For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II

It is the sheer scale of the Second World War that most of us, however keen to grasp its course in outline and the interrelation of its geographically and sometimes time-separated parts, find daunting. In terms of its time-span, its land masses and oceans that were the scene of prolonged conflict, its nations, races and peoples committed to or drawn into the conflict, its human and material cost, the statistics of the Second World War challenge the capacity to comprehend.

At one and the same time, the link between the Eastern Front and its Stalingrad, North Africa and its El Alamein, the Arctic, Atlantic and Mediterranean with their sea-lines, the aerial bombing offensives, Home Front war materials production and civilian morale, is clear, and yet it is only retained in a collective sense by the most self-disciplined mind. As we write this we can almost hear the protests of readers, ‘Have they not heard of the Pacific War too?’ To which we make response that indeed we have, and this book will certainly not fail by under-representation in that respect.

While the editors of this book have no grand ambition to succeed where few have attempted and success is rare – achievement in conveying a worldwide vista of warfare – they believe that in reducing the unmanageable scale to one of individual participants recalling the part they played in key events, general or special circumstances, major campaigns or battles, they bring the reader as near as he may wish to be to living through the challenge of World War from September 1939 to August 1945.

This book had its roots in the first meeting of the editors in Leeds in 1993. The rescue of the evidence of wartime experience was the main subject on the agenda. Retired New Zealand doctor and public health specialist Richard Campbell Begg, a naval officer in the Second World War, had responded to a New Zealand newspaper appeal by British historian Peter Liddle, keen to draw attention to his work in rescuing the evidence of wartime experience. At that stage Peter was the Keeper of the Liddle Collection, a world-renowned archive of personal experience in the First World War, based at Leeds University. Over some years he has been turning his attention to the Second World War, and has already achieved a substantial collection of material of personal involvement in that war, so much so that since the original meeting with Richard it has been necessary to set up a separate collection, which is also housed in the city of Leeds as a Second World War Experience Centre with charitable status and its own Trustees, staff, Patrons and Association of Friends. Peter has left the University and feels highly privileged to have been appointed the Director of the Centre, which continues to grow and flourish.

The New Zealand doctor had travelled to Leeds, his recollections had been recorded on tape by interview and, with personal accord quickly established, the possibility of association in the rescue work was discussed. It was not long before Richard, in his responsibilities growing younger by the day, was recording men and women resident in New Zealand. The friendship between Richard and Peter developed, with the doctor travelling not only through much of New Zealand in the work but returning to Leeds on three further occasions fuelled by an increasing awareness of the importance, urgency and fascination of the work. He had found that there were few areas of British and New Zealand service experience in the war not covered by one or more of the people he was meeting. So graphic were many of the tapes, and so wide their representation of air, sea and land service, that it was clear the material invited being shared with a wider audience than that of researchers in an archive.

This book grew as a result of a decision to draw together, as appropriate, the most striking of the testimony. It contains extended recall of the experiences of 53 men and one woman. Most theatres of war are represented from beginning to end of the conflict. This is the story of the war by those who were in it, given spontaneously without rehearsal 53 or so years after the event. For most, it was the first time anyone had asked them to relate their experience and had then been prepared to sit and listen, sometimes for hours on end. With remarkable lucidity and recall, with humour, sometimes with emotion, even distress, thoughts and descriptions of events long ago were vividly expressed.

With most theatres of war covered, and with the three Services and the Merchant Navy represented in many ranks, from those quite senior to those very junior, it has been possible to present a chronological story but also one from differing perspectives. In the book, as the war progresses, we sometimes meet for a second time those whose story in a different theatre and from a more junior rank has already been presented, and this may bring the reader to a still closer identification with the memories of some of those whose story is told here.

Each chapter has a contextual introduction so that the wider scene from which the particular vignette is chosen is properly made clear. The book is largely the written expression of oral testimony. As such there has been a little editing to clear away ambiguity, any lack of clarity through imprecision in the words as spoken. In the main, grammar has been left as expressed.

In the first chapter, what the ‘Phoney War’ was like for the ordinary soldier is made clear, and just as clear, the drama, confusion and swirling events from the German attack that would leave him evacuated from Dunkirk or St Nazaire or captured. Naval operations in the North Sea, including the first battle between battlecruisers, when HMS Renown engaged the German ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are next in line for recall. For the Battle of Britain and related developments there is graphic record; vivid descriptions of London burning, Coventry blitzed, aerial dogfights, crash landings and parachute descents, and a wealth of detail including men recalling their treatment after serious burns.

