War Experiences

This story was submitted to the people's war site by Henryka McDuff for the BBC and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Stanley Ernest Hodge with his permission and he fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Mr Stanley Ernest Hodge at the age of 15 became a Messenger boy for the ARP (Air Raid Precaution), this entailed running messages from one ARP post to another. At the age of 16 he joined the Port of London (Tilbury Docks) Home Guard until he was called up at the age of 18.

This interview is being conducted with Mr Stanley Ernest Hodge.M.M

“Would you like to tell me about some of your war experiences?”
“My name is Stan Hodge I joined up in 1943 at 18 yeas old with the Essex Regiment and later transferred into the Dorset Regiment for the invasion of Normandy. We landed on the beaches in Normandy at 7.30 Tuesday 6 June 1944 and we were one of the first regiments or first brigades to land and we got held up by machine guns and we were holed up for quite a while and the Sergeant said to me “Come with me; bring your bren gun — we’re going to work out one of these machine guns” So we did and I won a Military Medal for doing that.
“As the Normandy campaign progressed a bit, I joined the 4th battalion of the Dorset Regiment — the 43rd Wessex Division and I went on through Normandy, Belgium, Holland and into Germany and finished up there and after that we went up into Austria.”
“Do you remember the actual year when you went into Holland?”
“Yes it was in 1944.”
“Do you remember the place you went to in Holland?”
“No end of places, Arnhem, Hengelo, Nijmegen, Grosbeek.”
“And how long were you in Holland?”
“On and off for six months. We used to cross from Holland into the borders of Germany and we went everywhere then.
“Were you away from home during the war for five to six years?
“I was only 18 and I was not called up until 1943 so I was only away from home for roughly a year and then came back and went abroad again. I was evacuated when the war broke out to Norfolk just outside of Cromer for six months, and we wanted to come home to Tilbury Docks in Essex and we used to get bombed every night but we did not like being away from home.”
“What other experiences did you have during the war — were you at any time in fear of your life?”
“You know, I always say that I came out of short trousers into long trousers when I joined the army and went to Normandy. It was a bad experience because you saw your friends killed. I remember one time we had eleven objectives to take and they said keep going until you come up against some bad opposition and this particular time we ran into a village which was supposed to be clear and the Germans let us into this village and then they shelled us. I remember this young lad next to me — he had just had his head chopped off by shell fire and I was shell-shocked.
“I did not want to go on any more. I was bomb-happy as they called it. I was crying and did not want to go on. Well I had to go on because, well - it did not happen in our war - but in 1914-18 when the troops got bomb-happy they were classed as cowards, weren’t they, and they were put up against a post and shot. Well I wasn’t going to go back home and say “I’ve come home because I could not take any more”. I am not a coward type of thing.
“A tank crew got hold of me and said “Come on boy”- the tank crews always had a cup of tea on the go — “Drink this cup of tea you’ll be alright.” From that day onwards, that was the making of me - from a boy to man. From then onwards I really became a hard soldier. I have had some bad experiences.
“Arnhem: we tried to get the airborne out; we had to cross over the river in canvas boats with no paddles or anything like that; I could not swim but I made it across the other side; we lost about 250 men trying to get the airborne out which we did. We got so many airborne out.”
“How did they [your colleagues] die in Arnhem?”
“They were drowned, shelled; you put the canvas boat into the water and the Germans could see you — they had night glasses and they’d shell you, mortar you, machine gun you and everything. You had no paddles; you were using rifle butts to get you across the River Rhine which is so fast flowing it took a lot of the boats downstream and men just drowned.”
“What other experiences did you remember I’m sure you have a lot of memories, sad memories how did you feel at the time as a young man what was going on during the war?”
“The biggest fear was on the beaches: that we would not get further than the beaches and we’d end up back in the water — and I could not swim. That’s another thing, you trained for all those months for the invasion but your biggest fear was that before you hit the beach your boat was going to be sunk or you were going to be drowned as you jump into the water. I wanted to be part of it. I did not want to die that way; I wouldn’t mind dying once I’d done my job, took a bullet wound, something like that further on but I did not want to die just like that on the day I want to be part of it. I was only 18. I was a young man. I was still 18 at Arnhem. I spent my 19th birthday in a pig-sty at Arnhem! I had lots of bad experiences but lots of good times, you know what I mean?”
“You must have lost a lot of your friends.”
“Every day you lost someone. You’d do an attack on a village or a town and you could guarantee you’d lost at least 50 men in one attack. Complete companies. You get hardened to all these battles in the end and you just took it in your stride. You never looked round. ‘Charlie’s’ got one — you just walked on. It happened so much. During the battles, you never stopped to go away from your mates: you could not do it.”
“Do you remember some of the places you’ve been to in France during the Normandy invasion?”
“When we landed, we took this place called Asnelles”
“Do you remember what date that was, or what month?
“It was just days after D-Day. Arramanches, Arrandat, Hill 112, a little village called Audrieu. The Canadians had had a battle there. The Germans captured 50 of them and took them away and shot them through the head. The Dorsets were there as well”.
“So that was the beginning of the Normandy invasion.”
“Yes. Inland a bit. Been around Bayeux, Fontaine and so many places you forget them all, really.”
“What was your feeling at the time? How did you feel when this was happening — seeing all these people dying. Do you recall any memory as how you personally felt about it? Did you fear for your life?”
“No, not really; I always looked with the attitude, I thought, you can either get a nice little wound and they send you back home or you get your leg blown off or you could get one that’d kill you. That’s how you looked at it. Its one or the other. I didn’t get a scratch. For an infantryman to go from A to B was one in a thousand.”
“How long were you in Normandy?”
“In Normandy, it wasn’t long, say, three months then we crossed the River Seine and went on into Belgium.”
“Did you go the Belgium straight away, after Normandy?
“Yes, we crossed over the Seine.”
“Which part of Belgium did you go to?
“Went through Brussels. Straight through Brussels, I cannot remember the places, there were so many.
“Where did you go after Belgium?”
“In and out of Holland. They were very good to us, the Dutch people. Very good. It was a bad winter in Holland. Snow and cold. We were up at the Ardennes sector. We were in reserve because it was an American battle,the Battle of Ardennes, at a place called Liege in Belgium. We spent Christmas there in reserve. The Germans were pushing the Americans back. After that it was the Rhine crossing and onwards and upwards through Germany and finished at Bremerhaven.”
“What year was that?”
“1945.”
“The end of the war?”
“Yes.”
“You came straight to England after that?”
“We came home for about seven days’ leave; I cannot remember. We came back because the war in Japan was still going on and they wanted volunteers to come back to train as glider troops so when we got back home we were put into the 4th Battalion the Devonshire Regiment and we were stationed in Uckfield, down in Sussex. We were supposed to have done this glider training, which we didn’t. The war in Japan was finished by the time we got our act together, we went up into Austria with the Russians, the French and the Americans. Nice time in Austria. Vienna and all around. Then I only had about six months left to do and they said “Would you like to go to Hong Kong?” I said “Yes, Thank you very much.” Came home, had another seven days’ leave. Three weeks on a boat to Kong Hong; spent a few months in Hong Kong; three weeks back on a boat. Home; demobbed.”
“Thank you very much.”

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