Description
Object description
British clerk served with 11th Ordnance Field Park, 11th Armoured Div in GB and North West Europe, 1942-1945
Content description
REEL 1 Recollections of background in Paddington, Notting Hill Gate and Ealing, London, 1926-1939: social circumstances; education; work as office boy, 1934-1939. Recollections of service as private with 3rd Bn, (City of London) Royal Fusiliers, <39th Searchlight Regt> at Wembley Drill Hall, 4/1939-9/1939: reasons for joining and recruitment procedure; denim uniform; drill night training on searchlight and role as spotter; drill; rifle and Lewis gun training; spotter's chair; embryo nature of unit; relationship with ORs and effect of teetotalism; relationship with instructors and officers; interest in collecting newspapers and current affairs; call up, 1/9/1939; initial billets; reactions to reading of articles of war and outbreak of war, 3/9/1939.
REEL 2 Continues: lack of duties; uniform. Period on searchlight site at Thurton, ca 1939-1940: isolated situation; tent accommodation and winter billets; food rations; boredom; firewood; preparing site; hut accommodation; night searchlight duties and signals; practice drills; volunteering for Orkneys service. Period with King's Liverpool Rifles Searchlight Unit in Orkneys, ca 1940-1941: journey out; reaction to discipline; volunteering for Wrackwick Searchlight site, Hoy; isolated nature of site; scrapbook hobby; daily routine; winter conditions. Period at various searchlight sites in GB, ca 1941: lifestyle at Brassington site; transfer to switchboard duty at Buxton; volunteering for Royal Army Service Corps. Recollections of training as clerk at Royal Army Ordnance Corps Depot, Old Dolby, Melton Mowbray, ca 1941-1942: role of RAOC; method of processing indents; officers recruited from businessmen; stock control training.
REEL 3 Continues: stock control training. Period as stock control clerk with 11th Ordnance Field Park, 11th Armoured Div at Shelton Lock, Beverley, Aldershot and Tilbury, London, 1942-1944: composition of unit; learning to drive lorry; mobile role and type of supply carried by unit; dispersed nature of division; use of lorries to store supplies; ordnance indents; daily routine; endurance exercise; first aid role; move to Beverley, 1943; listening to wireless news; move to Aldershot, 5/1944; barrack accommodation; waterproofing lorries; reaction to news of D Day, 6/6/1944; reception from civilians on passing through London; entering sealed camp at Tilbury. Recollections of service in France, Belgium and Netherlands, 6/1944-9/1944: voyage aboard Landing Craft Tank and landing at Bernares sur Mer, France, 12/6/1944; move inland; establishing and signposting camp; method of processing indents, issue of stores and stock control; mobile role; sleeping arrangements.
REEL 4 Continues: tea drinking; cooking arrangements and food rations; vitamin tablets; latrines; absence of regular routines; initial static situation, 6/1944-8/1944; guard duties; contacts with divisional units; role supplying small spare parts; German POWs; reactions to burnt out tanks and corpses during advance in Falaise area, 8/1944; crossing pontoon bridge over Seine at Vernon; pervading smell of dead cattle; camouflage nets; air superiority; Lewis gun posts; visits to Bayeux; relationship with French civilians; reception from Belgian civilians during advance to Antwerp, 8/1944-9/1944; story of unnecessary casualties on patrol investigating reports of Tiger tank; German POWs kept in Antwerp Zoo; reception on move to Boom.
REEL 5 situation; relationship with Belgian civilians; German V1 attacks on Antwerp; situation on advance into Netherlands. Period based in factory at Helmond, ca 9/1944-4/1945: situation; attending ENSA concert; replenishing supplies from main Ordnance Depot, 11th Armoured Div; detachment of part of unit to Ardennes during German offensive, 12/1944-1/1945; hospital treatment for accidental broken nose from drunk NCO; relationship with Duthc civilians; situation and winter conditions; GB leave; letter and parcel contact with GB; collecting newspapers and ephemera. Aspects of advance into Germany, 4/1944: crossing pontoon bridge over Rhine at Wesel, 4/1944; problems with displaced persons including risk of attacks on British troops and looting.
REEL 6 Continues: question of war damage and reception from German civilians; drive along autobahn to Lubeck; German POWs; bartering cigarettes for German newspapers and ephemera; move to secure Schleswig Holstein and situation. Period at Stat Schleswig, 5/1945-4/1946: VE Day celebrations, 8/5/1945; attending current affairs course; question of relationship with German civilians including initial non-fraternisation, employment in camp, enforcing curfew and learning German; question of awareness of concentration camps and German treatment of Jews and Russian; continuation of ordnance parts supply role; return to GB. Demobilisation, 4/1946: payments; reluctance to give up wearing uniform during final leave period. Post-war career: background to decision to give up office work and become bus conductor.
REEL 7 Continues: effects of war service; return to work as office manager, 1951; background to joining Anglo-German Club and subsequent marriage to German woman, 1957; review of development and commercial exploitation of John Frost Newspaper Archive; membership of Normandy Veterans Association.