Bridge Patrol

Auxilier George Pellett; “We were trained at The Garth, Bilting, by Lovat Scouts, Royal Engineers and even, at one time, Russian guerrillas. We were taught how to kill with our bare hands, booby-traps or with a knife, to handle plastic explosives and how to sabotage vehicles and aircraft. Lord Lovat visited once. A popular booby trap was to place a primed grenade inside a cocoa tin jammed between tree branches. On one occasion an Royal Engineers instructor blew himself up while making booby traps. It took 12 field dressings to keep his chest intact, but he survived

Our training was as realistic as possible. We used to plant dummy charges on aircraft at RAF Manston and attack the 18-inch Bochebuster-Big Bertha train howitzer in the tunnel at Lenhall Farm. The gun was 150’ long, weighed 250 – 300 tons and reached to the ceiling of the tunnel. The sentries were armed with live ammunition and didn’t know we were coming. If we had been seen we would have been shot on sight. One night we were caught and Jack French fell off the gun barrel. On another night sortie against the gun the Patrol was surprised by the guards and one of the Patrol spent two days in hospital after being duffed up.

We also specialised in transport sabotage. We would target the same parts, such as gearboxes and back axles, and the tales of aircraft, to prevent the Germans from cannibalising vehicles for spares. We would often attack Regular Army convoys parked up for the night along the country lanes. We would creep in, avoid the sentries and place dummy charges or chalk an ‘X’ under the vehicles. As I was quite small and wiry I was very good at this. However, one night Jim Mount, who was big, tall man, got caught. They took him to a hut for questioning. Obviously, he refused to tell them anything. We crept into the hut holding a couple of grenades with the pins out, but the lever still held in place by our hands, and politely asked for our friend to be released. After they did so we scarpered. We always held a post mortem after every exercise to learn from our mistakes. One night we embarked on a exercise to cross Canterbury without being seen, just as one of the heaviest bombing raids of the war struck home. That was very hairy."

Jack French; “We trained in field craft at The Garth under two Lovat Scouts, Sergeant McKenzie and Corporal MacDonald, who were unbelievable deer stalkers. We would be told to watch a quarter mile-wide piece of rough meadow and to shout when we saw any movement. The Lovat Scouts would then pop up right in front of us. We never saw a thing. Eventually, we learnt to do the same over much sparser terrain.
There was also a Royal Engineer, Corporal Nash or Nurchant, who taught us how to handle explosives. He was always inventing things, showing us how to improvise bombs and booby traps. We went to The Garth almost every Sunday and then practised in our own area. We always informed the ARP warden before setting off explosives, but they never asked why.

We went to Coleshill three times. Wonderful shooting country. We reported to the RTO at Swindon and then were driven down to Coleshill. The improvement in our skills after  concentrated lectures and practice was remarkable. We also learned how to identify German tanks and vehicles, their weak spots, and how to attack fuel dumps. Our operational exercises were all timed and marked. Assault courses, unarmed combat, Patrol v Patrol trying to outflank each other, crawling under barbed wire, running and shooting and grenade throwing. You would be thoroughly exhausted and then told to make up live explosive charges.

Prior to D - Day we increased our attacks on Regular Army camps and country houses to help train the soldiers. The sentries were warned we were coming and told to challenge us three times and then shoot. We would infiltrate the camps and place Plasticine charges on vehicle axles and tank sprockets. In the morning we would turn up and show the officers where the charges were placed. Often the sentries were charged".