Memories of World War Two

The road to war

In 1939, Ron, 19, and Joan, 18, lived six doors apart in Southall. The arrival of war wasn't exactly a surprise for either of them. 'I knew damn well it was coming 3 years before it came,' admits Ron. 'I joined the TA to make sure I was in a unit that I knew, rather than some odd one.'

Even Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, 'waving this bit of paper', as Ron remembers it, failed to convince them otherwise.

So how exactly did it happen? 'At about 11 o'clock on a beautiful Sunday morning, there was this announcement that we were now at war with Germany,' recalls Joan. 'Within an hour we had an air-raid warning. Instead of going into our shelters, we all rushed out into the street and looked round, but it was a false alarm.'

Although Ron and Joan went round together as part of a big group, they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend - 'you couldn’t afford to', says Joan - and as soon as war was declared, Ron was called up.

In the beginning, no one had any idea how long the war would last and a lot of people thought it was going to be over by Christmas - something they said in the First World War.

'I don’t think anyone took any notice,' says Ron. 'Nobody believed them, anyway. We weren't over-worried by it.'

While Joan remained in Southall, Ron was posted to Cockfosters in North East London - an experience that didn't exactly excite him. 'We used to parade in the morning, break off for breakfast, parade after breakfast, then we’d march around Cockfosters, and then we were dismissed for the day. It was all a complete and total waste of time.'

It wasn't until after Christmas that Ron was actually posted overseas - to Egypt - and then he didn't come home for 4 years.

'We used to get "air mail letters", but you could go for weeks and not have anything at all,' recalls Joan. 'They were censored and he couldn’t tell me very much about what he was doing, but I did know he was in Egypt.'

North Africa (1940 - 44)

Ron was part of the Royal Corps of Signals, attached to the 4th Armoured Brigade. His unit started in Egypt, but then went along the coast up to Tunisia and eventually Libya, where he took part in both sieges of Tobruk.

However, Ron wasn't on the frontline of fighting. 'We were armed, but only to get out of trouble.' Not that saved him from the constant danger of bombing. 'Yeah, we were bombed and strafed frequently. I was talking to the Brigadier once, like I’m talking to you, and a shell fell where that tray is from out of nowhere, and muck went up all over him!' [laughs]

Spending all that time in the open - '50 miles in all directions of b****r all' - also meant Ron became less happy with enclosed spaces. 'The first week he came home to England, we had a lot of heavy bombing,' remembers Joan, 'and he didn’t like being in the house.'

Not that being killed was ever a major concern. 'You didn’t worry about that. There was no point,' says Ron. 'I mean you could go through a 24-hour period, and nothing happened. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere something would happen, but you never knew what…'

Amazingly, Ron and Joan didn't lose that many friends. 'Only Henley,' says Ron. 'He was driving a staff car and an aircraft came the other way and machine gunned it. And the car had umpteen bullet holes across the bonnet and it went into the cab, and shot the driver, and we buried him the same night.'

Joan continues the story. 'When he was on the boat going out, he kept saying, "I know I’m not coming back, the thing I’ll miss most is my piano." And everyone said, "Don’t be daft." But of the three people killed on the first day of war in Egypt, he was one of them.'