The Last Heroes: Voices of British and Commonwealth Veterans

AUT SI QUID EST IN VITA IN AETERNUM RESONAT

WHAT WE DO IN LIFE ECHOES IN ETERNITY

From when I began the ‘Debt of Gratitude’ project, The Last Heroes, in mid 2014, my on-going motivation and mission have remained the same, to write a book and subsequent work from the heart which is:

About veterans

For veterans

To honour veterans

Because to remember is to honour.

Gary Bridson-Daley

To my beautiful mother Sylvia June Bridson, who was very proud of The Last Heroes but who sadly passed before its release.

For you Mum.

26 March 1942–27 January 2017

Forever in my Heart

I would like to further dedicate this book to the memory of some wonderful people who touched many lives including mine in a very special, caring and lovely way: Brenda Griffin, Nancy Teacher, Violet Meltzer and Tony Parkinson. Thank you for your friendship and kindness; it will always be remembered.

First published 2017

First published in paperback 2020

This updated third edition first published 2024

The History Press

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Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Gary Bridson-Daley, 2017, 2020, 2024

The right of Gary Bridson-Daley to be identified as the Author

of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted

or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,

including photocopying and recording, or in any information

storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing

from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75098 657 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Dedications

Foreword by Dame Vera Lynn

Author’s Note

Second World War Timeline

Scale of the Conflict

Diversity of Those Who Served

D-Day: Veterans and Anniversaries

D-Day 80

Arnhem: Veterans and Anniversaries

Arnhem 80

THEATRES OF WAR

1   Army and the War on Land

2   Navy and the War at Sea

3   Air Force and the War in the Air

4   Intelligence and the Secret War

5   Home and the War on the Home Front

Connecting with History

Veterans’ Poetry and Songs

Casualties of War

For Those Who Never Returned

VE Day

Sacrifices Never Forgotten

Hope for a Better Future

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Dedications

This book is dedicated firstly to all veterans, servicemen and servicewomen from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries from all backgrounds and cultures who served this country in any and every capacity during the Second World War, who when called upon to help in a time of peril and danger answered that call selflessly to be part of the fight against evil in order to preserve our freedom and way of life. It is this conflict and generation that my book is focusing on; this book has been written to represent and thank all veterans of that conflict.

Additionally and very importantly, I also wish to extend this dedication to all the men and women who have ever served this country and those who do so until this present day in order to give us that same freedom, safety and democracy that we and our families and our nation still enjoy. This freedom was bought at a very high price, mentally, physically and emotionally, and it still is. It is for these reasons that I feel remembrance is such a necessary and valuable thing to undertake and something that hopefully the nation will always continue to do.

This book also pays tribute to those who have made vital contributions in civilian life; those from the past through to those who currently perform their duties as part of the essential civilian services, such as the police, fire, medical services, mountain and sea rescue and all others.

To all these men and women, military and civilian, this is truly dedicated to you as a real debt of gratitude which you all deserve.

‘They were a wall unto us both by night and day’ – 1 Samuel 25:17

Foreword

by Dame Vera Lynn

I believe it is our shared vision to honour veterans from all the services – Army, Navy, Air Force, Intelligence and Home Front – and keep alive both now and for future generations what these amazing people did for us and our country, and the freedom they gave us through their selfless actions and contributions which we and our families still enjoy to this very day.

‘A Debt of Gratitude’ [The Last Heroes] brings to life the voices of World War Two veterans, from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Countries, all with their own unique contribution and each heroes in their own way, and not only covers many aspects of the conflict but also includes poignant veterans’ poetry.

This book by Gary Bridson-Daley could well become an integral part of our country’s historical library.

Dame Vera Lynn DBE, LLD, M.Mus

April 2016

Author’s Note

All information given to me by veterans during the interviews and at all stages during the making of this book has been taken on trust and comes mainly from memory on their part and from resources provided by them. It must be remembered that each veteran has supplied personal accounts from their own experiences that are more than seventy years old and therefore should be treated, enjoyed and respected as factual human interest stories that have been gathered in order to capture and preserve those vitally important narratives before they were lost forever. I have, when and where possible, researched Second World War material from many additional resources in order to check and reinforce the accounts within this book.

The different material that was combined to compile the veterans’ profiles came from the following varied and extensive sources: the stories told and information imparted to me directly both face to face and in conversations over the telephone with veterans; additional supplementary information shared by spouses, family and friends of the veteran; and material resources I was allowed to view or take copies or pictures of, such as service records, log books, pay books, identification documents and miscellaneous documents from many sources. The information also comes from the videos made during the interview process, written and audio accounts given to me, and additional notes taken during the interviews plus veterans’ wartime and other photos. On the odd occasion, original quotations from the veterans have been lightly edited for the sake of clarity. Further resources came from helpful veteran- and military-related associations and organisations, Ministry of Defence requests, online research and various materials kindly loaned to me.

