Memories of an Artillery Gunner Part One - From enlisting in the TA to Dunkirk

Memories of an Artillery Gunner Part One — From enlisting in the TA to Dunkirk

Part One of an oral history interview with Mr. Jack Clifton conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“I joined the Bedfordshire Yeomanry, the Territorials in November 1938, I was 18. I was called-up, I was still 18, I was called-up in August 1939 and de-mobbed in March 1946. It was very popular to join the Territorials at that time. There was a lot of propaganda urging people ‘to do their bit’ and to me, the outdoor type, it seemed just the job. I asked my Dad and he said, ‘Certainly.’ So I joined as I say in November 1938. I was called-up in August 1939. It was announced over the radio.

I joined the Artillery, I was a Gunner, it’s not a Private in the Artillery, you are Gunners. There were all sorts of people there. Solicitors joined up, accountants and all sorts of people, it was good fun actually.

There were lots of 18 year olds because when war started and we were eventually shipped to France, some of them were too young to go. They didn’t send you officially if you were 18, you had to be 19. I forget the exact wording but it boiled down to ‘All members of Territorial Regiments report NOW!’ So we got up, said, “Cheerio” to the Governor (the Manager), I worked for the Electricity and off we went, that was in August, all but one of the juniors left the Showrooms.

We weren’t allowed to go home so we had to sleep out, we were billeted. I forget the name of the road but it was one of those off Ashburnham Road. Very nice people there they were too, they always thought it was a great joke, me living in Bedford and being billeted on them! We used to eat at the Crofton Rooms, that was a store place, all the food and everything was stored there.

After a while we moved to Thornbury near Bristol and we were allotted guns, in Bedford of course we didn’t have them. They dished us out with 9.2 Howitzer guns that had been rusting in a museum somewhere from the 1914 war. They were cleaned up and they found some shells and eventually we went to Salisbury Plain and fired them, they are very accurate by the way. But the shells, they were a terrific weight, you couldn’t lift them.

I was in the Survey Section and you had to pick out aiming points, you line the gun up and you were given so many degrees right or left and pushed it round. We had to draw a panorama and pass it down to the Officer in Charge of the guns and that was it. On the practice thing you got on a gun sight, Salisbury Plain was full of them so it was easy.

We were in the Bedfordshire Yeomanry but very soon the name changed to just a Battery number. After training we went to France. We went over from Dover to Calais, landed there and then we were loaded onto cattle trucks, mind you we thought it was a great joke, straw on the floor and everything else and we shunted off down the line and went to a place called Fleurbaix which is next to Armentières. Oh, it was all fun then. We didn’t do any training with the guns in fact we didn’t do any training all the time we were in France with them because it took a day to set them up, it was rapid movement so we just tugged them around. Scammells, great big lorries, they pulled them. I got my driving licence for a lorry at 18. It was fun! We didn’t see any Germans and it was a carefree attitude. If we were off we went down into Armentières and got drunk, not me of course, I’m a Parson’s son! A few of them used to fall in ditches, it’s all ditches in France, on the way back, but there you are, as I say it was fun until May!

We were stationed there for most of the time and then we moved on when the Germans started to advance. Oh dear, oh dear. We moved to a place close to St.Omer, there is a canal there. There of course things became a little more serious. We saw the odd German aeroplane and that was it. Mind you it was all fun until the Germans broke through and then we were mortared and we didn’t have anything to fire back with except 1914-1918 machine guns and the .303 rifles. It took a day to set upl the 9.2 Howitzer gun and you had to dig great big trenches for the base, it took near enough a day to dig them in and we never had the shovels so they were just towed around. Oh we had great fun just before that - practicing digging bases for them - we never actually set them up. We dug the foundations for practice, hard work too and you’d be surprised what we found! We found part of a skeleton and mortar shells galore, the cases not the explosive part, and I personally found a German hand grenade that hadn’t gone off, that was from the 1914-1918 war! We played cricket with a hand grenade that I found, chucking it at each other, when I think of it now, how mad we must have been!

At St.Omer we were, or some of us who had a rifle, we were detailed in a party to go into St.Omer where the canal goes through because rumour had it that the Germans were hiding on barges and coming along that canal to get behind us. We had to go down and look at these barges as they came in. We never saw a German on them. We had no option but to board the barges - when you wave a rifle around! We didn’t find anything on these barges mind you they ceased coming in after, say three days when we were down there. We were still down there and then one day we heard the bangs and screeches and the Germans were right on top of us.

