Jim Rolfe had an extraordinary war, and this is his story in remembrance of all who served. As a driver in the Royal Army Service Corp, he supported the 5th Infantry Division, known as the ‘Globetrotters’, the most travelled British Army unit in WWII.

This young lad from rural Buckinghamshire drove through India and the deserts of Iraq, and from the beaches of Sicily to the death camp at Belsen. After this experience, Jim was more than content to stay at home in Amersham for the rest of his life!

A Buckinghamshire Lad

James Victor Rolfe (1918-1998) came from a large family in Brill in West Buckinghamshire. His memoirs describe a tough rural childhood as his father struggled for money when he couldn’t work because of severe rheumatoid arthritis. Jim left school in 1932 at the age of 14 and went to live with his brother Tom and his wife Gladys in Amersham, with the hope of getting work. He was accepted as an odd job boy at St Mary’s Rectory and shortly afterwards moved to lodge with Miss Line at 35 Whielden Street. He later worked at the Misbourne hand laundry, earning 18 s a week.

The Royal Army Service Corps

When war broke out, 21-year-old Jim enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) whose role was to keep the front-line units supplied with provisions, petrol and ammunition. Jim completed seven weeks intensive training with the driver training school on Salisbury Plains, before he was sent to France in November 1939.

Dunkirk

Jim wrote vividly of the retreat through northern France and how his abandoned lorry was torched to prevent the Germans using it: “We then marched for about four days to Dunkirk after calling at a café, which appeared to be abandoned, and getting a bottle of rum. With this little tipple my mate and I buried ourselves well down in the sand, I with the Bren gun and piles of 303 ammunition and he with a 55-inch anti-tank gun.

“We were heavily shelled, bombed and strafed by Messerschmitts and we made up for lost opportunities, firing on Stuka dive bombers. We were on the beach for four days and three nights and in between times we were called upon to take ambulances back to pick up and dispatch wounded soldiers and civilians, until the jetty was eventually destroyed by the shelling of German heavy artillery. We then had our orders to take to the little boats.”

The Globetrotters

In February 1942, after training in Northern Ireland, Jim’s unit was sent to Africa, to support the 5th with the planned invasion of Madagascar. A month later they were on the move to India and travelled from Bombay to Burma (now Mumbai and Myanmar) in a convoy of 3-ton Dodge lorries. Jim described the stark contrast of the squalor of Grant Road, Bombay where dozens of lepers were lying in the streets, to the beauty of the Taj Mahal and the elegant tree lined avenues of Allahabad.

Just three months after arriving in India the division was on the move again to the Middle East. Here Jim experienced the terrific dry heat of a “godforsaken” Basra before he had to climb the Zagros Mountain range to the bitter cold of Kermanshah, Iran. After spending time in Palestine and Egypt, Jim’s unit eventually returned to Europe in July 1943.

Italy

In heavy seas and strong winds, they landed at dawn at Avola, Sicily before crossing to mainland Italy in September. Jim’s unit lost two men when anti-personnel mines were dropped by parachute and exploded about 10 feet above their landing craft. Now promoted to Lance Corporal, Jim spent several months in the Naples area ferrying supplies at night on American landing craft under constant bombardment by fighter bombers and a large rail mounted gun, nicknamed ‘Anzio Annie’. He went to the opera house and Pompei: “Vesuvius was throwing out a very fine molten dust and our lorries were covered with it - it came down like rain and people walked about with umbrellas”. He visited the Colosseum in Rome and the Vatican City where he even had an audience with the Pope!

The End of the War

In March 1945, driving day and night (with new night vision binoculars) the division crossed Belgium and into Germany. Here Jim witnessed the devastation of the bombing raids where Hamburg was “literally burnt to a shell”. Worst horror was to follow when the unit was sent to Belsen concentration camp to move interns to nearby homes and camps: “It was the most pathetic sight imaginable; a number of drivers couldn’t carry on and had to be replaced. You have no doubt read reports of the concentration camps and I have no need to repeat anything here”.

Civilian Life

Jim returned to Amersham in January 1946. He had served for six years and was hospitalized twice, with German measles in Dieppe, and with hepatitis in Tehran. Ironically, he only received an injury at the end of the war when a careless guard accidentally shot him in the thumb. To add insult to injury, Jim was demoted back to the rank of Driver for ‘failing to maintain alertness’.

Sadly, Jim lost both his parents during the war. His father died just weeks before he was demobbed. Jim returned to lodge with Miss Line and got a job working as a stores man at the bus garage. At a dance in the Conservative Rooms he met an Irish nurse, Mary Coghlan (Mollie). The couple married and moved to an old Dakota airplane that had been converted into a caravan on Bury Farm. Two children followed before the family moved to a council house at 38 Briery Way, where the third was born.

Jim Rolfe died at the age of 80 on 16 October 1998 and is buried at The Platt Cemetery. His memoirs From Brill to Basra have been published by the family and more of Jim’s experiences can be read at ameshammuseum.org.