Second World War Timeline

Although the Second World War officially began in September 1939 there were many events over a number of years leading up to that point that influenced and were directly and indirectly responsible for it happening from 1931 onwards when Japanese aggression in Manchuria began, and later with the rise and expansion of the fascist regimes of Italy, Germany and Spain and their aggressive expansionist policies. In time all of these combined would lead to the much bigger cataclysmic events of the Second World War, of which the main battles and events are shown here:

Credit to the United States Holocaust Museum website for the main text used in the timeline.

Scale of the Conflict

The Second World War was a completely global conflict and the sheer scale of it is truly mindboggling: no corner of the planet was left untouched by it. During the six years that it raged it would encompass almost every type of terrain within its theatres of war, from the deserts of North Africa to the jungles of Burma, from the icy steppes of Russia and the skies above Europe to every ocean of the world and deep below them.

It would lead to the mobilisation and inclusion of nearly every country in the world directly or indirectly, and would pull into it hundreds of millions of personnel who served in one way or another in the many and varied roles that their nations needed, both on the battle fronts and the home fronts. They would be locked in a deadly life and death struggle using every means of warfare, from conventional to those of intelligence, sabotage and deception and many other aspects, including the development of new technologies and secret weapons that eventually led to the use of the most destructive of these, the A-bomb.

It was a war that was also fought on another level and dimension, one that had not existed before. It was against evil ideologies that all those engaged against it understood had to be defeated in order to preserve all the rights that good men and good nations believed in and stood for, such as freedom, democracy, liberty and the right to peaceful self-determination. Had Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and their allies won the war, the outcome and alternative, which was already evident in occupied lands, would have been enslavement, oppression, totalitarian rule, tyranny, fear and, for many, death.

The Second World War also differed from other previous conflicts in that civilian deaths were for the first time more than double those of combatants. As a result of starvation, disease, bombing, forced labour, extermination programmes and other causes, more than 50 million civilians lost their lives, compared with approximately 20 million combatants. In comparison, the total number of combined casualties for the First World War was around 20 million. It is also important to remember that behind each one of these statistics there was a real person, a story, a life lost and a family that grieved his or her passing.

The nature of warfare had changed and knew no boundaries. This is reflected in the figures shown below for comparison between the two world wars:

For most, this really was the ‘Second’ World War in many ways because it was the second conflict that they had seen, fought or been involved in, and sadly in just over twenty years. It brought back painful memories, both mentally and physically, and of those who had survived the First World War, for a variety of reasons, many would not survive the Second.

The anguish experienced and the self-sacrifice and courage that was shown was equal to, and in many cases surpassed, that of wars and conflicts that had gone before it, both for the combatants and for civilians that were embroiled in it. Also, the frightful advances in weapons and tactics and the means of killing on an even bigger industrial scale than had been seen previously all added to the terrible experiences of people on both sides.

A rallying call to the nation from the Minister for Aircraft Production.

Another aspect that further reflects the scale of this conflict was the huge variation in roles and contributions of our servicemen and women to help bring about victory. It is this interesting variation that is reflected within the book alongside the personal recollections of the veterans and it is intended to capture and show as many of these different aspects as possible.

The scale of the conflict is further shown by the chart below that lists most of the countries involved, the sides they were on and their situation. Others not listed here mainly but not solely came under the United Kingdom as its Commonwealth and what were then essentially considered countries and possessions of the British Empire.

Allied and Axis Alliances in the Second World War, plus Occupied and Neutral Countries

Diversity of Those Who Served

A further indication of the size and scope of the Second World War is the number of Commonwealth countries and islands that answered Great Britain’s call for help in her hour of need, and who in most cases volunteered to stand by us. In doing so, many paid the ultimate price for a country they had never even seen. These invaluable contributions should always be recognised and remembered with the same amount of respect and reverence that we give to the memory of our own veterans from the United Kingdom.

The Second World War drew into it all the major countries and world powers of the time along with all their available resources and manpower and also that of their allies. On one side were the Axis nations of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan, along with a number of countries which at some point aided and supported them such as Finland, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

On the other side were the biggest Allied nations known as the ‘Big Four’, which consisted of the United States of America, the Soviet Union, China and Great Britain along with the countries of her Commonwealth and colonial possessions. These consisted of a staggering array of countries and islands all over the world from what was still considered the British Empire in one form or another such as Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Kenya, Rhodesia, Nigeria, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Gold Coast, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Mandate Palestine, Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Fiji, and many more, again reflecting the true global nature and scale of the conflict. Between them they provided a massive amount of manpower, material resources and very important bases from which the Allied powers operated in many theatres of war.

