Brussels, Winter 1944/45

Arriving in Belgium late in 1944, Dad's company (probably 703rd Construction/Artisan) was billeted over the winter in Vilvoorde, north of Brussels. Reading other Royal Engineers memoirs, I surmise that this is where his stories about guarding a POW camp came from. He did not smoke cigarettes, and used his army ration to trade with the POWs, many of whom were desperate for a smoke. This is where the German wristwatch came from that he wore for the rest of his life.


On New Year's Eve, 1944, Dad and a group of his comrades were photographed on the roof of the apartment block where they were billeted. The photographer, the apartment owner or manager, included his little daughter, Jeannine Den Zandt.

On the back of the photo on the left is inscribed:

 den 31-12-44
Jeannine Den Zandt
2, Constantin Meunier plaats 2
Korst(?), Brussel
Geb. [born] den 1-12-42

Two unknown children in Vilvoorde, 1945

 The company were called out briefly during the Battle of the Bulge, to a pavilion in a park, east of Brussels, but saw no action. They went Antwerp at the end of May, road building with a Road Construction Company. The company was broken up and became an Army Troop Company, which went to the Hook of Holland after a weeks leave. Dad obtained his 'B' release (early as he was a tradesman) and he returned to England via Calais. He was demobbed at Halifax, and received a demob suit at York.

Dad, Brussels March 1945

The War Diaries for the 703rd for 1940 and 1944/5 can be found in the National Archives, Kew. My transcriptions are available here.

Normandy 1944

At least two family members landed in Normandy in 1944. One survived (my Dad), and one didn't.

Dad had spent three rather peaceful and sunny years on Gibraltar with the 703rd Artisan Company, Royal Engineers. Here he was able to observe preparations for pivotal battles elsewhere (Malta, North Africa, Sicily) but stayed well out of harm's way. However, this blessed situation was shortly to change.

He sailed for England on September 25th, 1943, and after about a week at sea, arrived at the King George V dock at Clydesbank. Then to Leicester, Wigston Fields, Queniborough (Royal Ordance Factory) near Rearsby, and Rudgswick near Horsham. Then to Aldershot (Gibraltar barracks) in Dec 1943 for a six-week intensive training course. They spent a few months at Weston on the Wirral peninsular until July 1944, except for a while in June 1944 spent in Upper Norwood, East London, cleaning up after V1 attacks. Then to Newhaven ready for crossing the channel.

On August 8th the company crossed to Normandy in a U.S. Army LCT and landed at Sword beach. They camped in an orchard near Bayeux until early September. That is all he ever said about this time, a time that encompassed the titanic struggle for nearby Caen.

Remains of the floating harbour, Arromanches, 2005

Two of Dad's granddaughters, Arromanches, 2005

After the breakout from Caen, Dad crossed the Seine at Vernon on a pontoon bridge (probably a Bailey Bridge built by his company). Thence to Brussels via Amiens, Poix, Evreux, Charlesvoix, Tournay and Mechelin. 

The War Diaries for the 703rd for 1940 and 1944/5 can be found in the National Archives, Kew. My transcriptions are available here.
 
Dad had an Aunt Louisa (Johnson), who had a son Charles who died in the battle for Caen in July 1944. Unfortunately he never said (or knew?) Louisa's married name (they some distance away in Desford, Leicestershire) and contact had been lost a long time ago), and Johnson is a very common name. However, after some digging I found a Louisa Johnson married a fellow called Burton in 1912 in Dad's home town of Worksop, and they lost their son Charles, a Trooper fighting with the 2nd Derbyshire Yeomanry, Royal Armoured Corps in "Western Europe" on 6th July 1944. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lists his grave in the Hermannville Cemetery, 13 km north of Caen. The site www.forces-war-records.co.uk lists a Charles Thomas Burton as having been born in Lincolnshire but lived in Leicestershire. This is suggestive, as the Johnson family lived in South Lincolnshire before moving to Worksop and thence to Desford.

But then my cousin tells me his Mum talked of a cousin who died in Normandy called Walter Johnson, so unless Louisa married another Johnson (not impossible), he has to be Harry or William's son ( two other brothers who survived to adulthood were bachelors). Harry did indeed have son called Walter, but he seems to have died in 1971. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission reports two Walter Johnsons in the British Army died in 1944: one died on D-Day and had a father named William, but his family were from London, and "my" William Johnson, lived in Doncaster.

So at the moment, the betting is on Charles Thomas Burton.

Gibraltar

The Walthams in Gibraltar 1940-43, 1984, 2008 and 2014

Fresh from the Battle of Britain in Kent, Dad arrived at Gibraltar with the 703rd Construction (later Artisan) Company, Royal Engineers, on the S.S. Neuralia on 25th September 1940 (in his recollection - Arnold Hague's database lists the Neuralia as part of convoy OG43 which departed Liverpool on September 20th and arrived October 3rd). Dad was a sapper. The cruise from Liverpool through U-boat-infested waters with 56-ship convoy took two weeks, a large portion of which was spent simply assembling all the ships. They - the sappers at least - didn't know where they were going. They arrived at Gibraltar just after the Vichy French air-raid that was carried out in reprisal for the abortive landings at Dakar. Dad stayed on the Rock for three years, and only returned once, in 1984, for a brief holiday. 

