We lost lots of ships as we did in the Channel convoys. We sailed to Murmansk. One of our jobs was to bring back our Air Force fellows who had gone out to teach the Russians how to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes. We rang into a severe storm off the end of North Cape. The Air Force chaps didn’t like the Navy very much. They were very very seasick. They were very glad to see Scapa Flow. The unit was flyers and maintenance chaps.”

“Weren’t you ever seasick?”

“I’ve been through some fairly heavy seas in little merchant ships and I’m never seasick. I might have had a bit of a headache. I left the Berwick in October 1943 to become an upper yardsman.”

“What’s that?”

“Selection for officer rank from the lower deck. After a few months’ training in Victory, three months onto HMS Collingwood at Fareham to do the upper yardsman course - two to three months and was then rejected. They then suggested a warrant officer’s course at Portsmouth, which I passed with flying colours as a WO. In order to get some experience as a boatswain I was drafted to HMS Orestes, an Algerine class minesweeper and I spent 1944-46 minesweeping with the 18th Minesweeping Flotilla, serving all the way up Holland to Germany, the Scheldt River. I was waiting my turn to become a warrant officer and I decided to buy myself out of the service. I paid £24 for that, November 1947. I became a Chartered Engineer - nine years at college and with the MOD in Enfield for 26 years. I was called up twice to Pompey [Portsmouth] on the reserve.”

Preparations for the D-Day Invasion - Mulberry Harbour Caissons

Following the assault on Dieppe in 1942, when several thousand Allied troops attacked military targets and remained ashore in occupied Europe for nine hours, it was realised that the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe could not realistically take place using existing European harbours. The vital experience gained at Dieppe was costly in terms of heavy casualties and numbers of prisoners taken by the enemy. In any full-scale invasion of continental Europe, large numbers of men would need to land in a comparatively short time, with considerable logistic support. It was not feasible to attempt this at any existing, defended port and the German army were expected to destroy all suitable harbours.

It is thought that the solution to this problem was first suggested by Commodore John Hughes-Hallett. If a harbour could not be found, one would have to be built and floated across the France. This idea led to two floating Mulberry Harbours being constructed. Their construction was essential to the Normandy invasion plan. They were to be towed across the sea to the landing beaches and used for the disembarkation of troops and stores. They would make possible the invasion of beaches where there was no natural harbour and give the tactical advantage of surprise as well as providing facilities for unloading and disembarkation. In the words of Guy Hartcup, they were “an imaginative use of technology to overcome the disadvantages of landing on a defended shore at the mercy of the weather”.

Landing craft and barges would be able to unload without grounding and could turn round regardless of the state of the tide. The Mulberries were designed to provide shelter for craft in bad weather and accommodation for Liberty ships, coasters, tugs and ferries, all with up to three sunken ships in the harbour. They also had anti-aircraft guns, storage for ammunition, oil and water, plus accommodation for up to 500 officers and other ranks. They were to be big enough to allow for the handling of up to 12,000 tons of stores and 2500 vehicles each day. The harbours would have to be the size of Dover harbour. In the event, only one of the harbours towed to Normandy became fully operational; the other suffered storm damage.

Parts of the harbours had to be specially designed and built. These submerged cement caissons were code-named Phoenixes. (The project is described by Martin Doughty in Hampshire and D-Day.) A Phoenix construction site on Hayling Island was just south of the Ferry Boat Inn. Here, at least four caissons originally ordered were built. The large workforce did not know what they were for and called them concrete barges.

At the Hayling site, now a car park, strong metal rings remain to which the caissons were anchored. Also, traces of their concrete slipway are indicated by straight rows of seaweed at very low tide.

George Hickinbottom of Dudley worked for Naughton Tiverdale Ltd at Tipton in the West Midlands as an overhead crane driver on parts for a Mulberry. Then aged 14, he recalls that he used to help turn parts about the size of a double-decker bus for them to be welded on their reverse side. These were then taken to different ports by transport company Betty Box, ready for the invasion.