It should also be remembered that we were joined by the mixed nationalities of many occupied nations who continued the fight in many ways through active and organised resistance in their own countries, and additionally through and with the help of their countrymen who volunteered and served within every branch of our armed forces. These included the Polish, Czechs, Dutch, Danish, Norwegians, Belgians, Greeks, Yugoslavians, French and those from the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and elsewhere.

Within this book these invaluable contributions are also rightly acknowledged and their veterans, some of whom settled in the UK after the war, are honoured alongside our own. This continues to show the diversity of those who served in what truly was a ‘world war’, who came from many different countries, cultures, religious and ethnic backgrounds (as the famous wartime poster shown on the previous page demonstrates), and served, worked, lived and in some cases died alongside British servicemen and women.

They were bonded and united by the absolute understanding of the need to come together to defeat the evil of the Axis countries and all that they stood for; as the stories within this book reflect, they did exactly that!

D-Day: Veterans and Anniversaries

Operation Overlord, 6 June 1944, was the largest amphibious invasion in history, involving landing Allied armies over 150,000 strong on a 50-mile stretch of coastline in Normandy on five beaches with airborne landings in support of them. It was the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from Nazi occupation. Troops were landed in this gigantic first phase called Operation Neptune, as shown on the map over the page, from west to east on assault beaches with the following code names and formations:

US 1st Army

Utah: US 4th Infantry Division

Omaha: US 29th Infantry Division

US 1st Infantry Division

British 2nd Army

Gold: British 50th Infantry Division

Juno: Canadian 3rd Infantry Division

Sword: British 3rd Infantry Division

D-Day invasion map showing the forces involved and the Normandy beaches on which they landed during the biggest amphibious assault in history.

Among them were other forces from Commonwealth and occupied countries, such as Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Rhodesia, Poland and France, where the Free French were returning to help liberate their country after four years of brutal German occupation.

The airborne element consisted of US 82nd and US 101st Airborne Division troops being dropped behind Utah Beach to secure the western flank and British 6th Airborne Division troops being dropped behind Sword Beach to secure the eastern flank. In the planning of Overlord the Allied commanders learned very important lessons from previous failures at Dieppe in France and Anzio in Italy. Along with huge deception plans, the established air supremacy and other factors contributed towards success on that critical day and the days that followed, which allowed them to gain a vital foothold in France at the beginning of this campaign. D-Day was the first part of the ‘Normandy Campaign’ which, as mentioned before, began on 6 June and cumulated in the fall of Paris on 25 August 1944. After this Allied liberation forces continued across Western Europe until eventually, by the end of war on the continent and VE Day on 8 May 1945, they were well into Germany itself. At various points, they had linked up with allies from the Soviet Union, who had been fighting fierce battles with immense casualties across half of Russia and into Germany to defeat the Nazis from the east. Importantly, the success of D-Day also ensured that the Western Allies were firmly established on the continent by the end of the Second World War, providing a counter to Soviet-backed communism at the start of the Cold War.

The aims, starting at D-Day and the Allied campaign to liberate Western Europe thereafter, can be summarised in this General Order issued within the US High Command:

‘You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.’

US Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, February 1944

The important stories and historical narratives that follow are from veterans of all the main services and reflect very different perspectives, experiences and/or involvements in D-Day, their varied contributions showing some of the many facets that made that great undertaking such a successful one. Included here is a new interview I conducted with Marie Scott especially for this special eightieth anniversary edition of The Last Heroes, and a new piece of D-Day poetry called ‘D-Day 80’, but of course all the stories within the book’s pages will remain preserved here and forever timeless.

Wren Marie Scott

Served with: Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF)

Service number: 91414

Interviewed: Kingston-on-Thames, London, 15 October 2023

Service History and Personal Stories

Illustration     Born: 26 June 1926, Waterloo, London, United Kingdom.

Illustration     Marie left Battersea Central School aged 14 in 1940, and by 1942, when she was 16, had applied for and got on to a course with the General Post Office (GPO) to train as a switchboard operator. Having been trained, Marie worked throughout 1943 and into early 1944 at a number of GPO exchanges in London, gaining good experience in that role and on the switchboard equipment used by the GPO, which stood her in good stead.

Illustration     In March 1944 Marie volunteered for the Royal Navy and joined up at their Mill Hill Recruitment Centre in Barnet, London, and after a two-week probationary assessment and basic training period, was then, due to already being GPO trained, sent directly to her first posting as part of the Royal Naval Women’s Service to Fort Southwick in Portsmouth. Here she worked in their top-secret underground (communications) headquarters (UGHQ), which received its orders and messages from nearby Southwick House, the main Allied Forward Headquarters for the Normandy invasion that housed the top generals and decision makers. It was from here that General Eisenhower triggered the whole invasion with the famous words, ‘OK let’s go!’

