Dick joined 61st Reconnaissance Regiment at the Medieval Lympne Castle in the second week of November 1942. Before starting work as an officer he had nine days leave with Chotie at his home in Pagham, Sussex. His first letter to her as a 2nd Lieutenant is "rather sketchy but the security angel cuts out everything worth writing – almost …." We know from Eric Postles that 61st Recce were on coastal defence duties, patrolling between Folkestone and Romney in Kent.
Managing to get back to Pagham on a 24 hour overnight pass on Wednesday 17th November Dick was re-united with his brother Brin and his sister Diller, both home on leave (Diller from the pay Corps and Brin from Officer training). He nearly got stuck at Brighton station on his way back having lost his wallet but was helped out by the local YMCA. Around this time he also met up with Don Johnston, his old friend from 43rd Recce (later killed in the sinking of the Derrycunihy soon after D Day).
61st Division was also a training unit and Dick was involved in a week’s exercise in the Kent countryside in mid November. He wrote to Chotie on his return:
Letter written on Sunday 28th November 1943
2/Lt R K Williams
‘B’ Sqdn. 61st Recce Regt
Recce Corps, Home Forces
Sunday 28th
Chotie Darling,
I’m now back again and settled down after the scheme, which lasted for its original duration much to everyone’s disgust.
On the whole I had quite a happy time, as I either stayed at, or passed through, several old haunts well known to the family in the old Morris Cowley* days, and coupled with the opportunity so often missed of worming my way into a vast number of period farmhouses and the like.
The weather was excellent, cold but dry and as we stayed in one little village for three days without doing anything of military importance, we managed to get sufficiently well organised to hold ABCA*** periods and run a football tournament. I evaded these two popular pastimes however, and mooched about a local farm until the daughter of the house asked me in for coffee and CHOCOLATE Biscuits! Her undoubted charms left me cold, but I took a lively interest in the biscuits. Lovely old house, with a massive oak beam over the fireplace marked 1600.
The major** came back yesterday. He appeared quite a good type – reads Balzac, so I’m well in.
Nothing much happens here. I’ve just finished a 48 hr spell of Duty Officer, rather a cushy appointment. I get another 24 hr next Wednesday so I may go up to ……….. (word inked out). There’s nothing to do here, or locally, but the snag is the fare. It will be the second day I’ve had off in three weeks, which isn’t so good, to my way of thinking.
Many thanks for your letter, Darling, most welcome at the conclusion of an exercise. Glad to hear you’ve got, or rather you’re getting, a rise****. I bet you’re getting more than me after all. After I’ve paid income tax, messing***** etc, I get the equivalent of Lance Corporal’s pay….
Must close here for dinner.
All my love precious
Dicker.
*presumably the family car from his childhood at Orpington in Kent.
**Army Bureau of Current Affairs – an organisation set up to educate and raise morale among British servicemen in World War 2.
***possibly the Regimental second-in-command, who was a Major, or maybe the Major commanding ‘B’ Squadron. Dick was one of 23 to 30 subalterns in the Regiment – commissioned officers below the rank of captain, generally comprising first and second (junior) lieutenants. Dick, as a newly commissioned officer, was a second lieutenant.
****due to her new qualification as Operator Fire Control?
*****Commissioned Officers were required to eat in the Officers’ Mess and pay a subscription fee for supplies and upkeep. They would also be expected to wear formal attire for evenings in the mess.
© Chotie Darling
Dick, of course, was now in the regiment of the Recce Men we’ve been following. All were in ‘B’ Squadron: a reconnaissance regiment consisted of the Regimental HQ with HQ Squadron and three Reconnaissance Squadrons (‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’) of about 150 men each. Every Squadron had its own HQ, three Scout or Recce Troops consisting of one Recce and two Carrier sections - and one Assault or Infantry Troop. (From ‘The British Reconnaissance Corps in World War II’ by Richard Doherty, Osprey Publishing 2007). In 1943 Anthony Rampling and Eric Brewer were in the Assault troop (lorried infantry called in to overcome enemy resistance) while Dick and Eric Postles served in Scout Troops.
Dick's Recce officer lanyard
Although Home Defence was still important (particularly Anti-Aircraft response) Britain was becoming more relaxed about the possibilities of invasion. The fascist leader Oswald Mosly was released from prison, on grounds of ill health, on 17th November 1943. The next day the RAF began a series of very heavy raids against the German capital of Berlin, killing thousands of civilians.
In Poland as Operation Reinhard (the plan to exterminate Polish Jews) reached its culmination, 42,000 Jews working in forced labour camps were murdered by the Germans in the so called ‘Operation Harvest Festival’. The world was waking up to the horror of the Holocaust when the dreadful atrocity of Babi Yar - the ravine where Nazis had shot and buried about 100,000 men, women and children - was revealed soon after the Soviet Army took the Ukrainian city of Kiev on 6th November.
Wet and wintry weather was hitting both the Eastern and Italian Fronts. In Italy the Allies advance slowed as General Mark Clark’s 5th Army reached Monte Camino, the mountain ridges defending the main route to Rome. The failed British attempt to take the ridge on 5th November resulted in its nickname of ‘Murder Mountain’. Montgomery’s 8th Army was now approaching the strategically important port of Ortona on the Adriatic coast but the Germans fiercely defended the town for another month.
In the Mediterranean Sea, Germany’s sinking of HMS Rohna, with the loss of 1,138 of the US troops she was carrying, would have been such a blow to Allied morale that it was kept secret until 1967!
Americans were engaged in terrible conflict with the Japanese in the Pacific. 1,000 US Marines were killed in the 3 day battle for tiny Tarawara Atoll in the Gilbert Islands - as well as 5,000 Japanese and Koreans - and on 1st November the battle of Bougainville Island, east of Papua New Guinea, began and lasted until August 1945 (the end of war in the Pacific). On 25th November US planes based in China started to bomb the Japanese Island of Formosa (now Taiwan), contributing to a massive Japanese offensive against the airfields in early 1944.
Chiang Kai-Shek, the Chinese Nationalist leader, met Roosevelt and Churchill at a conference in Cairo http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1140364.shtml (BBC History website) on 22nd November to confirm their strategy against Japan. Russia had not declared war against Japan and so did not attend but the two western leaders met Stalin together for the first time in Iran, at the Tehran Conference on 28th November, where he agreed to join the fight against Japan once Germany had been defeated. Roosevelt and Churchill promised that they would invade France in a second western front by May 1944. This was to be Operation Overlord and the beginning of Dick's war in Europe....
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