We slept in an evacuated house in St.Omer, our little lot. There were about a dozen of us on this job and not a single thing was pinched, not a single thing. No! They were all honest. We dirtied a few sheets mind you, going to bed with your boots on because you weren’t allowed to take them off. We had a hair raising moment there, Lieutenant Yates, he said to me, ‘You can ride a motor bike can’t you?’ I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ He said, ‘Well, I want you to go — he indicated a road — down there and see how far away the Germans are.’ I thought, ‘My god!’ and this was at night and so I went, you had to obey orders. I went down this road and suddenly a gang of fellows jumped out. I thought they were Germans, I couldn’t understand a word they said - it was a Scottish Regiment! I did the quickest stop in my life! These Scotsmen, they wouldn’t think twice about firing and it was dark. Oh dear, oh dear. I said, ‘I’ve come from the Artillery, we want to know where the Germans are.’ The chap I was speaking to used a very rude word and he thought I was mad for NOT knowing, ‘Just down the so and so road!’ he said. So I went back to old George Yates and told him they were coming. ‘Ummmm, what shall we do? We’d better stick it out.’ So we sat there and the next day the Germans were all around us and he said, to me ‘Well, you’ve got a motor bike, I want you to go back to the Regimental Head Quarters’ which was St.Momelin (?), suppose it was two miles down the canal. The old Germans, they did a bit of target practice at me, they didn’t hit me, I lay flat on the tank and went back, they didn’t get me because it was dark. I got to the bridge across the canal, the old sentry stopped me ‘Oh, back again?’ I said ‘Who is in charge of the guards?’ ‘It is Lieutenant so and so.’ I said, ‘Could I have a word with him?’ he said, ‘is it important, he’s asleep?’ I said, ‘It’s very important.’ He came out in a dressing gown, ‘Yes, what’s the trouble?’ I said, ‘The Germans have just set into St.Omer and they are coming down the canal.’ ‘Oh, bloody hell!’ he said and everyone was alerted. I had to go back again and again - they had their target practice but I got through alright but we were told to stop by this Lieutenant, ‘Stay there until we contact you again.’ So we were there all night and in the morning a small convoy came up and whisked us off.

We returned to the Head Quarters at St.Momelin (?) just down the road. I think it was a brick yard up there, there were lots of bricks around anyway where we where and anyhow in our absence they had dug shallow trenches in right angles facing down the road. We did have a Boyes anti-tank rifle and I had a .303 and two others had .303 and we had to look down the road there. Well, nothing happened at first . We got out, wandered around and an old friend, he was a Bedford boy, he was a Despatch Rider and he said, ‘Oh, come over here Jack, you can see them!’ They were in St.Omer which was about two miles away and you could see the German troops and the odd tank and that was it. Then just shortly after that they started to mortar us and that was a bit frightening! A chap in the next little trench, which was about 10 yards away, a mortar shell landed just in front of that and a yell, he lifted up his head and the shrapnel hit him in the eye. He went off and had it dressed, nobody was killed there.

Then the Major, he wanted everybody with a rifle to report to so and so. And as I say rifles were very limited and he said, ‘We are going to form a patrol and go down there, see if we can take cover in ditches and what not and see if we can wipe out those mortar gunners.’ Well, it was Boy Scout talk - the Germans were thorough soldiers! To get half a dozen or so soldiers with rifles to go down and shoot them! Anyway we were sheltered while he was giving all of these instructions under a bridge and a mortar shell landed and he was killed! So we never went. Major Williams, that was him, poor old boy, a nice fellow, a very nice man.

Well, we pulled out eventually. We fired at a tank that was coming up the road and there were yells, it was a French one! Anyway these boys with anti-tank rifles they didn’t do a fat lot of damage, they were only little things, they just bounced off. Oh, yes the French opened the lid of the tank. There were a few French, I think they were an anti-tank Regiment actually and they were lost and they had horses to pull their equipment and I remember they pulled their horses into the hedges with just the behinds sticking out and I thought, poor things. They pulled out and we went pulled out of there with the Germans on our tail.

We had transport at that stage and we went to a big airport where Bader was shot down, it was a German airport when Bader was shot down. Anyway we were sent there and there they were a bit naughty really there. The Germans bombed us and we took cover and again I was lucky they bombed us and there were some Frenchmen lying around there and one of them was as near to me, about 3 yards, he had part of his leg blown off. I couldn’t believe it! I sat up and looked at him and there was a leg lying there and they whipped him off somewhere, I don’t know where he went.

It got a bit lively there so we pulled out and we went on, we went down in the lorries, a great convoy of us and then we stopped and all the guns came up and then we knew why we had stopped. We had to make the guns unserviceable so what we did, we bashed in the breech box because if you bash the breech box in you can’t fire them. But I suppose the Germans were pleased to get them for scrap iron. And, the lorries we drained all the water out and raced the engines until they seized up, it was a childish thing to do really because the Germans could soon get them going again. But anyway that’s what we did and then we were told, ‘Right we’ve got to march now’ and we did, full pack, gas cape, a blanket, the whole blooming lot. 18 miles we marched. We marched off and we didn’t have any water or any food and we stopped at a place, name of which I forget, and there was an estaminet here, a French pub. It was closed and one of the boys he said, ‘We are going to get a drink’ and he got his rifle and banged on the door, knocked the door open and they were drinking Crème de Menthe, Brandy, the lot. I must admit I wasn’t into spirits in those days and I did have a bottle of beer and this fellow and another one, they got drunk and when we got the orders to march off again, they couldn’t! They sat down by the side of the road and the lad, he flopped over, he was unconscious, he went to sleep! He survived the war - he was a Prisoner of War for all those years. He was definitely captured on that road, the Germans were only a short way behind us, a very short way, you could hear them!

Off we went again, nobody told us and we saw Bray-Dunes and we were, well I speak for myself I was quite weary by then and judging by the way everyone else looked they were all weary. As I say 18 miles we marched and then we went on from there onto the beaches and there were no end of soldiers there and Army vehicles, motor bikes and all sorts of things - just abandoned. I thought I’ll have a ride on one of the motor bikes and I did, it was a Norton and I always wanted to ride a Norton never having ridden one of them, I’d ridden a BSA but this was a Norton. I roared up the road and when I came to stop - I couldn’t! Whoever had left it there had disconnected the brakes! Fortunately it slowed down sufficiently and I turned the throttle off, hit the side, the verge, not a hard verge and stopped and got off it and kicked it!

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