Illustration     Initially Marie worked on the combined WRNS, WAAF and ATS switchboard team but closer to D-Day was chosen, trained and specially assigned to work on a VHF long-range radio set and given the very important job of relaying scrambled messages to those leading troops on the beaches of Normandy as part of Operation Neptune, the first amphibious landing phase of the bigger Operation Overlord, code names for the Allied assault on Nazi-occupied Europe.

Illustration     This she did on D-Day itself and for a few weeks after as Allied armies pushed forward, and later was transferred back onto the main switchboard at Fort Southwick. When King George VI visited the facility Marie was part of the march past by the WRNS on 16 November 1944. By 1945 she had been transferred down to the Stone Frigate HMS Mercury, site of the Royal Navy Signals School near Petersfield in Hampshire, continuing in that role.

Illustration     By July 1945, with her skills as a Wren Sw/Op no longer required, Marie was sent to the WRNS Pay Section Office at Skelmorlie House, HMS Largs, in Ayrshire, Scotland, remaining there for a year until July 1946, when she was sent to be demobbed right back to where it all began for her two years and four months earlier: Mill Hill Recruitment Centre in Barnet, London.

I first met Marie Scott at the Bayeux War Cemetery in Normandy, France, on 6 June 2019, during the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when a number of us were having lunch in the VIP tent after attending the memorial services at both Bayeux Cathedral and the cemetery, where dignitaries, political leaders and royalty were present for those very big and important events. Not long after, she was awarded the well-deserved Légion d’honneur. However, due to circumstances, it wasn’t until nearly four and the half years later that I met Marie again, when I finally interviewed her in October 2023 for a very fitting and valuable contribution to the D-Day part of this special edition of The Last Heroes in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day in 2024.

On D-Day, Marie played her own pivotal role in events as the troops hit the landing beaches as part of Operation Overlord. From the secret underground communications nerve centre at Fort Southwick, in the Portsdown Tunnels, embedded within cliffs at Portsmouth, Hampshire, she sent and received secret coded messages to officers leading their men into battle on that historic and fateful day. We now directly find out more about:

The Vital Part Marie Played in the Success of D-Day

Before the war I had already been trained with the GPO as a Switchboard Operator, and so when I went to Royal Navy recruitment and joined in March 1944 they snapped me up because I would be of use in communications, and I became part of the WRNS – the Women’s Royal Naval Service, as a Wren SW/OP or Switchboard Operator, but as a young 17-year-old girl I initially had no idea the place I would end up and the things I would be involved in on D-Day! That place would be at the UGHQ – Underground Headquarters of SHAEF the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force deep below ground at what was known as Fort Southwick in Portsmouth, where as a WREN I would be, most the time, on the switchboard of that centre of communications on the run up to and during the invasion of Western Europe. It was from nearby Southwick House that Eisenhower and Montgomery, also other officers in the High Command would send orders and messages that we had to pass on via the switchboard to people and places elsewhere that were involved in that huge undertaking. Some of us were billeted in a lovely place in Fareham, Surrey called Heathfield House and were driven to and from work every day [like those working at Bletchley Park and other secret establishments were during the war].

Switchboard Operators at work in London during the war, doing the same job on similar equipment that Marie did most the time whilst at Southwick House. The servicewomen in this particular picture are Canadian.

It was from that deep subterranean system of tunnels approximately 100ft (30m) and 350 steps below the surface that this extremely complex nerve centre operated twenty-four hours a day, and where Marie and many other WRENS worked around the clock to maintain the vital comms required to help make the invasion a success. She now tells us more from her unique perspective:

On the big day itself I was already assigned to a different piece of equipment and I was operating a VHF radio sending coded secret messages to the troops as they were landing on the beaches, via their Signals radio operators to what I think were officers commanding different formations, and passing on the coded messages I received from them which could have possibly gone to a number of rooms and departments of various branches of the armed forces at the UGHQ, including the main plotting room and also the Generals, Admirals and Air Marshals at the high command in Southwick House itself, after all these facilities were coordinating the whole invasion. It was a one-way system, I would raise the lever, send the encrypted message through and they would respond, and when they lifted their lever you could hear the real and terrifying sounds of war, such gunfire, loud sustained gunfire, bombs exploding, men barking out orders, injured men screaming in obvious agony, suddenly you realised my God there are men dying there! Whenever the lever went up on their side I was thrown back into the full-on horrific sounds of war as they were unfolding! Although I had already lived through the Blitz in London this was totally different because it seemed somehow more personnel as I was directly communicating with those in the midst of that frightening reality, at first it was all such a shock for me as a teenager to hear those petrifying things that I though I’m not sure if I can carry on doing this, I felt quite scared, then I thought to myself don’t be so silly you’re safe inside a cliff many miles away from all of that whilst young men