The story now moves to North Africa and the great campaigns fought there. There are two chapters devoted to this, separated by those dealing with the operations in Greece and Crete, both ending in defeat and evacuation. The parachute and aerial landings in Crete, in which the Germans suffered heavy losses, are dramatically recalled. We then move to the Italian campaign, with the first successful Allied landings on the Continent, at Sicily, documented by many men who were present on land, at sea and in the air, then the dearly bought and narrowly achieved landings at Salerno and Anzio and the battles around Cassino, the hard slog to the north and eventual victory. Events in the Mediterranean, including the epic convoy ‘Operation Pedestal’, are covered, as are other naval engagements, bombardments and action by British forces operating from the island of Vis in support of Marshal Tito’s partisans and, not least, the valiant defence of Malta and air and sea operations from that island.

With Japan entering the war, there is experience of the military defeats in Malaya to relate, the surrender at Singapore and, not least, a vivid account by a destroyer officer of the sinking of the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse by Japanese air attack. That officer’s ship was sunk shortly afterwards at the second battle of the Java Sea. There follows a remarkable account of the brave determination of a nurse escaping from Singapore as the Japanese entered the city. She experienced the bombing, then the sinking of her ship. She swam to an island, caring for wounded there, then, one step ahead of the Japanese, she travelled all the way across Sumatra, where the Japanese finally caught up with her. There is coverage of subsequent events in South East Asia at sea and in the air, and eventually the recapture of Burma, including a graphic account of Chindit operations in that country.

Meanwhile, in the Arctic, there were the Russian convoys, including the disastrous PQ17, with which three of the contributors were involved, and later the sinking of the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst. There is material on naval events in the English Channel and the Atlantic and the increasing air attacks on German-occupied Europe. D-Day itself, then the advance through Northern France into Belgium, Holland and across the Rhine into Germany, have many contributions from all three services.

Returning to the war in Asia, where the tide was running against the Japanese and the British Pacific fleet was in action, there are accounts of this and what it was like having a kamikaze aircraft attack and crash on your flight deck. The New Zealand Air Force was now in action in force in the South Pacific and there is an interesting story to tell here.

Finally the prisoners of war, both in the Japanese theatre and in Europe, tell of their experiences in captivity, hardships and lighter moments. The sinking by an American submarine of a Japanese freighter with 800 prisoners under the hatches, and the frightful ‘death march’ back into Germany from Poland, provide sombre reading. Those in Japanese hands were perhaps saved from imminent execution by the dropping of the atom bombs. The comment of one of these men, ‘forgive but never forget’, provides a fitting finale to this chapter and a book written with respect for all the men and the woman mentioned, and the generation which they represent.

Richard Campbell BeggNelson, New Zealand

Peter H. LiddleThe Second World War Experience Centre,Leeds, UK

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_d1ad0516-6ac2-571d-9256-6b7a48da3035)

The ‘Phoney War’ in France and its aftermath (#ulink_d1ad0516-6ac2-571d-9256-6b7a48da3035)

Britain had pledged support for Poland in the event of a German invasion, and when this occurred on 1 September 1939, Britain and France were soon at war with Germany. By prior agreement with Germany, Russian troops entered Poland on 17 September, and by 5 October Polish resistance was largely at an end. Hitler, his peace overtures to the West spurned, wished to make an early attack on France, but the weather, the hesitancy of his Generals and finally the loss to the Allies of the initial plans for the attack, resulted in delays.

William Seeney, an apprentice printer from Ealing, London, was quite convinced a war was coming, so, in 1937 at the age of 17, he joined the Territorial Army:

‘I became a member of the 158 Battery of the 53rd Brigade, Royal Artillery. We were at training camp in Devon somewhere in 1939, must have been the beginning of September, when war was declared. As Territorials we were now fully involved. We didn’t get home, we went direct from training camp to a place, Abbeyfield outside of Reading, where we were inoculated, etc. It was evident that the authorities had decided to get people overseas as quickly as they possibly could, so we were among the first to go.

On the morning parade, it must have been maybe one day, two days, after war had been declared, those who could drive a car were told to declare themselves. Not too many people drove in those days, but a dozen or so did and we ended up by driving a whole lot of rather antiquated and requisitioned vehicles, with the members of the Battery on board, to Southampton, where we eventually boarded a transport which took us to Cherbourg.

