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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the authors permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 7a: `A' Platoon, 133 Coy RASC Broxmore House Whiteparish, Salisbury, Wilts May - Sept 1941

Broxmore was another mini stately home (now demolished) commandeered by the Army. 133 Company here was comprised of four platoons, A, B, C and workshops platoons plus HQ staff.

The officers and HQ staff were based and billeted in the big house. The men were billeted in the stable blocks on three sides of a courtyard. The surrounding acres with sundry sheds previously housing livestock were now workshops and home to many of the company's lorries. And there were a lot of these. Eighteen lorries per platoon - either Morris C 38's or Bedford three-tonners. There were two men to a lorry. Platoons A, B and C were each divided into three sections, each with six lorries and twelve men, drivers and driver-mechs. Driver-mechs were capable of minor repairs, adjusting brakes, changing oil, adjusting points etc.

Each platoon had a fitter, responsible for major repairs and maintenance. `A' platoon's fitter was Pte Reid R.W., Mechanic 3rd Class. A despatch rider was attached to each platoon: D.R. Billy Veal was the lucky man with `A' platoon. Cook private `Rice' Cheesborough fed them to the best of his ability. A sergeant, section corporals and `lance Jacks' kept them in order and second lieutenant Yates was the officer in charge. He had an Austin pick-up and a batman bringing the total number in each platoon to 48 men.

As well as servicing the lorries and the pick-ups, fitters looked after and serviced RAMC ambulances.

`A' platoon at Broxmore made a big impression on Reg and he has a good memory of many of the men there. People who played some part in his story are, in ascending order:

`A' Platoon Where from
Driver Davenport Sheffield
Driver Billy Grills Devon
Driver Cassidy Geordieland
Driver `Tug' Wilson Barnsley
Driver Lush Southampton
Driver Johnny Steele Geordieland (Newcastle)
Driver Wheeler Geordieland (Gateshead)
Driver Warhurst Hull Docks
Driver Petty Hull Docks
Driver Dougie Pope - water wagon
Driver Sid Porter - water wagon
Driver Jock McSomething Scotland
Driver Bill Dutton (`Button') Scotland
Driver Jock McQuaker
Driver Manny Smith Billingsgate, London
Driver Paddy of `B' or `C' platoon
Driver-Mech Harold Rumsey-Williams Potters Bar, London
Driver-Mech Roy Brotherstone Connah's Quay, North Wales
Driver-Mech Powell Southampton
Driver-Mech Jack Powell Blaenavon, nr. Abergavenny
Despatch Rider Billy Veal
Cook `Rice' Cheesborough
Fitter Reg Reid Sheffield
Fitter in `B' Platoon Jock McLeod
Fitter `C' Platoon Johnny O'Toole
Fitter Workshops Platoon `Ritchie' Richards
Corporal Tony Greenholgh Manchester
Corporal King
Corporal Mulchinok
Staff Sgt Smith (half caste) Liverpool
Sergeant Allen Oughtibridge, Sheffield
`B', `C' platoons or workshops Staff Sergeant Smith
`B', `C' platoons or workshops Sergeant Johnson
`B', `C' platoons or workshops Sergeant `Bollocks in Brackets'

Lieutenant Yates, later replaced by: Lieutenant Errington, London
Lieutenant Baker (originally from `B' platoon) Major Dodds was in command of all four platoons. (Major Beswick, of earwig fame, had been posted from South Littleton to Burma).
We'd better explain, first of all, in case some of you are wondering, how Sergeant of `B' or `C' Coy got his nickname `B****cks in Brackets'. This sergeant was mentioned in despatches for his courage at Dunkirk in rescuing men from the sea.

In fact it was an unknown infantryman who was the real hero but `B in B' certainly played his part. On a small steamer, a RAF officer had insisted that his men should go below decks - Army personnel to be on deck (this tied in with Reg's view of the RAF at the time. Though they were still engaged he suspected he'd lost `Girly' Ruth to the RAF lad they'd met on the train from Sheffield).

Back to the steamer - in an appalling turn of events a Luftwaffe bomb went down the funnel and exploded, killing all below decks and blasting the army lads into the sea, dead or alive, before it sank. `B in B' survived and in shirts and shorts hauled himself into a small boat. More men clambered aboard if they could and the infantryman swam around retrieving others who were still alive in the water, swimming with them to the boat where `B in B' hauled them. Every time he bent down to pull someone in, ‘B in B’s’ shorts, weighed down by the water, dropped to his ankles. A photographer on a nearby vessel snapped this and `B in B' and his bum, bow legs and a hint of b****cks appeared in a daily newspaper - not to insult the bloke of course, but to show his heroism. `B in B' was one of two sergeants back at South Littleton with the same name and a clerk there had differentiated him by putting `(B****cks)' after his name — that immortalised him as Sergeant `B****cks in Brackets'.

