Ernie Ward
A soldier serving with the Royal Army Pay Corps
Ernie Ward, completed his basic training at Devizes. “We were given a choice of where we wanted to serve, so long as it was not within a fifty-mile radius of our homes”. “Once basic training was completed, I was posted to Stockport”. When the train I was travelling on arrived at Reading station, the squad I was with were told “all those going to Stockport will need to disembark at Birmingham, New Street, because you are now going to Wolverley instead”.
“Just a few nights after arriving at Wolverley, I found myself on guard duty for the very first time”. “In the early hours of the morning we were passing the mortuary building of the former American hospital, when we heard strange noises coming from inside”. Very frightened and with our pickaxe handles raised we entered the building”! “To our great relief and surprise we found a couple of duty cooks playing table tennis over the former mortuary slabs”.
Ernie Ward
“I worked in the orderly room, and after six months we all got a permanent pass”. “We had a civilian lorry and driver from Genners Transport Quarry bank, the lorry had previously been used as a coal truck”. “I would often say to the driver, are you going home at five o’clock”. “He always obliged, but I had to get up the next morning at 0530 the following morning to catch buses back to camp”.
“I remember an exercise starting one Friday afternoon when we received the coded message”, ‘Hedgehog Red’. “We dashed back to the billet to collect our equipment, but found the door had been padlocked, so we smashed a window, and got in that way”. We were supposed to defend the flood plane, below the lock from an attack by ‘the Queens Own Worcestershire Hussars’ in their tanks”. “Nothing had happened after about an hour and a half, so we all packed up and went home for the week-end”.
