A Rifleman's Diary: Kicking Against the Pricks

A Rifleman’s Diary

(Kicking against the pricks)

by Eric Fawbert

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©

Copyright 2007 Eric Fawbert.

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ISBN: 978-1-4251-5417-2

ISBN: 978-1-4251-5419-6

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1 It’s the Infantry for me! (to 26th Jun 1940)

Chapter 2 Basic training (27th Jun 1 940-2nd Jan 1941)

Chapter 3 Advanced Training (3rd Jan 1941-29th Sep 1941)

Chapter 4 We’re off! (30th Sep 1941-29th Nov 1941)

Chapter 5 The Days of Innocence (30th Nov 1 941-31st Jan 1 942)

Chapter 6 The Lull before the Storm (1st Feb 1 942-1 5th May 1 942)

Chapter 7 Knightsbridge to Alam Haifa (16th May 1 942-11th Sep 1 942)

Chapter 8 Alamein and the Chase (12th Sep 1942-31st Jan 1943)

Chapter 9 And on to Tunis (1st Feb 1 943-11th May 1 943)

Chapter 10 And now for home! Well-maybe not! To Italy (12th May 1943-4th Jan 1944)

Chapter 11 To England, Home and Beauty! (5th Jan 1944-2nd Jun 1944)

Chapter 12 The Invasion (3rd Jun 1944-31st Jul 1944)

Chapter 13 Breakout from Caen (1st Aug 1944-31st Aug 1944)

Chapter 14 Through France to Holland (1st Sep 1 944-2nd Jan 1 945)

Chapter 15 Holland to Kiel Canal (3rd Jan 1 945-8th May 1 945)

Chapter 16 ‘Der krieg ist zuende!’ (9th May 1 945-30th Jul 1 945)

Chapter 17 And after (31st Jul 1945-6th Jun 1946) August 1 945

Appendix A Affirmation re Griffiths DCM

Appendix B Food! Glorious food! (How we longed to have some!)

Appendix C Churchill

Appendix D Thumbnail Sketches

Appendix E Random Thoughts

Glossary

I am dedicating this book to my two children

Helen and Janet

They never at any time asked me Daddy, what did you do in the war? so I never had the opportunity to ‘bum my chat’ with untrue tales of derring-do. I’m determined though to inform them of my pride in my part in the war, and it is best done with the diary entries and stories arising.

Acknowledgements

This book was first printed as a private venture for the interest of my family and friends. I was encouraged throughout by a very good friend, Mrs Hazel Loutsis, who undertook the onerous task of converting my drafts to ‘fair’ copies and thence to the printer’s computer format-this latter process being beyond my ken! Thank you, dear Hazel.

The photographs however, were produced by another good friend, Mrs Lesley Cutting, an expert in computer photography-fortunately-because the originals were mostly the scruffy efforts of amateurs and well in need of enhancement! My thanks to you also, Lesley.

It was the enthusiastic reception by my friends that gave me the idea of trying my luck with a book for a wider publication, so I turned to another good friend, Mr Rodger Hunt, who is a veritable wizard with computers, and I have taken much advantage of his good nature by exploiting his skills in adapting the book. Thank you Rodger.

Foreword

You may well ask why someone should be writing memoirs of his military service in a war that ended 60 years ago, especially as during those years, so many others had ‘got their blow in fust!’-well, fair enough-but I’d still like to explain why I persist.

I served 6 years as a ranker in the 1st Battn the Rifle Brigade, from the 27th June 1940 to the 6th June 1946, and four of those years were ‘in action’ in North Africa, Italy and NW Europe from D2. I was lucky enough to get through ‘without a scratch’, although my nerves were beginning to fray after 4 years of it, and the war’s end came nicely in time before I became ‘bomb happy’.

Throughout my service I kept a daily pocket-size diary, casually in the year or so of training, but most diligently during my active service and it is those daily entries that give accuracy to my reminiscences. The transcribing of the smudgy, minute writing, was quite a job, especially as I had to resort to a magnifying glass at times (my sight is still very good, but I can’t expect to have the ‘hawk-eyes’ of my youth), and my typing has been, literally, one-finger! However, I learnt where the letters were on the keyboard, and plonked them out fairly quickly, although if or when it comes to ‘fair-copies’ for printing, I shall call in an expert! The job gave me pleasure in reminiscing and re-living the excitement of my youth; after all, I didn’t choose to give up six years of what are meant to be the best years of one’s life-six years, I stress, not six weeks, and including the first four years of my marriage (my wife wasn’t keen on the idea either), so why not take pleasure in reminiscing in my old age?-after all, there’s not much else to do in your late eighties!