We arrived in Cherbourg and there was a lot of confusion – we were hungry but no food had been laid on. The officers in charge were told to march us out of town and they obviously had a destination – we knew that eventually – and as it so happens it was a farm and we marched for about 8 to 10 miles, still nothing to eat – we’d had nothing to eat since the night before and this was well into the following day.

William Lewis Seeney

We eventually arrived at the farm and they’d obviously just kicked out the pigs and the sheep and the cows and tossed in a few bales of hay, and we were told to make ourselves comfortable, but still no food. We were told to organise ourselves into small units and half a dozen blokes would get together and that was their mess. Well, we had money – after all, we’d still been working, or had been a couple of days ago – and we did just as we were asked to do, and we chipped in, in these little groups, and we made a list of the things we’d like people to buy for us for food – then the truck took off for Cherbourg. So we had a sort of meal eventually and it was the same the next day until they got things organised. One thing that tickled me, on our march to our farm – we passed some blackberry bushes and the British Army broke ranks and picked blackberries.

However, the time arrived to leave. We were only there for a couple of nights, which was just as well, because the rats, you see, they’d never been so happy in their lives with all these bits and pieces around and we were quite happy to get out of the place. We marched down to the siding by a railway and there we got on to a train, and the train – you may not believe it – they’d obviously got these carriages out from the sheds, had them parked away from the last world war and they were still marked with 40 men and 8 horses – it was marked on the side of the bally trucks. They just had sliding doors and they tossed on a couple of bales of hay and we were told to get on board and the train took off.

Eventually, after many delays because we were being constantly shunted off the main line to let regular trains through, we arrived at Epernay, which is about 30 or 40 kilometres west of Rheims. There we disembarked. We had no weapons at that time but we camped alongside the station, just for the night – not so much camped as bivouacked – we just had to get our heads down. Then another train came along and there, lo and behold, were our guns and our transport.

We had difficulty in getting them off the trains but time passed, and eventually we got everything off the train and we moved off once again going east towards the Ardennes. Eventually we were to the right of the British Expeditionary Force [BEF] and up against the French on our right in the Ardennes The nearest village was Aguilcourt, and there was another village called Guinecourt, and there we were told to prepare. You’ve got to remember we were there for battle and there we were running around in circles, digging in, waiting for things to happen, and there was infantry floating around and nothing happened.

Of course in the Battery itself, things had to happen. First of all we had no cooks, so it was a case of saying, “You, you and you, you’re the cooks.” It’s hard to believe this, isn’t it, and we’re supposed to be at war! The interesting thing about all this really is, we’d been trained to fire a gun. Now, basically, that’s a very simple operation, but the important job – and I learned this and it took a long time to learn it – we’d never been taught to be soldiers. This was very important. Well, obviously to be a soldier you’ve got to be trained to be a soldier, not just to fire a gun. In my view that’s the simplest thing in the world, and all the things that go to make a soldier we just didn’t have – we’d never been trained to do it. We’d never been trained to kill people. I mean just think, we were soldiers – we’d never heard of a killing ground, and as for being killed yourself, blimey, that was the last thing you thought about.

Time passed, nothing happened. We’d been under canvas all this time, and just before winter began to break we got a number of Nissen huts and life became a bit more comfortable. Christmas came and the usual festivities and nothing happened apart from the “recce” aircraft overhead. They were there all day and every day – German, French, British, they were always there.’

Another 17-year-old who joined the Territorial Army in 1937 was William John Campion, a railway clerk from Liverpool. His introduction into France was rather more leisurely and comfortable:

‘During 1938 and ’39 there was always talk of war, so later in 1939 – and war was obviously imminent – I wasn’t surprised to receive notice that my regiment, the 59th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, had been mobilised and I was required to report with full kit on a certain date, 1 September. I went along there as ordered, and met all the other crowd who were being bussed out to Tarporley in Cheshire, where we spent the next month receiving new equipment, new uniforms, and, as far as time permitted, continuing our training both as a regiment and as individuals. We were there for a whole month and then, about 1 October, we took train to Southampton and then across to Cherbourg. We arrived there early in the morning after a dreadful crossing.