C. J. Mitchell of Portchester was employed as a mechanical equipment driver by Trevor Construction Company, a firm recruited to build caissons on Hayling. While working on the Mulberry, he recalls that he and fellow workers from Portsmouth sometimes reached the site by bus and ferry while others used the railway. Some of the labourers, who were mostly Irish, were billeted in huts at Cams Hill, Fareham, and arrived in Southdown buses. There was no shift work but the men worked to the finish when concreting.

Mulberry Harbour caissons under construction

Mr Mitchell recalls the autumn of 1943 was cold and wet. They were issued with wet weather gear and their only shelter was the hut where they had meals. Work continued until the last minute of any air raid warning. Snacks brought to them during the morning and afternoon were eaten while working and they went for lunch a few at a time, when possible. Sand and ballast was continuously brought by road in lorries, day and night. A special grade of “winter use” cement was also supplied. Some of these materials were said to have arrived on the Island by rail. Sand and gravel were brought from nearby Sinah, from land which is now a small lake, by Hayling Coal and Transport lorries.

Security was such that workers did not know what they were building until the first caisson was launched and moored in Langstone Channel for the final build. Nobody had talked about it while building though Mr Mitchell remembers referring to the caissons as “concrete barges”.

There was no water supply when the project began. Later, water was brought via two-inch steel pipes laid on the road surface from the funfair area. All equipment had to be transported from South Hayling station by lorry. Huts were erected for offices, canteens and stores. Everything was manhandled from the railway trucks until they had enough equipment to begin.

Walls and foundations were constructed first. Sand kept falling back into the trench before the concrete was tipped in, but the difficulty was overcome. Next, the “barge” floor was laid. There were no concrete-pumps then, so when the steel-fixers had done their job, the concrete was put in place by wheelbarrow. Each floor took over 24 hours to lay, in one slab with no joins. It was exhausting work. When one floor was finished and the shuttering fixed, workers moved to the next “barge” and repeated the exercise.

Royal Marine G. L. Parker, born in 1923, was on Hayling for January and February 1944 as a driver-mechanic on a course about the Gray marine diesel and Hall-Scott (Invader) Marine engines, i.e. invasion preparation. Guard and security duties and the study of course notes left him little spare time, he recalls, but he managed to visit his parents at Worthing - by train when he could afford it, otherwise by cycle.

Wren June Carter, born on 15th June 1926 (now Mrs R) married her present husband, a former Royal Marine, in March 1998 having recently met him. Each, unknown to the other, had served on Hayling Island during World War II.

June recalls that she knew Wrens in her home town, Brighton, and their job seemed glamorous, so she joined up aged 17 and was almost 18 when she came to Hayling, early in 1944, to do general clerical work. She was first stationed at the Victoria Hotel; then Treloar House, Sandy Point, at the Suntrap School; and eventually at HMS Northney III. After the invasion, she lived at Broadview House, Seaview Road. The girls understood they were releasing men to do other things.

They were able to wear civilian clothes off duty but could buy their own underwear, for which they were given chits. She searched shops in Havant unsuccessfully for her preferred brand of bra, but was eventually offered two of this scarce commodity at a Brighton shop when on leave. The shop assistant explained that this was because she was in uniform.

June Carter

Colonel Coke

About 1944, after the invasion of Sicily and Italy, in which he took part, Colonel Coke (then Major) observed trials of experimental equipment at Hayling Island Sailing Club. He watched as an amphibious tank, too heavy for Langstone Bridge and intended for shipment by landing craft to Portsmouth, stuck in the craft’s doors and sank. He saw a shooting-stick device tried out which was intended to test beach consistency. The tester would sit on the stick’s seat to note how far it sank. He recalls that while a rather fat lieutenant commander did these tests with Sir Malcolm Campbell, he himself (Colonel Coke) could not stop laughing as he imagined how useful this device would be to those who landed on the defended beaches of France in the dark.