Whatever my intentions were when writing the diaries, they ‘fell by the wayside’ during the post-war struggle to cope with more urgent living, and so they laid dormant in my attic for 60 years, until I dug them out for interest and to relieve the boredom of sedentary old age.

I was never one for joining ‘Old Comrades’ associations, or ‘chewing the cud’ over the war, nor Remembrance parading, but I have always felt chagrined that my 4 years of active fighting service received no more recognition than very modest promotion, and campaign medals that were awarded also to base-wallah non-combatants and suchlike. I’ve also felt strongly about the deficiencies and ‘cock-ups’ of incompetent seniors who ‘got away with it’, so I’ve expanded the original intention of my ‘family’ book, to express those feelings. I do regret though that they have been written so late.

It was only recently that an author friend, impressed by the detail of my diaries, and the photographs and souvenirs that I have in support, encouraged me to write a book. If I can make it interesting reading, it could be a ‘best seller’, a memorial to me and of interest to my children-but perhaps best of all, it could even find a place in The Rifle Brigade library, alongside the recollections of Rifleman Harris in the Peninsular War!-hmm, perhaps not.

The book is intended primarily to be an interesting recall of my experiences as a ranker and the drain on one’s human recourses over years of warfare, be it of adapting to years of daily mayhem, but also of being the ‘dogsbody’ for every bit of physical graft required in the field. If read as a whole, the 2,000 or so diary entries would weary the reader as I wearied of the war, so I’ve edited out those of little import, and most of the private and domestic items.

In the course of transcribing, I’ve been surprised to read of events, some of consequence, that I’d quite forgotten, and indeed, some that I still can’t recall-but, they’re in the diaries, so they must be so! The stories that I tell are of events that I do remember well.

As the reader will note, the war was mainly of movement (certainly in the desert) with comparatively short periods of intense static action. My Regiment’s role was as motorized infantry in support of the tanks, which comprised the major striking force of most 1939-45 battles. Prior to getting on to 6 pdr anti-tank guns in June 1 942, I was a machine-gunner in Bren carriers (and also on occasion afterwards, e.g. at Alamein); in general however, my two roles caused me to miss out on some of the less pleasant traditional roles of infantrymen (e.g. foot-slogging and hand-to-hand fighting, for which I was most grateful!)-but of course, no infantryman can escape listening posts, patrols and guards.

I believe I made a good ‘active service’ soldier, but my modest promotions to the less-than-dizzy height of Lance Sergeant came tardily, and grudgingly. It may be that I was not really worthy of high rank anyway, and I certainly did not strive for promotion, content to be ‘one of the lads’, but later events changed my mind, so that I did find it galling when so many of my inferiors in intelligence and battle performance were ‘made-up’ long before me. The obvious reason (to me!) was my proclivity to ‘kick against the pricks’ in having a mind of my own and expressing my opinions, which weren’t always welcome. However, throughout my life, my maxim has been-To thine own self be true and I have no regrets for it. In the event, and for a long time after being ‘made-up’ to full Corporal, I was used on Sergeants’ work, and in effect the Regiment initiated the ‘three for the price of two’ policy!

They got around to giving me a third stripe eventually, but at the time of my demob., it wasn’t substantive’ so I ‘retired’ as Corporal.

I emphasise that this book is based on facts and opinions known to me at the time, the whole point being to give an authentic view of the war as experienced and read on site by a front-line ranker. As far as I can recall, I never saw a newspaper at any time in my overseas service, nor indeed any authoritative news source, so that when I did return home after two and a half years in N. Africa and Italy, I was surprised to learn that we 8th Army blokes were all singing ‘Lily Marlene’ and that we had a Forces Sweetheart called Vera Lynn-I’d never heard the song, and I only knew Vera Lynn because I’d seen her making her debut in 1938 at Ilford Empire in Ambrose’s Band, second string to Evelyn Dall. Then I went off for a year or so to Germany via Normandy.

Having read my diaries for the first time after all these years, only now do I realize how lucky I was to get through those ‘active service’ years unscathed. So many of my fellow Riflemen paid the full penalty by not ‘making it’, and I’m surprised to read of how many of my immediate colleagues were wounded in some greater or lesser degree. I must have had a guardian angel looking after me, starting from the day he/she guided me away from the RAF. I am eternally grateful.

I saw a photograph the other day of Montgomery in his ‘everyday’ uniform, but nonetheless ‘sporting’ all his medal ribbons, and it gave me to think (that sounds Churchillian!-sorry!) how all medal owners affect to be modest about them, but how many of them don’t mind flaunting them on all possible occasions. Most Subalterns (the commissioned ranks with which I’m most familiar) were obsessed with getting a ‘bravery’ medal to take home for Mummy and the girls, some of them even prepared to earn it. I would have liked one too, I’ll admit-well, we are all ‘grown-up kids’ aren’t we?-and the ladies all love a hero-but I had no intention of ‘sticking my neck out’ for one! Also, I would have liked to finish the war with a higher rank, one that impressed, but one can’t have everything, can one? So I settled, with gratitude, for being alive.

