Rolvenden Patrol

Herbert Trelogan recalled: “I was approached while I was a beater during a rough shoot at Park Gate with Bill and Cecil. In the early days we had no instructions. We had the hide out and the equipment and we used to invent our own tactics. If the enemy came we were to go to ground and do what we could to disrupt them and blow things up. We never went on courses; that came later. In fact, we did not examine a lot of stuff in the hide out as no one had shown us what it was for. We used to chuck grenades in a nearby pond. The water would rise as high as the surrounding trees but hardly any fish ever appeared.

Lieutenant Strangman, and then a Lieutenant Dinwiddy, and two or three Lovat Scouts were responsible for our training at Cranbrook. We used to go to Angley Wood at weekends and the Lovat Scouts would show us how to use and strip down various weapons. We also had a little stunt where we would go into the woods with our Thompsons and a chap hiding would pull up targets with wires. Very crude but it did the job.”  

Jack Moss: “We went to The Garth once a month and also trained at Coleshill and in Angley Wood near Glassenbury. There was a local Patrol in the area, but we never met them. We had lectures, grenade throwing, explosives practice, unarmed combat, shooting and how to crawl through barbed wire without cutting it so as not to leave any evidence. We were not to engage the Germans but to destroy their supplies. Our weapons were for defence not attack.
We were taught to carry our Thompsons on fully automatic but to only fire one shot. You had to press and release the trigger very quickly. We sometimes saw people at Angley Wood, from other patrols, we recognised. We never asked them any questions for security reasons. Before D-Day we were asked whether or not we would be prepared to drop into France. This was more of a feeler than a reality.”

Bert Trelogan: “Coleshill had a very big unit and headquarters there; quite a sophisticated place. The man in charge was Colonel The Lord Glanusk, a Welsh Guardsman. He was a very tall fellow and used to dress up in full rig. I remember this Lieutenant Dinwiddy; he was there at the time. He was just a little fellow. I remember looking up at the big fellow in awe.
Lord Glanusk would issue the men with a typewritten notice to be shown to anyone who asked who they were and what they were doing.
We did all sorts of things like throwing grenades. They had a big area and were behind an emplacement. We would throw the grenade and drop down behind the emplacement and wait for the explosions. I used to love it because I was quite good. We were shown how to steal up behind somebody with a knife and grab them and stick in the knife…and that was fine.
I remember we had a night exercise there to attack a position and I was in charge of our little crowd, about half a dozen blokes. I decided we were going to crawl across these fields to attack the place not along the hedgerow, as this is where they would set all the traps. In the middle of the field it was all flinty ground. My knees were red raw through crawling through a ploughed field.”

Jack Reed recalled the training at Coleshill was more intensive and the lectures came from higher military people. He recalls they even had an ATS station.

According to Jack Moss the Patrol’s operational area was to be two or three miles round Rolvenden. Although they carried out local exercises most of the training was at Angley Wood and sometimes at The Garth. They practiced laying booby traps along Alders Lane where it was presumed the Germans would travel.