StanEllis2

StanEllis2
The Phoney War part 2

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 2

Driving the rations lorry to Chatham:
Another job I got there, being the only person who could drive, was to drive the ration lorry. We had to get the provisions from Chatham, we used to drive down there every day. I was driving, there was a corporal in charge of the food, and we used to go down there daily and pick up what was required. But if I’d done that, I didn’t have to go on a night shift. I got a bit more sleep than some. You couldn’t do a night’s shift and then go driving. That might spoil your concentration a bit. We would pick up food and cigarettes- everything they wanted. There was not only us there, there were gunners there, engineers who were running the lights, observation people up in the towers, and they were all Territorials. Sheerness was a proper barracks, a regular garrison, permanent buildings and all. The naval dockyard adjoined it, and there was a Church there as well, which we used whenever we could. Church parade was voluntary, you were never told you’d gotta be there. But quite a few came, and in usual Army fashion, you had to get on parade and get marched up to the church, which was in the actual Wildfire base that the Navy ran. I expect it’s still there. It surprises me that I’ve never been back there, but I imagine I would find it interesting,
as mostly these buildings were permanent things. By this time, once we’d been called up, our Territorial status had been changed to full time. Of all the people there, only about half a dozen were from Sussex, when we got there it was already manned by the people from Gravesend, the Blue Circle cement lot. And they thought- Oh well! We’ve got a job for the whole war here. We won’t have to go abroad. I don’t know if it worked that way or not, because we didn’t stay there all that long. We had plenty of action while we were there. The Blue Circle managers probably became sergeants in the Terriers because they’d had experience of controlling personnel, something like that. I was a mechanic at Russell’s garage in Bexhill. You learned to drive because you’d got to move the vehicles about, so even though you might not be old enough to hold a licence, you’d learned to drive vehicles on and off pits in the garage. I’d joined the Terriers on 2nd September 1939, then we just managed to get this camp in at Dover. At Sheerness, my driving experience got me the driving job, and they just issued me with a licence, just like that. They said, well you can drive then. I think the winters then were a bit more severe, and it was sometimes a bit of a challenge, because it was snowy and icy. We used to go on to Sheerness sea front and do our PE, as they called it- physical exercise. That’s a very cold place. We had to keep moving- it seemed to be freezing out there. That was all part of the experience. I knew quite a bit about vehicles, as I had been working at Russells’s two or three years. I knew how to maintain the vehicles I was driving, I knew quite a bit about mechanics. The privilege I got for being able to drive was I didn’t have to do night work, as I was driving to Chatham by day. There were only two of us, the corporal and I, and we were sort of our own masters. We didn’t stop for tea because there wasn’t anywhere to stop. We could get one at Chatham barracks because there was a cook house there. While he was talking I used to pop round and get a cup of tea. And one for him as well. The cookhouse worked at certain times, we got to know when we could get a cup of tea. Once we’d done a few trips we’d get to know where to go, and pick up some refreshments. We had to load the lorry ourselves, we’d back up to a loading bay, and put the boxes or whatever it was on the back. During the day sometimes there was a lot of activity at Sheerness. The Germans started these day raids, and the RAF sent up fighter squadrons to try and sort them out. We had these barrage balloons and the Germans would give them a burst of machine gun fire and that would finish the balloons, they would come down in flames. They were on a winch, and I was glad I wasn’t on a winch when that lot came down. That was dangerous, but that was how it was arranged. They seemed to be in RAF uniform, all those people that manned the balloons. Probably the RAF regiment. So I had quite an exciting and frightening time at Sheerness. The German bombers used to come over in huge formations, and the barrage used to start up. That used to get them going up high, then the RAF would get going to sort some of them out.
Some Dunkirk survivors come through Sheerness:
Another thing we saw at Sheerness was the Dunkirk evacuees coming in. As you know, they lifted the men from France in all types of boats, and some of them came in to Sheerness so they could be disembarked at the docks. Prior to that, we didn’t know anything had gone wrong in France. We suddenly saw all these boats coming back, discharging all these dishevelled-looking soldiers. British and French came in, and we thought- you know you actually do think: ‘What were they all doing here?’ Then they announced that Dunkirk was taking place. So that’s where they’d all come from. But despite the appeals going out for the boats to help, the first ones we saw were coming back, at Sheerness. And we thought, they’d kept it quiet, because they didn’t want the Germans to increase the pressure on them. As you might say, on those that were still there. They collected boats from all around the coast, with the owners, and fortunately the weather was reasonable and they could get across the Channel, reasonably easily. They were of course subject to the attacks of the German airforce, but they were well looked after by the RAF. The fighters kept them all off. As I say, they don’t tell you anything, or in the news, and then all of a sudden you see all these people coming back. Then when we saw French soldiers coming off as well, we thought- something has gone terribly wrong. Then of course it was announced that they were evacuating the BEF from Dunkirk. So that’s another thing- it’s all action at Sheerness. The evacuees came back to other places, the nearest one was Dover, but we never spoke to any of them. We were on duty, and you could see that they were in a bit of a desperate condition, some of them. It was a long journey by small boat, and also, they had had a pretty rough time even before they got on the boats. The Dunkirk evacuation took place before the Blitz, roughly at the end of that summer. Then there was the Blitz, but the Germans kept trying, all the time. They kept the raids going whenever they could. They had been persistent for some time. It amazed me that they got so many off at Dunkirk, because the German airforce could have torn them to pieces. The RAF was manning a shield to stop them. The German bombers came right the way through. They bombed many places, including Belfast, which I’ll come to later in my story. We did about a year at Sheerness, and then they must have thought, we’d had it soft for long enough! And they started dispersing us around the country. I remained a private, or Sapper by another name (the equivalent rank) all the time I was at Sheerness. I eventually got to be a corporal as the war went on, but I had a bit of privilege driving that lorry- I got a lot more sleep than some of them. And, of course, I missed being in the British Expeditionary Force. I wasn’t eighteen, and it probably saved me from going to France, and coming back the hard way. Some of my comrades were local boys from Hastings and Bexhill, and I still see some of them today. Sometimes we would go and see relatives, and I would drive all the way to Bexhill without signposts- well I say I knew the way. I might have had a few surprises, I can say. Particularly at that level crossing just outside Battle, it’s a different angle there, and if you go too fast you fly in the air. I couldn’t see to judge my speed, so I hit it quite hard, then all of a sudden we came down again…A few comments from my passengers! That was at night. The headlamps were shielded off apart from the slits (which gave the only light). There were no road signs. I don’t remember getting lost, but it must have been pretty lucky that I didn’t get lost. After this session at Sheerness where all the action was, they decided to post us to Northern Ireland, with a field company, Royal Engineers.

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