Guard duty at Winchelsea was two hours on and four hours off. Where?
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'On the chalets at the bottom of the hill from the guard room. One used to stand in the sentry box and and one used to patrol around these wooden chalets. Then you'd come back and if you were lucky you'd get a crafty fag. But you had to be careful because we were in a hollow and if the Orderly Officer was coming down on his bike--they used to come down the hill on a bike--he could see you if you lit up, he could see the red glow.
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'Now Eddie Poole, I was on guard with him one night and he always used to smoke a pipe. One night the officer came in, he says: "Have you been smoking? I can smell pipe tobacco. Poole you smoke a pipe, let's see if your pipe is warm." Eddie gave him his pipe and it was cold! The officer couldn’t understand it. And then after he left, Poole turns round and and he says, "I and always carry two pipes!"
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George Forster also remembers one NCO haranguing C Company very loudly on the green in Winchelsea one morning. In mid-flow a little old lady comes up, taps him on the shoulder with her brolley and sternly tells him: "You don't use that sort of language in our village!" For several seconds the NCO is speechless.
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Forster remembers the two old ladies who provided tea and scones for the men every morning in Winchelsea. During the summer the men were often detailed to harvesting work. Forster remembers one nasty accident with Sergeant Swann
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'He nearly cut my hand off. When we were at Winchelsea, they used to cart us away to the fields, cutting beans and that. We had sickles and this bloke cut me across the wrist with it. He was a Corporal then, but he was made a Sergeant later and he got killed.'
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GF remembers one of the songs they would sing while marching through Sussex and Kent:
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"We are some of the DLI
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We are some of the boys
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We know our manners
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We spend our tanners
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We are respected wherever we go
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As we march down the avenue
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All the lads and lasses cry
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The DLI are passing by"
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GF remembers being overflown by enemy aircraft as they raided Camber Beach.
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'They hit the cement works and there was a big cloud of white smoke went up.'
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Also of an RAF aircraft being brought down:
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'The day the Beaufighter came in he was very, very low. We had instructions that if an aircraft was any lower than 100 feet we had to open up on him. The Royal Artillery down the coast opened up and we just joined them--and then we got a rollicking for using ammo up.'
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