Crossing to France

I grew up on a farm in the West Riding of Yorkshire. When war broke out I went into the army, I was 20.I joined the Royal Scots Guards 8th Battalion, 15th Scottish Division, the Ladies from Hell the Germans called us, because in the First World War they fought in kilts.

At first we were in England looking after the War Defence. Then we went abroad on a big ship over to France (D2 I went). On the journey they fastened us down below deck under a trap door, they banged it to there were no lights, nothing. Frightening, the buzz bombs were overhead, we could hear them coming over and the other sound was the chugging away of the ship.
Anyway when we got out there they lifted the latch up and I said to the naval man, “what did you do that for — why were we locked away down there?” He replied “well if we’d have got bombed and the ship had gone down you’d have all gone down with it and there’d be no panic, no bother that way.” It was shocking.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.