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Captain Raymond Frost Royal Artillery 109th Regiment/80th Regiment Battery 342,343,344 WAR WORLD II EXPERIENCES
RECORDED ON TAPE 1997 submitted by his daughter Mrs Anne-Marie Woosnam.

This is Kate and Grandad’s recording war time stories.

What sort of things did you get up to in the war?

Well perhaps start at the beginning. Ok. I tried to join the RAF volunteer reserve at 17 and I was too young, you had to be 17 and ¼, so I joined the Territorial Army in Reading, the Royal Artillery. I went 3 times a week to do drills and went down to the coast in Somerset where there they had a firing camp. I came back and just before D-day I was called up not D-day the war opening up and then the war started. I was stationed up near London. From there I went down to Southampton when the blitz was on. From Southampton I went to Iceland where we arrived 90 days before the Germans arrived? I stayed in Iceland for a year and I came home and went to Octu at Shrivenham in Wiltshire. From Shrivenham I went up to the coast to Tywyn in Wales and finished at Octu in Oct 1942. I was posted down to an artillery unit down in Kent and from there we went did a lot of training and went up to Otterburn in Northumberland did some firing camps there and came back down again to Addington near Croydon. Had another firing camp, by then we became part of the Canadian Army as they were short of artillery and we were stationed down in Kent opposite the Pas de Calais to keep the German army there while they did D-day in June. We went from there to sometime in July went to a camp in London where we were all sealed off. Then went and loaded our guns in the Port of London and went out from there down the Channel with the buzz bombs going over the top and we arrived at just off the coast of Normandy where we were taken ashore; joined up with our guns which came on different ships and we went into action firing into Caen. We fired for 2 days without stopping. The ammunition came straight off the ammunition trucks and was put into the guns and fired straight away. We were firing a new shell that was called a proximity shell which exploded within 25 feet of any solid so firing against soft targets like infantry and trucks it exploded and force of the shells went down and caused a lot of devastation. We then crossed over after firing into Caen. We then fired for 2 days again solid into Falaise Gap where the Germans were, they just couldn’t escape because the English army was on the left hand side and the Americans were on the right and they were caught in the gap. From there we went down across the River Seine on a bridge composed of small boats with a road across the top. I went to Dieppe where all the Germans had disappeared they had gone back right the way along. From there we went up to where the Airborne has landed at Arnhem again firing at extreme range to try and help the Airborne Forces out but unfortunately it didn’t happen they had to come out of the place. From then we branched up to the Reichswald Forest again we were firing 2 days without a halt. The forest just disappeared, the shells had flatten them completely out. From there we back to a port on the coast of France which escapes me the name and had a weeks rest there. From there we went back just into Germany itself on the Rhine opposite a place called Xanten where they laid down lots of smoke, the British Army and so on, so that we could bring up all our ammunition for the guns preparatory to firing. When the Airborne came over we have been firing again for solid 2/3 days and it all stopped and the Airborne all came over at this place at Xanten. The gliders. paratroopers and so on. From then onwards after they, the British Forces went up into Germany, we went back into Holland and I finished up the war right on the tip of Holland at a place called Groningen where the Germans then surrendered. From there I came back home on leave and on going back to my unit I got back to Holland where I was met by a Sergeant with all my kit and I was posted off back to England where I went up to Woolwich and they sent me home where I had about 3 weeks leave as I was going to fight the Japanese. In the meantime, they dropped atomic bomb and the Japanese surrendered but I still ended up on the way to India where I arrived in India in a place called Karipur which is about 70 miles outside Calcutta to a regiment there which was the 9th India Anti Tank Regiment firing 6 pounders and they were extremely short of officers. They had all been posted home for D-mob and I had 6 months to 9 months there and again I came home by ship and landed at Liverpool and went back down to Reading and I was de-mobbed and that’s my story.

Did anything funny happen?

Oh, yes the one thing I did miss out on the story was that we were rushed up into Ardenne where the Germans had broken through and the ground was absolutely frozen solid you couldn’t dig the guns in or anything and we were at a place called Marche in Belgium. It was a very moonlight night and the Americans were pulling out with all their trucks and a German 262 jet fighter was coming up and down and we were running from one side of a cow shed to the other side to miss this bloke who was machine gunning all the way along. There again we pulled back down from there and we had to come down a whole series of mountainous roads and it was black ice and as we were coming down the guards armoured division were trying to go up and finding it very difficult with Churchill tanks.

Another funny incident again when we were just this side of Caen, the Sergeant Major and myself we were going back to the wagon lines and we found these mines called sticky bombs, you stick them on a side of a tank, let go of the handle and about 5 seconds it explodes. We managed to find an empty ammunition tin and put one in there and when it went off, all the Canadians nearby went completely mad and started firing in all directions. So we got lost and they didn’t know anything about it at all, we disappeared.

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