`A' platoon was half composed of youngsters aged eighteen - one, driver Billy Grills, was only 17. Silly young sods! Most of the rest were in their early thirties. Silly old sods!
Reg was the mug in the middle at twenty-two but soon palled up with three of the `old sods': Brotherstone, Powell and Rumsey-Williams, and three of the `young sods': Wheeler, Warhurst and Petty. The older men were driver-mechs. Two were Welsh - Brotherstone from Connah's Quay, North Wales (he worked at the Shotton Steel plant before the war), and Powell from the Rhondda (he had been an ambulance driver). Despite being from North and South Wales, they got on well together and were good fun. Rumsey-Williams too was a driver-mech, a Londoner from Potter's Bar.

Petty and Warhurst were from the slums of Hull, near the Docks - somewhere near the Land of Green Ginger. Wheeler, who made up this trio of `young sods', was a Geordie, from Gateshead, who had everyone in stitches with his sense of humour. Utterly childish - but aren't we all at times?

The young drivers, eighteen years old and army-trained, only got seven miles per gallon out of their lorries. The older men in their thirties, and most civvy-trained, got fourteen mpg. Convoys of lorries would leave Broxmore House ferrying supplies across the south of England, often travelling at night. Reg was always in the lorry at the end of the convoy, either driving or in the cab with the driver. He was referred to as the `tail end Johnny', always there if someone broke down.

A despatch driver would lead the convoy, in `A' platoon's case D.R. Billy Veal. Billy's Matchless 350cc had a low intensity headlight which was hooded and blackened leaving a slit directing a small beam of light down onto the road, not affording much light for driving at night - but equally not affording much light for an attacking Messerschmidt to aim at. Maximum speed was ten miles per hour.

Each 3 ton Bedford and Morris C38 lorry in the convoy had its back axle differential (the bulbous steel housing differential gears between the back wheels) painted white and illuminated by a small light, the `dif. light', at night to guide the following lorry.
A slow but fairly secure way of moving a convoy from A to B. A Messerschmidt pilot had to have eyes like a hawk to spot the D.R.'s faint light on the roads.

Reg found later in north Africa, that American convoys drove at full speed at night with headlights blazing - relying on their speed to get from A to B before an enemy could spot them. Which was the more effective? Who can say? But in southern England at the time the Luftwaffe, defeated in daytime battles with the RAF, relied on night attacks, so night convoy movements, though better for the roads being empty of other traffic and for secrecy, were nonetheless hazardous.

An Irish lad, `Paddy', a driver in `B' or `C' platoon, the selfsame Paddy he'd met in Luton who'd now joined 133 COY, suggested they spend a Sunday in Luton with his girlfriend and her sister, the WVS girl. Reg hesitated to rekindle a friendship with her sister since he was still engaged to `Girly' Ruth - Ruth had even got his suitcase containing £100 and his best suit, for safekeeping when he had moved to South Littleton and a possible Burma posting. What the hell though - Ruth had only written once in the last few weeks and in her letter had mentioned again the RAF High Wycombe lad they'd first met on the Sheffield to London train.

He drove to Luton with Paddy on the ever-faithful Excelsior Manxman. They had a `smashing' time with the girls, but again Reg and the sister made no promises to each other. Seeing Reg was merely an extension of her WVS work looking after the troops! It was dark when the two young men headed back to Broxmore, Reg concentrating intently on the road.

His civvy bike had a headlight, hooded and with a low intensity bulb, which was even so taped over with just a slit of light directed down at the road as required by military law. The cold night air was blowing through their army haircuts and around their ears as they travelled at 10 to 15 mph. Paddy, exhilarated, shouted "Look at these fireworks". "Fireworks be b****cks, we're being shot at."

Reg can't recall actually uttering these words, but he certainly thought them as he yanked the bike and its contents - him and Paddy - into a hedge with tracer bullets flying along the road whistling past them. From sound, if not sight recognition tests they'd had on Luftwaffe planes, he guessed it was a Messerschmidt ME 109 screeching overhead, immediately following its bullets. The pilot must have been one with eyes of a hawk to spot the light from Reg's bike and he had assumed, or hoped, it was the head of a convoy, so had dived and strafed the road.

