StanEllis1

StanEllis1
The Phoney War part 1

Hello, my name is Ellis Stanley, Army Service number 2092841. I have written my memoirs of World War Two as I lived it. I served through the war from first day to last, and served as a vehicle mechanic, reaching the rank of Corporal. I was a soldier in the Army firstly in the UK, then in North Africa, and finally in Italy and Greece. After Victory in Europe, I was posted to Italy again until I was returned to Aldershot and demobbed in 1946. These memoirs have been edited to conform to People’s War standards, and are spread over 12 title pages, and cover my service in locations as listed below. They have been transcribed by Andrew Voyce, an Open University graduate.

StanEllis1 UK- The Phoney War part 1
StanEllis2 UK- The Phoney War part 2
StanEllis3 UK- Northern Ireland and preparations for the desert
StanEllis4 North Africa- The journey by troopship and the Battle of El-Alamein
StanEllis5 North Africa- Active service with the Eighth Army
StanEllis6 North Africa- The final defeat of the Afrika Korps
StanEllis7 Italy and Greece- Arrival in Italy and joining the Battle of Monte Cassino
StanEllis8 Italy and Greece- Monte Cassino
StanEllis9 Italy and Greece- Some matters of everyday soldiering
StanEllis10 Italy and Greece- The end of the war for me: Victory in Europe
StanEllis11 Demob- Time after the cessation of hostilities
StanEllis12 Demob- Postscript

The Phoney War part 1

The TA and initial training and callup from 2.9.39
We knew that war was coming and our first move was to the Ordnance Yard at Eastbourne. I had joined the Territorial Army. Some of our unit lived in Eastbourne, some in Bexhill. The only time I had been out of Bexhill with the Army was to Dover, to Swingate Camp. ( Ellis has a picture of his hundred or so mates there, at camp. It is an excellent photo with plenty of detail for so many people. There are some of the first type of radar masts behind the group. There had also been some masts on the Pevensey Marsh Road near Bexhill. The Dover photo is taken very near the South Foreland Light. The photo includes men from Hastings, Eastbourne and Bexhill. The photo is taken at a week’s camp, under canvass in fortunately good weather. Some of the men in the photo, Ellis still bowls with). After the men got together at Eastbourne, we went to the Milton Barracks at Gravesend, on the 16th of September. War had already been declared (on 3rd September) and we took over the barracks there in Gravesend. They were picking out squads of men to go to France at that time, as part of the BEF, British Expeditionary Force. A few of us were too young. You had to be over 18, and I wasn’t. We were sorted out, a few of us, and we were told we couldn’t go, which we were quite upset about, really. As it happened, it probably saved our lives, because a lot of them that did go were killed, and those who weren’t killed were taken prisoner. At that stage in the war, it meant they were prisoners for about six years. You can imagine. Luck was on our side. Eventually after kicking our heels around Gravesend barracks, it was decided — we were posted to Garrison Point Fort at Sheerness (on the Isle of Sheppey on the north Kent coast).

