Les Bond

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Les Bond

Les Bond in his Home Guard uniform

Below are extracts from correspondance with Les Bond, an ex-Brandonian who now lives in Australia. Les was aged 14 at the outbreak of war. (Part 2)

Conscripted into active service
I was happy about being called up and I was offered deferment for, I think, six months and then after that then to apply for a further six months. That was because I was working at Mount's Lime and Whiting Works at the time. The lime part was tied up with agriculture you see, and food was a very important industry simply because of the shortage of it. Anyway I didn't take up the offer as my friends were all getting called up and wouldn't I have been a 'Drongo' to stay behind? Another reason was that I had always wanted to join the Navy and this was a good opportunity to get in as every one had a choice as to which arm of the services you wanted. But ask for something and you get the opposite and it was the same when the first weeks of training were completed we were given a choice as to what branch of the Army did we prefer, i.e. cook-house, artillery, tanks, brengun carriers, support groups - such as heavy machine guns - or large mortars. My application was for the service corps as a driver. So what did I get? Well, the exact opposite ... the bloody foot sloggers, infantry!!!!

Training
When first called up I had to report to a barracks in York. It was the home of the Rifle Brigade and all conscripts had to wear a special hat badge, but we were given the honour of wearing the Rifle Brigade's badge.

After the initial training I was posted to the Suffolk Regiment at the Gibraltar Barracks in Bury St. Edmunds for the next lot of training. It was a good change to have instructors who spoke with a Suffolk accent, also to be able to get home at weekends I used to hitch hike home as soon as we were off duty and get back on the Eastern Counties bus on Sunday nights.

In training at Bury an instructor, a sergeant, was killed when he was training us on 2-inch mortars with live ammunition. He would take only one recruit at a time to the firing emplacement as a precaution in case of accidents and what was supposed to happen was that the squaddie would slide a mortar bomb down the barrel then hit a firing pin and fire instantly. This occasion it failed to do that, so he straight away slid another in on top. Well you can guess what the result may be when it hit the head of the first bomb which was primed to explode on impact. The result was horrendous.

The next lot of training was called 'Division Training' where we went to Weybourne, on the north Norfolk coast. It was there that I met up with an old school mate, Alfie Winter from Town Street. We bivouacked together with two ground sheets joined together to make a low tent for two. That was on a grueling 100 mile route march that took us 4 days and poor old Alfie went on sick parade before we finished it and I never saw him again. From my time at York to the final at Weybourne was a total of 6 months and at the end of that period we were given embarkation leave.

When the leave was over I had to report to Wells-Next-The-Sea and the next thing I knew I was in France on a train to Belgium. Upon arrival there I was put into a holding unit and from that unit we were put into any Regiment that needed replacements for their dead and wounded and that's how I finished my Army life in the Seaforth Highlanders.

The training was pretty tough on a young bloke who had never left home before and naturally there was home sickness, but gradually you get over that. There was the 100 mile route march that had to be done in 4 days and that included a few little exercises each day. We were taught about what war and what it was like, such as enemy booby traps and having mustard gas dabbed on your hand so we knew what it was like. When you finally got where the action was it was nothing like we were told it would be and I think the training was just to make you obey orders with out question .

In training we had one lad who was a real country bumpkin, he regularly urinated in his boots through the night.

Active service - Crossing the Rhine
How did I feel about going into active service? It was like water off a duck's back until you find your self amongst the noise of battle and the sight of blood & guts, then I was well and truly scared. I only knew of one guy to go AWOL and run away and he was brought back, but he ran off again. What happened to him after that I don't know as I never saw him again.

The crossing of the River Rhine was my baptism of fire, although most of my time was spent doing what the army called "advancing to make contact". When you did make contact you either fought or made a strategic withdrawal which ever you were told to do. We marched up to the south bank in single file

Les in his Seaforth Highlanders uniform
Les in his Seaforth Highlanders uniform

through the night, which took us through the rows of heavy artillery, which when they fired with out warning frightened us to death, although they were giving Jerry a good blasting. When we got to the bank we had to wait until dawn and then we were put into vessels not bigger than rowing boats that had outboard motors. These were driven by Royal Engineers and some motors failed on the way so those poor sods just drifted down stream. We never knew what happened to them and anyway we were not being fired on. When we reached the south bank we clambered up to the top only to find dead Germans all along the top of the embankment. We had been saved a lot by the Commandos who had gone over in the darkness and had garroted or knifed them all out of there slit trenches. So our lot was pretty easy for a start we advanced and made contact. Then to our surprise we saw all these planes towing gliders in the sky. The sky was just full of them. It was a few days before we got to where they had landed and what a sight that was. They had all crash landed and after seeing that I was glad to have crossed the Rhine in a rowing boat.

Our unit did see a concentration camp and that English guy that says it never happened is off his rocker because it certainly did happen!

European civilians
My first encounter with the civilians in Europe was with the Belgium prostitutes. When we got settled into our first billet we went out into the street and there they were, just waiting for us. They all had their hair shaved off, as that was what was done to the girls who went out with the German soldiers, and some of the guys went off with their choice of the prostitutes. Believe it or not I didn't, as I just didn't fancy a girl who was hated by her own and had been a friend of the Germans.

My next contact was with a Dutch family with whom I was billeted. For a few days they were very nice as all the Dutch people I encountered were, but at the next stop, back in Belgium, I was billeted with a nasty lady. She crammed as many guys as she could in her house and so we were not very comfortable. Her next door neighbour only took two guys and I must say they were a nice couple and the husband was a coal miner, so we used to go to their house at night and play cards. One other thing about the Belgium's was they used to let us travel free on the trams, but when the war was over they wanted us all to pay. You can guess what we told them to do. The Germans where very subdued except some of the prisoners of war who were very arrogant. When the war finished we were all given a letter from Montgomery and we were ordered by him not to talk to the German population, not even children. After a while we were given another letter saying it was okay, but we could speak to children only.

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