Then, later that evening, we were on the train travelling south or south-east. Anyway the train took us as far as Laval, fortunately a proper train, not the sort the French soldiers travelled in, with was it 40 men or 8 horses? The train took us to Laval, and at Laval we met our own vehicles which took us on to the small village of St Jean sur Mayenne – Mayenne is a tributary of the Loire. It was a beautiful spot. It was at that little village that I had my first experience of champagne and Camembert cheese – one I liked and the other I couldn’t eat. We stayed there only one night and we then set off on a three-day journey up north where we eventually arrived at a little village of Chaemy in the Pas de Calais in the old First World War battlegrounds.

Once we’d settled into billets – it was a small village, we were scattered in all sorts of places, small cottages, and men were even billeted in the morgue – our first job after that was to dig gun pits on the Belgium frontier, a small place called Ask. So that was 5am reveille, our task digging gun pits and Command Post, back at 7 and next morning up again at 5.30. Our guns were 6-inch howitzers, which are pretty big things and take big holes, so it was some time before we got that job finished. When it had finished, we were in the middle of a very cold winter and life was a bit hard, but not to be compared with trenches in the First World War.

William John Campion

Our little cottage had an outside pump where the ice had to be broken off every morning, and also two cesspits, but our time in Chaemy, again, was made up with training. We had one special day when we were taken to see the Vimy Ridge Battlefield and Memorial. I don’t know whether this was to give us an idea of what to expect particularly; we found it most interesting, but we were young and had plenty of optimism, so it really didn’t teach us much about war.

The nearest town to Chaemy was Lille, a big industrial town. We were only allowed there once a fortnight, and in Lille there was very little in the way of entertainment for troops. I can’t remember seeing a canteen – we used the estaminets and cafes for a meal – but there was one other place which always struck me as being very interesting. For one thing being so unlike the English people’s conception of such a place. France, as everyone knows, had what, I think, were called “maisons de tolerance”. They were illegal really, but the French Government just turned a blind eye. These were the brothels, and the ones I’m thinking of weren’t “mucky” places. They were big houses, and when you went in there was a big room. There would be a bar and a small band, a three-piece band. The girls there would dance with any man who wanted her, and if the men didn’t want anything else that was fine, but it would help to occupy an hour quite well, and Madame, who ran the place, was a disciplinarian who insisted on the highest standard of conduct, so you see we didn’t always misbehave ourselves. We stayed in Chaemy until February, then we moved up to a suburb of Lille and were billeted in a girls’ school and we just kept on the everlasting training.’

Meanwhile Lance Bombardier Seeney tells of a shooting accident that resulted in what must have been one of the first British casualties of the war.

‘On this particular evening, it was New Year’s Eve as a matter of fact, there was a party going on. The boys were drinking in one of the huts and one of the men left the hut, obviously to go and relieve himself, and the guard, he just pointed his rifle at this chap and pressed the trigger. The silly so and so had a round there, pressed the trigger and shot this poor chap straight through the head – killed him stone dead immediately.

The following day after this tragedy I had to go with one of the drivers into Epernay to collect a coffin. In Epernay we picked up this coffin and a Union Jack and then we were told to go to a convent which had been turned into a hospital for when the casualties would be coming into that area. Anyway, this other fellow and myself, we wandered to a shed, which we’d decided must be the mortuary, and by this time the Battery MO turned up. We dragged the coffin in and we just stood by. This poor chap was lying on a table, dead with his boots still on, and the doctor told us to get him into the box, and this was the first time that I had handled a dead body. This other chap and myself, we picked up this poor fellow and put him in the box, and of course the box was too small, and if you can imagine in this eerie light – no electricity, just an oil lamp – pushing this poor chap, just as well as we could, into this box and then getting the lid on and screwing it down, and the following day the poor chap was buried. And I might add he was buried where we were. It’s understandable why the French, in that area anyhow, were very anti-war – it was just one huge cemetery after another from the First World War, thousands of crosses in all directions, and this began the new cemetery with this Number One, with this poor chap who had been killed in such tragic circumstances.

The “Phoney War” continued and, like all soldiers, we settled down to making the best of what was available. The way of living became quite easy; the spring came along, the weather became pleasant and we settled down to a nice easy war; we also had a few days leave back in the UK and the war generally was almost forgotten. But all the time those people in their recce planes above were busy day in, day out.’