After reading this book, I hope the reader appreciates my unadorned ‘warts ‘n’ all’ account of my experiences, no assistance of professional writers, no waffle about ‘the sun sinking over Salisbury Plain’ etc, no manipulation of the facts-and no patronising endorsement by Army ‘brass’. Refreshing, isn’t it?

Eric Fawbert

Storrington, 30th September 2007

Chapter 1

It’s the Infantry for me!

(to 26th Jun 1940)

It was not my intention to go into the Army in the first place. My family had no military background and my parents were the most pacific of folk. The Army was the least popular of the three Services, and with memories of the First World War horrors still in people’s minds, the infantry was the least popular. I certainly wasn’t interested, didn’t even give it a thought until the time came for me to register in 1 940. On reflection, I realize that that statement is not strictly true; I was a keen motorcyclist in the thirties, and one of my motorcycling friends told me of a Territorial unit, the Queen Victoria Rifles, that was being equipped with powerful sidecar outfits, with machine-guns fitted in the ‘chairs’. He joined, and no doubt enjoyed the boozy evenings, but that didn’t appeal to me, nor that the Drill Hall was at the other side of London. In the event, the Battalion did not go over to France until the Dunkirk evacuation, when they were hastily sent over to Calais as Infantry, together with the 1st Battn Rifle Brigade and a Battn of the KRRs (Kings Royal Rifle Corps), to draw pressure off Dunkirk. They fought until being over-run, and the survivors were made prisoners. My friend was one of the survivors, and he spent the rest of the war in German prison camps-so much for the motorbikes!

My interests were very much inclined to flying, as the development of flight in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s had really captured the imagination of most young men who’d grown up with it-certainly with me and my pals. Thinking back now, it’s ironic that we did not foresee that the RAF was going to be the least pacific of the Services, that the glamour of the fighter ‘planes, which was the main attraction, would be overshadowed by the brutal work of great big, lumbering bomber ‘planes, where glamour was the last thing that could be said about them. The bomber crews were the real sacrificial heroes of the RAF, and I’m certainly glad that my argumentative nature talked me into the Army-I got through the war intact, whereas I might well have been one of the 56,000 air-crew who didn’t-but what brought about my argumentative character? To answer that, I need to give a summary of my family life, from being born in 1915, about the time of the battle of Loos in France.

My parents were a good example of North Country ‘working class’ folk, hard-working, necessarily frugal, of Yorkshire stock and Huguenot heritage-and devout Primitive Methodists. Their five children (well six, to be precise, but one died before I was born) were all boys, and we were all given a sound Christian up-bringing; the fact that I am now agnostic does not detract in any way from the benefits which that religious grounding established in me-I simply came to believe that mankind is not capable of understanding God and the Creation.

Dad’s job was a bricklayer, and at the time of my birth, he had taken the family into south Durham, directed (I think) into the unpleasant wartime work of maintenance of blast furnaces. I was the youngest but one of the sons, and I’m now the only survivor of the family. Dad was a quiet, most lovable man, a staunch Trade Union and Labour Party man; he held his views quietly, as was his nature, but, except for the eldest, his sons were not so placid. The second and third sons became very active in both Trade Union affairs and politics, and in those days of repression there was need of ‘angry men’ to fight for better conditions. Our newspapers were the Daily Herald and the Daily Worker, the latter being a disreputable rag of a newspaper of the Communist Party; the Herald was the Labour Party’s paper, and as I listened only to the dance music on the ‘wireless’, I was much influenced by my brothers, and the newspapers, even though I was not intensely interested. I had my own interests, when time permitted: I was working long hours in my job with the Dagenham Council, and studying for exams, and my spare time was taken up with a range of leisure activities of an active nature. Girls were just an interesting ‘side line’ until I met my ‘one and only’ at which time my unattached pals eased themselves away, and left we ‘courting’ types to concentrate more on romance! As Muriel (yes, that was her name) made a good pillion passenger, we got around quite a bit on my motorbike.

One of my motorbike pals, Jack McKinnen, applied and was accepted for, a flying crew Short Service Commission in the RAF in 1938, and was trained as a Navigator. He flew in Blenheims, completed a tour of 30 flights, but was killed when motorcycling home on leave during the war. Jack loved talking motorbikes, and I well remember how often he and I had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky-he was a good friend. Anyway, in the course of his Service, he called on me on his first leave, and complained bitterly of the snobbery and class distinction in the RAF; now that and my ‘working class’ background, were what conditioned me when I attended for my medical etc. after registering for RAF flying crew in early 1