Manning the searchlight station at Sheerness
That fort, it was the Fortress Company, Royal Engineers. They were manning searchlights down on the water’s edge, which swept the Thames estuary looking for German E-Boats, that sort of thing- enemy craft. There were six lights at Sheerness, two on Southend Pier (on the opposite bank of the estuary) which was roughly opposite us, and some more on the Isle of Grain (further west, towards London, from Sheppey, and on the Kent side.) So they had it well covered. There were one or two attempts by the Germans to attack on the water up the Thames. Also, German aircraft were attracted by the searchlights, and they would come in and machine-gun down the beam. ‘That was a bit scary, to say the least.’ The searchlight emplacements were permanent things, concrete, and it had a parapet about two feet high. The only way the operator could be safe was to lay down on the floor behind the parapet. So, if the bullets took the light out, they wouldn’t take the operator out as well. That was an experience. Quite frightening really. Sheerness was quite a lively place. We had the searchlights, that was all night work. The place was also protected by a barrage balloon (a large inflated pod to be a hazard to enemy aircraft.) The Battle of Britain was going on above. The RAF and the German airforce sorting each other out. The fort at Sheerness was armed by two naval guns, six inch guns. It had anti-aircraft pom-pom guns. Bofors anti-aircraft guns. ‘It was quite an occasion when something happened there- there was a lot going on.’ The mouth of the Medway comes out there as well as the Thames, and that was the entrance to Chatham Docks which was a base for destroyers. So when something happened they would very often come out, more or less flat out. They would be using their anti-aircraft armament and everything. So it was quite exciting but quite frightening at times. Some people called this stage of the war ‘The Phoney War’. What bit of action was where we were. I was there for about a year. The Germans used to come and shoot these balloons down with their machine guns. They would creep in low, and when they were shooting these balloons down, the RAF would get to hear and chase them out. At the end of my year there, things had started to quieten down a bit. I had another job there. There were searchlight operators, there just to keep the searchlights burning. The controls were in a high observation post. The controllers were sitting up high and they had a tiller thing and they could steer that light wherever. They could elevate it or depress it, whatever they wanted to do. But the operator in the emplacement, what he had to do was keep clear of the lamp, because if they moved it, he could get knocked over. They were permanent concrete emplacements, motorised, with steel shutters across the front, and the whole operation of the searchlight was controlled by traversing it by motors. The searchlight was operated by carbon, with two carbon elements that would meet, and there was a spark between the two. The operator had to make sure that those carbons were kept in the right position, he could adjust that. He couldn’t adjust where the beam was going to point. I didn’t actually man the lights myself, but several of my colleagues did, and they found out that the place to be was on the floor behind the parapets. So if they hit the lamp, it destroyed that, but it didn’t destroy the operator. We didn’t need too many replacement lamps, because there was so much opposition, so much anti-aircraft fire, and also, the RAF being above, it was a pretty dodgy place for them to come in. But they sometimes came in at night with their E-Boats, because they had the cover of darkness then. Whether they could see what they were doing is another thing. If our lights were exposed, they would just give it a short burst.
The Royal Navy joins in out of Chatham:
And the Navy would come out of Chatham Docks and chase them away. That was quite impressive, they were quite fast, those destroyers. A big plume of water used to come out of the back, like a motor boat. They would chase the surface boats away. We were quite close to some of these at Sheerness. There was a Naval dockyard at Sheerness, called HMS Wildfire. They had a handy swimming bath over there. We had one night a week when we could go there and swim. Actually I learned to swim there. Prior to that I was not a swimmer. It was not so common to be able to swim in those days, and our family didn’t have a lot of money to spare, so if we wanted to swim we went down to the beach. I improved my swimming no end at Wildfire. It was a lovely big bath, certainly as big as those used locally now. Another thing was that the generators were in the fort itself. Lister diesel generators. When we got a warning, they would be started up. They were hand started by a big cranking handle. Once they were running, the electrician would ‘put them on the board’, as they used to say. In other words, the power went out to the light. Then the operator would get an order from the control to expose, or whatever. It was remarkable how all this fitted together. The control towers were high on that fort and had a view over probably all the Thames Estuary. I expect the Germans knew that the observation towers controlled the lights, because it was all permanent- it was there in peacetime.
Comrades from the local area:
Most of the people working there were Territorials, they mainly came from the Gravesend area. And they all worked for the (nearby) Blue Circle cement company. How the Blue Circle cement company went on after they all got called up. I don’t know. They all knew each other, which was a friendly arrangement. So the Germans would attack the beams, but they wouldn’t attack the observation posts, because they wouldn’t see them in the dark. They would have attacked the observation posts if they had known where to shoot. They would have attacked anything. Same as they did around Bexhill. Especially if they’re coming back from a raid, they won’t take bombs back with them. If they see something likely, they will drop all their bombs. They use all their bullets on the way home. So we were in the thick of it in 1940. What action there was, was in the Thames Estuary. The German airforce during the Blitz, would follow the Thames by night, especially on moonlit nights. Sheerness and Detling on a hill near Maidstone were lively places. What is now the Kent County Showground was a field absolutely full of anti-aircraft guns. They were going like Billy-O. I passed them when I was coming back from leave, and they were all blasting away at something in the sky. That was another impressive thing. It wasn’t just Bofors they had, they had long-range guns to protect the London area. There was a ring of anti-aircraft guns all around London. The Germans would attack at any point, and Chatham Dockyard was a target. Sheerness itself had a dockyard, and there were all sorts of targets they could have zeroed in on. London suffered a terrific amount of damage, and there were people with us who had family in London. That was very harassing for them. In fact, there was a system where they could get leave and go home, to see if it was still there. To see if the family had been damaged by bombs. It was very worrying time for people who lived there and who had family there. At one point, after a big final effort, the Germans switched to night raids. Some of these bombers got damaged, and they used to come in ever so low, to find a reasonable place to land, without crashing it. That was quite spectacular- a big German bomber circling round overhead and looking for a place to land. Of course, everything that could be, was shooting at it! Desperate times, yes indeed.

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