The assault, when it came on 10 May 1940, involved simultaneous and overwhelming attacks from the air, with German forces advancing through Holland and Belgium. British and French forces deployed into Belgium but were soon forced to withdraw. In the meantime a major and unexpected attack by German armoured panzer divisions, advancing through the Ardennes, overcame troops guarding that sector, disgorged into France and soon reached the Channel coast behind the British lines. This, and the surrender of the Belgians on 27 May, resulted in the evacuation of the bulk of the British army from Dunkirk, completed by 4 June. France signed an armistice, on German terms, effective as from 25 June.

Lance Bombardier Seeney awoke to the fact that the war was on:

‘. . .and we were getting an awful drubbing. It was fairly evident that the Germans were very much aware of where we were, and that’s not surprising – I mentioned the recce planes – and we were very severely damaged at that time. There were quite a few casualties, but that was the way it was – it was war, and also, what was so astonishing, almost immediately the roads were chock-a-block with farmers and people coming in from the war areas and retreating towards Rheims, Epernay and the south. It was the audacity of these German aeroplanes – there was little opposition, and also remember that at that time a gaggle of 50 bombers seemed enormous. I know it was nothing like the enormous numbers towards the end of the war, but 50 bombers on the way to bomb. . . And you must remember that, as far as I was concerned, they were coming to me, little Willie. Obviously they were covering an area and they seemed to move towards the south-east, towards Rheims, and there was bombing all the way round there. And then they would come back and they would do this hedge-hopping, coming very low, and the rear gunners on these bombers having a grand old time just shooting up everything in sight. Once again it included me, and I wasn’t a very good soldier – I was quite happy to keep my head down.

Unfortunately, because of the easy way we’d been living, we’d been a bit careless and one of the bombs destroyed all our GTVs – that’s Gun Towing Vehicles – all in one swipe. We had no way of moving our guns. Also, an interesting part about this question of transport was, because of the very heavy winter that we’d passed through – and remember we weren’t accustomed to such things as freeze-ups in big motor vehicles – many were damaged with iced-up engine blocks and so on. They’d been sent back to the Service Corps people for repairs so that at that time there was a huge shortage of vehicles available to move people and things about – they were still being repaired – and I was told that this was a general situation throughout the BEF. In our case we were just one troop of four guns, and we lost their mobility in one swipe. Once again it was panic stations; nobody knew just exactly what was happening. We had certain targets at which we fired, but it was all a bit half-hearted; I suppose it was just a show of strength. After two or three days of this odd situation, news came around that we were going to retreat, we were going to retreat south of the River Aisne, which was in our area. That was fair enough; we seemed to think that would be a good idea, soldiers being what we were – we weren’t all that good. But, unfortunately, we couldn’t take our guns with us, so we just took the blocks and ammunition that was available, we blew that and off we went. We left fairly early in the day, crossed the river and continued till the evening, and there we stopped and there we were, a half battery of the Royal Artillery with no guns. We were a bit stupid.

This is rather an interesting one. They issued us with Boys rifles, and whenever I mention Boys rifles people just simply don’t know there was such a thing, but these things were called Boys rifles. I don’t mean “boys and girls” – it was just the initials of this particular rifle and it fired a .5 bullet. In other words it wasn’t like an ordinary rifle and the recoil was pretty severe, so it was necessary to get on your stomach and use it in that way. These Boys rifles were considered to be anti-tank and, when you think about it, the whole thing was once again, at that particular time of the war, pretty pathetic.

We were given a silhouette of these various German tanks and there were crosses marked on them to tell us that was the place to fire at to put them out of action. There was no question of destroying them, but we could stop them – but you needed to be a brave man. Well I know that the very thought of just waiting around for a tank to turn up so you could get a shot at it didn’t appeal to us very much. We were split up into small groups and we were told to lie around and destroy these tanks when they arrived, which they didn’t, which was just as well.

As I mentioned early on, in the first stage of retreat, we stopped and bivouacked and got ourselves comfortable and then somebody suggested – the other half of the Battery were in the area – we should borrow their GTVs and get back and retrieve these guns. Well, of course, that seemed to be a very good, bright, very dashing thing to do, and then of course the question was volunteers – “You, you and you”, the usual drill – and I found myself one of the people on the way back to where we’d just come from.

By this time, when we re-crossed the Aisne towards Guinecourt, the French had moved in with anti-tank weapons on the south side of the Aisne and were waiting for the Germans, who were close by, to arrive at the river. So our Officer decided we couldn’t hope to pick up the guns, so we backtracked and eventually rejoined our unit.’

For John Campion, manning the guns outside Lille, events following the abrupt ending of the ‘Phoney War’ were equally memorable: