Garth Wright tells Times reporter John Hutchins of some of his experiences as a gunner in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and his special bond with his fellow soldiers from West Devon who he served with.

AS the sole survivor of the five original ’Band of Brothers’ from Horndon, near Tavistock, who all joined the Territorial Army at the outset of the Second World War, Garth Wright, still possesses a fine, military bearing —pretty impressive for a chap now in his 97th year.

Garth, who now lives in Crownhill, Plymouth, was one of five young men from the village near Tavistock who enlisted with the TA in the summer of 1939, when war with Germany was imminent. The five - Ken Stephens, Roger (Reg) Palmer, Peter Dodd, Harry Anderson and Garth — joined the 153 Battalion, Tavistock, which was part of the 51st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, based at Crelake Barracks at Tavistock.

Tavistock

At the time Garth was then just 19 and working as an labourer. His father, who had worked as a boilerman at Devonport Dockyard, had moved from Plymouth in 1936 to become the publican at the New Inn (now known as the Elephant’s Nest) in Mary Tavy.

‘We didn’t have a lot of training,’ said Garth, ‘it mostly consisted of going up to Plasterdown with our two anti-aircraft Bofors guns and somebody would run into the gorse bushes, pop their head up as a target and we would try and turn the gun on them. left or right. We certainly didn’t prepare.’

‘I remember on September 3 when war was declared. We were supposed to go to Watchet in Somerset for some ack-ack training but that was cancelled. A couple of weeks later our battery was heading to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.’

France

The 150-strong 153 Battalion and their guns were sent to protect an airfield near Lille in north west France where their unit guarded RAF Gladiator aircraft and later Spitfires and Hurricanes.

Garth, who already was a keen motorcyclist before the war, became a despatch rider although in that winter and early spring of 1939/40 there was not much action at the time known as the ‘Phoney War’.

’For a while it was very quiet,’ said Garth, ‘it was all a bit of an adventure and I thought well if this is war give it to me any day. Then all hell broke lose and on May 10 everything changed. I was riding around as a despatch rider, taking messengers between headquarters and the lads on the guns. It was chaos. Refugees were choking all the roads after the Germans surprised us by attacking through the Ardennes Forest. We were constantly coming under attack from Stukas and Messerschmitts 109 aircraft. The Germans bombed and strafed the refugees. It was sheer hell.

‘We were still fighting World War One tactics. They devastated us. They were prepared and we weren’t — it was as simple as that. It was men against boys.’

The speed of the German advance caught the British and French by surprise and the BEF found himself heading for the Channel ports for a possible escape route; soon the only port available for evacuation was Dunkirk. It was here that the first of the ‘Horndon five’ was killed — Ken Stephens was a senior despatch rider, leading a column into Dunkirk when it was attacked by Stuka bombers. He and two soldiers in a following lorry were killed instantly.

As the British troops retreated towards Dunkirk Garth was one of many soldiers who helped cover them with rifle fire. When they got to the beach, he had the disheartening task of giving the order to destroy their own anti-aircraft gun and throwing its breech block into the sea.

‘There was nothing we could do except spike the the guns and make them useless to the enemy.

‘In the meantime the beach was under constant fire by the Germans from aircraft bombs, heavy guns and machine guns.

‘It was every man for himself,’ said Garth, ‘I don’t mind admitting to be terrified. The Stukas diving down on us were awful, with the blood curdling scream they gave as they dropped their bombs. With the machine guns strafing the beach there was no escape and men were being killed all around me. I was so scared that at that moment I almost wished it was me that had died.’

But fortunately for Garth he survived uninjured and to take his mind off the chaos and carnage all around him, when someone asked for stretcher bearers, he volunteered.

‘I helped pick up this badly wounded man and carry him to the mole (a wooden pier) and then on board a destroyer, HMS Codrington. I was about to go back to the beach when a Royal Navy officer told me to stay on board. I didn’t argue! Unlike many I had a first class ride back to Blighty.’

Garth was one of almost a third of a million British, Commonwealth and French soldiers who were evacuated off the beaches and back across the English Channel between May 26 and June 4, 1940, by an armada of Royal Naval, merchant and small ships and boats. ‘Operation Dynamo’ was later described as the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ and enabled the British to carry on to fight another day when capitulation looked the only option. It proved to be one of the crucial battles of the war.

London

After recuperation Garth was sent with his unit to protect forward aircraft stations at the height of the Battle of Britain at places such as RAF Hornchurch, Marsden and North Weald before 153 Battalion were ordered to join the British 6th Armoured Division.

Tunisia

‘We started to train with tanks and we thought we would be taking part in an invasion, perhaps France but we landed at Algiers in North Africa as part of Operation Torch with the Americans. Our job was to take Tunis before the Germans and then wait for the British Eighth Army to join us from Egypt.’

It was there that Peter Dodd was killed.

