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Transcript Of Interviews
Of
Sgt. Roy William James Welland 5337618
1st Battalion The Royal Berkshire Regiment
.....After
we completed a certain amount of training like that they whipped us down to
the Isle of White, now we wondered what the hell are we were being sent down
there for; anyway we were transporting down to the port and crossed over by
ferry landing at Ryde. We went to a place, I think it was called Binstead Hall,
and presented us with little cards, no bigger than a cigarette card, with German
phrases on it, like cigarette and cigarettes’ and things like that and
we were told to read, digest dispose of it when you’ve got it all, crikey,
what’s going on here, then we thought, oh super if we get whipped away
somewhere, or something like that, but we didn’t believe it or not, something
must have gone wrong but nothing happened like that at all.
.....A little later on we got another title, we were no longer No.2 Army Commando,
if we were we didn’t know it, we were now the 1st Brigade Special Service
Unit, that was controlled by Brigadier Young, I think? (Brigadier Peter Young).
The S.A.S. was built up from all that, that’s how it all finished up.
There was no such thing in those days as paratroopers, not to the extent it
was at Arnhem. We were the 1st Brigade Special Service; and went down to Paignton,
in Devon from there as No.2 Commando. We thought that was very strange perhaps
we’ve come out as there brigade now, because they never told us too much
really, it was all sort of all going on behind the scenes. We took a back seat
and were back under 2 Commando again.
.....We later heard that after Dunkirk and all the rest of the theatres, both battalions,
the 1st Battalion and the 2nd Battalion, who had suffered a lot of casualties
needed to be built up, so they broke the 6th Battalion up a bit and built the
battalions up from the 6th. Anyway the C.O.’s of those particular units
were making such a fuss about their best men being taken by these special services,
because they were getting very popular, lots of blokes were volunteering for
these various services at that time, the wages were better as well, that was
the pull, and on top of that the adventure, because we were kids, weren’t
we, we were full of ambition, adventurous and that type of business, you know,
that’s beside’s the point, we were old enough to die for our country
so that’s fair enough.
.....At Paignton we got put into special digs, civilian digs. So we were very very
lucky, I got put in with a family, a mother and three daughters, the eldest
one was married, with a baby, but that’s beside the point. There was
four of us all in one room, the front room incidentally, which was their lounge
obviously and I think it had four bed bunks in there. We used to have ‘Roll
Call’ and that sort of thing each morning in the road just outside as
well as being brought up to date on what we’d got to do. I believe we
used the local Town Hall or another local place where they had this massive
room where we used to do a lot of our training, mostly all of our lectures
were held in that hall. Along the beach, we used to do a lot of work also.
.....During all of the C.O.’s moaning like hell about their best men being
pinched, they asked for various service units to try and thin down a bit and
return some of their soldiers, and this is how the 5th Battalion got involved
with the 1st Battalion. I left the 5th Battalion to join all this, but I was
later returned to the 1st Battalion, and I arrived there just in time, in the
middle of 1942 I think, or early part of 42, I can’t remember, it was
defiantly 42, and was sent over to India, we were to go to Madagascar I think,
then they changed their minds and whipped us over to Bombay instead, I think
we stopped at Cape Town to refuel. Well that was a hell of a big convoy, we
were followed by Jerry bombers with big long tailfins I forget what they are
called, you could hardly here them, they were up a terrific height, they couldn’t
be hit with any shell fire apparently, and we didn’t suffer too much,
not as far as I know we didn’t.
.....We arrived at Bombay and boarded trucks and then we were whipped of to a place
called Ahmednagar, near Poona, a camp, hundreds under canvas and we got settled
down as best we could, while we were in there and made some sort of life for
ourselves. I was a little bit bored really with it after all the excitement,
and what I had been doing before, it didn’t seem the same to me somehow,
square bashing and all that, that wasn’t up my street at all, not really.
I preferred to sort of get around and do something definite. Anyway, George
and I were asked to form two sections of men that we’d like to hand pick
ourselves, which we did and formed up what we called the ‘Tiger Patrol’ because
of our previous commando and jungle training, and were made up to lance corporal.
After awhile we wished we hadn’t accepted this offer, because we got
overworked really. Anything that went wrong, they’d say, I’ll get
Roy or George to take their sections to do it, but there again, that’s
war.
.....Then I was sent to the transport section, where they taught me to drive which
was one good thing about that, they taught me to drive these trucks and troop
carriers and God knows what, and then I went back with C Company, doing lance
corporals duties in a section. I was in 13 Platoon C Company I think it was.
.....After that things started to brew in Arakan. We were told we will be whipped
over to Arakan and see if you can sort that lot out, see what we can do over
there. Well our brigades were thee battalions strong, so we had our battalion,
which was No.6 Brigade, which was the Royal Berks, Royal Welch Fusiliers and
Durham Light Infantry and we borrowed the Royal Scots from No.4 to build it
up a bit. We knew that once they done that that we was going to be on a big
attack of some sort, but there again that didn’t happen, we got over
there, we knew what we’d got to do. We saw the enemy positions, but they
were literally impregnable, I couldn’t honestly think how we were going
to get down there. There were tanks, they were buried in the ground with just
there turrets showing. They were having a thoroughly good time really; they
felt as safe as houses here. There were two impregnable positions, ‘Sugar
4’ and ‘Sugar 5’ (Sugar Loaf); they gave them titles like
this. We put in a number of attacks, and suffered casualties, they realised
that was a dead loss, and we withdrew and regrouped, and I believe Instead
of the Fusiliers we had an Irish regiment, and they got into a bit of difficulty,
so we reinforced them and strengthened them up a little bit, and then they
sent us back to the Kuda area, and then they shipped us up to Dimapur.
P 1 :: P
2 :: P 3 :: P
4 :: P 5
Sgt. Roy Welland