Many ingenious ideas at this time led to useful developments which smoothed the way of Allied invasions, particularly the D-Day landings. Others needed a lot of hought to make them usable, or were abandoned as impracticable.

During early 1944 on Hayling Island, work on the caissons for the Mulberry Harbour continued apace. When ready to be launched, the first caisson was raised from the supports, using wooded wedges drawn together by bolts. It was moved, inch by inch, to the slipway and levered onto the launching cradle, again by wedges. Everyone concerned was enormously relieved when over 3,000 tons of green concrete had been moved successfully without breaking up.

The testing time for Mr Mitchell of Portchester came when the caisson was launched, as he was to be on it with a salvage pump, ready to pump if water was taken on, to prevent the caisson from sinking. After it had been moored in the Langstone Channel, the rest of the caisson was completed.

R.A. Beachill of Copnor started work as an apprentice electrical engineer in January 1944. Remarkably, his first job, having not long left school, involved work on the caissons on Hayling Beach. Temporary power cables were to be supplied to the work site via small pylons made up of scaffolding tubes. He was on site for approximately three to four months and saw the job through to completion.

He also tells of a mainly Irish workforce and of extremely hard working conditions. January and February were bitterly cold, the site was totally exposed and there was no shelter while working. The men with whom apprentice Beachill worked were billeted in one of the disused holiday camps and were brought daily to the site by bus.

He was present for the launch of four caissons at the end of March or beginning of April 1944. Three launched successfully but the fourth would not float properly. He was personally involved in frantic efforts to remedy this.

A night shift was started and a small number of floodlights was installed, in spite of a total blackout being in force. The problem appeared to be a faulty scuttling valve which allowed water to seep in, even when tightly closed; consequently, several compartments were awash with water. A Royal Engineers diving team was called. They were to work, under water, inside the caisson, as they could not get at the underside while the barge was aground.

Young Mr Beachill was asked to do night shift as duty electrician and was responsible for switching off the floodlights should there be an air raid alert which, he recalls, happened quite often. They installed a transformer and when the switch was thrown the lights went to “dim” for two minutes, to allow the workmen to get off the caisson and to walk along temporary staging to the shore. Then the lights went out, leaving the caisson in total darkness. Because of the lighting, the site was a very obvious target, so the army provided a battery of six Bofors light anti-aircraft guns for local defence. These were on the shore just to the left of the caissons, each one surrounded by sandbags. They opened fire several times on low-flying planes.

One night, while on duty, Mr Beachill was asked to climb on to the caisson as the diver working on it was not satisfied with the lighting. It was very murky under the water at about 2.00 a.m. and the diver was working deep inside the caisson in about 15 feet of water. Apprentice Beachill managed to fix up a wandering lead with a floodlight dangling on the end and clambered down an ordinary wooden builder’s ladder until his feet were inches from being immersed, to hold the light at water level shining downwards. He did so, he says, for what seemed like an eternity.

But the problem was never solved. The caisson almost floated but whenever the tide was running, it would shift several yards at a time, scraping along the bottom of the harbour. This caused more problems because electrical cables were stretched tightly across the water, held by insulating cleats clamped on to the caisson. When the caisson shifted, the cables snapped and live cables lay beneath the water surface.

Southwood Road, Eastoke: contemporary postcard

B. G. Turner of North Hayling says his father-in-law was employed by Portsmouth Dockyard, one of a team of about 40 who worked on a Hayling caisson which must have been the one described above by R.A. Beachill. He was told that half tree-trunks were placed under the caisson, it was winched and rolled forward only to break in the water.

Former Marine Stan Truman of Tavistock says he and colleagues were laying bets, as the caissons grew a few feet higher daily, on what they were. It seemed incredible that so much concrete would float.

In spite of tight security, a South Hayling girl, later Mrs Grace Townsend, watched caissons being launched. She was invited to do so from their home by the family of her friend Jos. They were both 17. Grace recalls the launches as big events but with only the workmen and officers present. She remembers the caissons as great big things, has no idea how they floated but says there was a lot of grease on which they slipped down when launched into the water. She assumes something pushed them. About three caissons were built at the time and they were made of reinforced concrete with iron bars inside. Nobody was allowed on the ferry during a launch but she found it interesting to watch.

As well as the Mulberry Harbours, Hayling Island saw much of the concentration of more straightforward materials and manpower, which took place all over Hampshire, as the build up to D-Day gathered pace.

Captain Alec J. Wale, RN, of Alverstoke, Gosport served in the 30th Supply and Repair Flotilla of landing barges which formed up in Langstone Harbour in early 1944 and sailed from there on the evening of 5th June. He believes the other “S and R” Flotilla also formed up at Langstone and there were a number of smaller landing craft (LCMs) there too, manned by Royal Marines.

The barges were Thames lighters fitted with engines and modified to provide accommodation for personnel. They carried the means to provide logistic support. For instance, LBEs carried technical specialists and maintenance equipment for emergency repairs. Others carried, respectively, fuel, water and hot food. These craft provided immediate support to small craft in the beach area immediately following the Normandy landings. His flotilla was part of Sword force.

The administrative offices for all this were in the Royal Hotel. Ratings lived in holiday chalets and the 30th Flotilla officers lived at Swaythling, a house half-way along Southwood Road, which they found comfortable. Six officers were looked after by four Wren stewards with a large chalet on the beach across the road to act as a bar and lounge. After a few weeks they moved to the Suntrap School, opposite the coast guard station. In the evenings they would walk along the beach to the Honky Tonk (now called the Inn on the Beach).

The late H. S. Berry, formerly an Able Seaman of the 4th Landing Barge Vehicles Flotilla, recalled that his skipper was Pat Osbourne and that the flotilla used the Royal Hotel mess. But his enduring memory of Hayling was that all the toilets in the Suntrap School, where his flotilla was housed, were really too low for use by sailors. He was there up to and including the invasion of France, then posted to the Far East. I gather the crowded conditions at the Suntrap in war-time grated a good deal on a number of the men who were billeted there.

Men and officers waiting for orders made their own entertainment. Corporal Eric Chesher (LCM Flotilla) of Helensburgh says he and other Marines played tombola at the Royal Hotel with RN personnel. He used to enjoy playing the violin for a sing-song on the beach some evenings, then they would all swim naked in the warm sea, prior to visiting the Shades (suitably dressed) for a drink - but choice of drinks was limited.

Marine John J. Cook of Tintinhull, Yeovil recalls that he and his mates visited the Shades public house in their spare time, if they had any pay left. If not, they played football or just sat reading or cleaning their kit. The Shades, he says, did not always have anything to drink. Beer was “zoned” during the war and customers could not always buy their preferred brand even when beer was available. If there was beer, they would buy a pint to last all evening. For security reasons they mostly stayed in their own area, but occasionally went by ferry to Southsea or Portsmouth or used the grassy area between the Royal Hotel and the beach as a football or cricket ground. John Cook recalls that it was neither of Wembley nor Lords standard. However, they were active young men, cooped up on Hayling Island awaiting their orders for action; sport helped to keep them fit and to some extent prevented boredom.

Other Marines recall regular church parades at St Peter’s Church, visits to the Shades, to the Regal cinema and to another cinema which they describe as “ramshackle”. The building has survived to become St Mary’s Street postal sorting office, but viewed from the west one can see at the front of the building the roof-top shape of the little room used by the cinema projectionist. Many of my ex-service correspondents recall with affection visits to the Meadowsweet canteen at Northney which was run voluntarily by local ladies at the home of the Misses Rouse, Northney.

R. G. Hylands of Eastbourne says the sailors would sit round a dining table while a meal was prepared. A Mrs Hedges used to do the cooking.