‘We were with our guns and met fierce opposition just outside Tunis. We were too much exposed with the infantry behind us. It was crazy. There was no protection. Peter was sitting on an ammunition box looking at a German mortar crew when they sent over a mortar - it blew his stomach out. Afterwards we buried him deep in the sand but the Arabs dug him up later and stole his uniform.’

‘Soon afterwards our captain pulled out a white flag to surrender himself and advised us to do the same and become a prisoner of war. I couldn’t believe it.’

Needless to say Garth did not take that advice and continued the fight instead.

In February 1942 the American forces in Tunisia lost more than a 1,000 men when they were trapped in the Kasserine Pass by the Germans under General Erwin Rommel. Garth remembered being part of the force that pushed the Germans back after that battle.

‘I remember going through the Kesserine Pass. It was such a beautiful night with a wonderful smell of broad bean flowers in the air. But then I saw what must have been hundreds of American vehicles which were in convoy and they just laid there all burnt out.’

It was on the way to Tunis that Garth’s friend Roger ‘Reg’ Palmer was killed.

‘A pair of Messerschmitt 109s came down and strafed the road. Roger went to feed the gun with ammo when he was hit. I remember seeing his lungs still moving in a hole in his back.’

Although he witnessed a lot of death, including many of his friends, Garth had an empathy with the ordinary German soldier, who like him, was just trying to survive the war.

‘I’m not talking about the Nazis, the SS, the fanatics, I had no time for them but the Wehrmacht troops, the ordinary German soldier, was just the same as us.’

Garth tells of one moment he will never forget.

‘I went out into the desert with a spade to go to the toilet. Certainly this German on a BMW motorbike comes over the sand and raises his hands to me shouting “Kamerad, kamerad.” He wanted to surrender. I got in his sidecar and told him where to go. He was quite a friendly fellow.

‘He was called Heinz and a butcher before the war so we took him with us and got a job working him in our cookhouse. He tried to stay with us and was very upset when he left. I think he ended up a prisoner of the Russians. I often wondered what happened to him.’

After the Germans were pushed out of North African by the Allied Forces Garth and his regiment were sent to Italy with the 6th Armoured Division and found himself at another infamous battle, Monte Cassino, where, in early 1944, one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of the Italian campaign took place during the Second World War.

Italy

The Germans, fortified behind their lines in mountainous country, took over the Roman Catholic abbey of Monte Cassino, which gave them the heightened advantage over the surrounding countryside. Although the abbey was reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment it took four assaults before the bastion was captured by Polish forces in May 1944.

‘It was terrible. The Germans were well prepared and it took slow progress for us to advance up through Italy,’ said Garth.

It was in the mountains that another tragedy struck the West Devon soldiers.

‘We were in the mountains and being given a welcome by these Italians who were giving us wine. A little Italian had a lady’s hand pistol and was boasting how many Germans he had killed with it.

‘One of our lads was looking at it when he accidently pulled the trigger and shot Harry in the stomach. He survived it and was sent to Blighty (back to Britain) but he died just a few years after the war when he was out walking from Brentor to Mary Tavy with some of the lads for a drink.’

Garth remembers being with the Allied troops when they broke through the final German defensive line in Italy.

‘In was May 1945 and I was driving a tractor, crossing the River Po when a load of prisoners passing started to wave their hands in the air and shouting “It’s over, it’s over. The war is over”. I felt disbelief. It took a time to sink in.’

Austria

Garth ended the war in Klangenfurt in Austria and stayed in Brescia in Italy, finishing with his battery of 51st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment guarding an aerodrome before he was finally demobbed in 1946.

He returned to the West Country and married his war-time sweetheart, Olive Abdy, who he met in the east end of London in 1941 and the couple married in May 1946. Garth got a job as a bus driver in bombed-out Plymouth, and continued until he retired in 1979 after 33 years service.

However, like many a veteran, Garth could not forget those years that forged him as a man, and those pals who he served with and particularly those who had died serving their country.

Over the years Garth has been an active member in the Dunkirk Veterans’ Association (Plymouth branch), the official bugler for the Monte Cassino Society and the Royal British Legion. He has also been happy and proud to raise thousands of pounds towards the Monte Cassino memorial, which is sited at the National Arboretum near Lichfield, Staffordshire, and for the Dunkirk Veterans’ Association memorial on the Hoe, Plymouth.

‘I never really understood why we were at war with the Germans; the average Germans are more like the English than any other nationality,’ he added. ‘It all seems senseless.’

Now 97, a still spritely Garth has never forgotten those young Horndon lads who joined up all those years ago to fight the nation’s foes and all the other fellow servicemen he met along the way.

‘I remember the friendship, the camaraderie, which helped us all through the hard times and got me through the war. It gave us a bond that never was — and will never be — broken. It got us through hell and fire and enabled us to come out the other side. We will remember them.’