The Story of WALLY STOCKLEY

...This being completed the signallers and I would take our turn manning the phone for Fire Orders. Whenever the line went dead we had to find where it was broken and fix it. I suppose it could have been due to rabbits or other small rodents gnawing through the fine cable, but for some reason this always seemed to happen at some unearthly hour during the night!

Later on in France before crossing into Belgium, I was doing my turn of duty on the phone. This particular day at about 11am, the Command Post Officer left the command post to answer the call of nature. It was while he was away that Fire Orders came through on the phone for the guns to fire on a target. It was a bit frightening no officer being present. So I had no other option but to pass the target on to the guns and when they were ready tell them to FIRE.

It was only when the guns had finished firing that the officer appeared wanting to know what was happening; this officer was a dour man I had never seen him smile. It was then that the phone rang, it was the Battery Commander at the Observation Post wanting to talk to the officer who had just come back, while he was talking on the phone he kept looking at me. I thought I may be in trouble for doing something wrong, but the officer said he had a message from Sunray for me, (Sunray was code for Battery Commander) "My Compliments to the Signaller - Good Shooting!" Although elated it was a position I didn’t want to find myself in again.

One afternoon we were in Belgium just outside of Ghent, having just fixed the phone line after it had been damaged. We were about to pass a big house with a large driveway when we saw a little old, or should I say elderly, man shouting and waving his arms frantically! Not knowing why he was so excited, we went up the driveway and approached him. He took the four of us into his house, and into a large room. He sat us at his table, then brought in five glasses and two bottles of champagne which he had buried in his garden. He filled the five glasses after which he started singing "It’s a long way to Tipperary" in broken English. It was sad that we had to drink up our Champagne in a hurry, and leave the old chap celebrating his new found freedom all alone.

Then it was leaving Belgium into Holland, taking up many new gun positions along the way. Late November we took up position in the area of Dinther...