It was an exhilarating end to the day out. Paddy said it was an act of God that they were unhurt and the bike undamaged. To be on the safe side though he never asked Reg for a lift again! Trust in God but don't get on a bike!

The Manxman was parked in its usual `pog' - outside one of the two gatehouses either side of the drive leading to Broxmore House, and they walked, legs like jelly, from their meeting with the Messerschmidt, back to their billet in the stables. The two gatehouses had not been taken over by the army, and an elderly couple that enjoyed Reg’s banter, lived in the one that Reg parked his bike outside (He'd offered to take the elderly rheumatic lady on a cheeky weekend to Brighton on the bike!).

Perhaps Reg thought the Messerschmidt affair was fate warning him not to stray off the straight and narrow path in life - not to have fun with another girl while engaged to `Girly' Ruth. He had a nicer letter from her and went to High Wycombe a few times to see her, calling in on Stan Smith and Frank Turton as they toiled away at the Heavy Repair Shops. He was glad he'd left when he saw them at work.

Then Ruth `went funny' again. What had he done wrong? Things had seemed to be going swimmingly with picnics and cuddles in the woods as though it were peacetime. Had she chosen the RAF lad? Had his scorn of the `Brylcreem Boys' been seen as the jealousy it probably was? He'd scorned them as puffs for having sheets on their beds! Though she had insisted no full sex before marriage should he push for it? Did she want him to be more insistent? Should they get married? - The £100 she was saving for him (along with best suit in suitcase) was a very large amount of money then - but, influenced by her parents, they'd agreed to wait until after the war when the future became clearer. She kept mentioning her brother in the Infantry `doing his bit' in Egypt. Did she somehow feel Reg had dodged the Burma draft? - got measles with this aim in view?

Of course he didn't discuss much of this with her - they were mainly thoughts. Youths, and especially working class youths, didn't often voice their thoughts on such matters and relied mainly on feelings and intuition. So when he went to Sheffield again Ruth had been moody and he went alone. His mother had finally left William Angus Reid and was living in Porthill, Stokeon-Trent. She'd been `called up' and was working in a munitions factory.

Reg knew the city. He’d been there before the war with his father to collect china `seconds' from a Stoke pottery to sell on a stall in Bakewell market. His mother's uncle worked at the factory and got goods at a very favourable price.

Now she was in the Potteries, Helen Elizabeth wrote to her son explaining why she'd left William who was now renting a house in Fulton Road, Walkley. William drank too much, smoked too much, and gambled too much yet she had suggested Reg went to see his father.
The Fulton Road lodgings came as a shock. A back-to-back house with only front door access - a downstairs room cum kitchen with two chairs and a table, a bedroom with the bed as the only furniture, and an attic. No bathroom, of course, but cold running water in the stone kitchen sink. An `entry', passageway through the terraced houses led to a communal yard with communal toilets.

William was pleased but embarrassed to see his son, introducing him to a lodger he'd let live in the attic for a small sum to offset the rent. William wasn't embarrassed at having a lodger, but by having sold Reg's Hornby train set with its big engine and his lead soldiers - a collection built up over the years - soldiers of various regiments, all hand painted. He'd even sold an army greatcoat that Reg had posted him, a new greatcoat given to him by a lad who had lost an arm at Dunkirk and had been invalided out. Mind you, his father had been stopped by police while wearing it in Sheffield, it being illegal for a civilian to be wearing army uniform.

Reg slept on the -carpet in the living room cum kitchen (known as the `house' in those days) and was then glad to return to Broxmore, determined more than ever not to waste his money and his life boozing, smoking and gambling, apart from having the odd jar or two with the lads now and then.

Wheeler, the Geordie comic from Gateshead, offered the lads a bit of light relief following a lecture by Major Dodds. Dodds had a characteristic mincing walk with his cane under his left arm held to his body by his gloved left hand. His right hand glove was never worn but held between index finger and thumb. Wheeler mimicked the walk to perfection and with sweeping brush as cane, and a pair of gloves, and with Warhurst, Petty, Reg and Brotherstone marching smartly in single file behind him, he swept into `A' platoon's stable-barracks.

He could also mimic Major Dodds' voice, and had just turned and shouted something to the effect that the men behind him were marching `like puffs' - worse, `like buckshee second lieutenants', when he caught sight of the major himself in the barracks in deep conversation with `A' platoon Lt. Yates and others of the `buckshee' variety plus Sergeant Allen.
The officers took it in good part, were quietly amused at the impersonation and even Major Dodds refrained from asking Sergeant Allen to `take that man's name'.

Pr-BR

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