Sixty-eight years after Dad's first arrival, in July 2008, his youngest granddaughter and I arrived at La Linea (just over the border in Spain) on a Portillo bus after a pleasant 5 hour ride from Granada. Six years later, I returned, with my sister, wife and Dad's middle granddaughter.

 

S.S.Neuralia

 

Dad, Gibraltar airport, 1984

 The first place Dad lived upon arrival was "Gavino's Asylum", Prince Edward's Road, a home for "28 aged paupers and 18 orphans of both sexes" (according to an 1881 guidebook). The Gibraltarian residents would have been evacuated from the Rock at this time. The company stayed there for one week. Now (2008), the building is being turned into luxury apartments, but the old inscription on the facade remains:
 

Victoria Reg.et Imp. regnante

hanc alam

et pecuniis legatis a

Guglielmo Eschauzier

viro optime

de concivibus inopibus merito

ædificavere

Iohannis Gavino fideicommissarii

Anno Domini MDCCCXCV

Gavino's Asylum

After a brief stay in Gavino's Asylum, Dad and his company lived at Hargrave's Parade for the next three years. Sleeping arrangements were rudimentary. The straw bedding was burned periodically for reasons of hygiene, and blowlamps were used for dealing with bed bugs on the iron frames (they exploded rather enjoyably when the metal became hot). One fellow had to have sandbags placed around his bed because of incontinence brought on by heavy drinking.
 

Hargrave's Parade ((Plazoleta de los Artificieros) 1984

Hargrave's Parade (2014) has had a facelift

I recall him saying something about living in a "Spitfire crate" - a wooden packing crate used for transporting Spitfires which were erected on the Rock before flying on to North Africa or Malta. I still have some small boxes he made from the wood from these crates.

Dad learned to swim while on the Rock, in Catalan Bay, occasionally watching friends dive into shoals of jellyfish and emerging quickly and painfully. He also swam in the pools in the newly discovered Lower St. Michael's Cave. He had a stalactite as a souvenir for many years but eventually threw it away. (We noticed in 2008 that any stalactite that could have been broken off, had been). 

The lake in Lower St. Michael's Cave, where Dad swam in 1943

Spelunking in the Lower Cave

From a 1943 Gibraltar newspaper.

One of Dad's favourite pieces of music was the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria Rusticana; I learn from the BBC's People's War website that this piece was played each night over one RE barrack's tannoy at lights out - maybe his?

Postcard home 21st February 1941

Dad, somewhere on Gib, 15th June 1941

Dad's Royal Engineers Company, Alameda Gardens, 3rd October 1942

 Written on back: "Here are some of the local [Worksop, Notts.] lads. Back row extreme right is Jack Farmer. Fourth and fifth from right, same row is Albert Caudwell and Jack Odlin from Middleton's. Third from left on same row is Cliff Wardale of Welbeck who used to work on the same firm. Third row extreme right is Colin Ellis, late of the Council (Harry [Dad's brother] knows him). Hope you recognise seventh from the right on that row [Dad]. This only leaves one more local lad and that is Dick Slater who is fourth from left, second row."

Alameida Gardens 2014: the bandshell and the Y-shaped tree are still there

Dad often spoke of the intense aviation activity on Gibraltar's cramped airfield (like many an earth-bound foot-slogging soldier, he loved watching planes). He witnessed the initial stages of Operations Pedestal and Torch. He watched the Italian airforce dropping bombs on the hills in Spain (which was safer than trying to drop them on the Rock - for both sides). At some point a squadron of defecting Vichy French fighter aircraft arrived from North Africa; he remembered they were Dewoitines with a snake painted down the side of the fuselage.
 

Dewoitine 520 of GC1/3, note the snake on the fuselage

Dewoitine model photo link

 One of Dad's tales of Gibraltar which used to delight us as children was that of Jock Evans. Jock returned to barracks drunk one night with a cigarette in his mouth. The cigarette dropped onto the bed as he lay down, and, sometime later while he was asleep, his trousers burst into flame. A friend cut off his burning garments with a jack knife and Jock was rushed to hospital. Upon discharge he did not return to barracks but stowed away on an aircraft carrier then in the harbour. It transpired later that he had learned that his girlfriend back in England was pregnant. Once Jock and the carrier arrived in England he went straight to her, and they quickly got married. Immediately after he turned himself in to the Military Police at the nearest army camp. Eventually he returned to the Engineers on Gibraltar.

  During his time on the Rock, Dad built gun emplacements; at least one of which was still there (but bulldozed to side of beach at Sandy Bay) in 1984. He was, and remained, a carpenter, and I think mostly made concrete shuttering.

Dad inspecting his handiwork, Sandy Bay, 1984

Still there in 2014

  About the 24th September 1943 Dad met his brother Bob walking down Main Street. He had just arrived on the Cameronia, the boat Dad left on the next day (convoy MKF24). Bob was in the RAF and had had a bad time on Manston airfield in the Battle of Britain. After Gibraltar Uncle Bob went on a protracted tour of Africa by air, which he seemed to enjoy hugely: Dad had a photo of him wearing a fez and grinning. 

S.S. Cameronia

Uncle Bob, WWII, somewhere warm