Robert William (Bill) Shipman

Bill was born in the village of Stathern in Leicestershire in April 1920, leaving school

at 14 he worked on a local farm before geng a job as a bricklayer. In April 1940 while

building part of the Old Dalby army camp, he received his call up papers and joined the

Leicestershire Regiment at Glen Parva barracks. Aer six months of training, Bill went with

his baalion, 2/5 Leicesters, to Scotland where they formed part of the home defence force

as a German invasion from Norway was a possibility.

For the next two years the baalion moved around the country on various defence

dues, rst to Norfolk then on to Kent where they patrolled the coast on bicycles. This was a

pleasant task in daylight, but during the night as a blackout was in eect a lot of me was

spent untangling themselves from barbed wire which they had not been able to see. During

this me, Bill was granted several periods of ‘Agricultural Leave’, as he had farming

experience he would have been a great help with geng the harvest in, all of which went

towards the war eort.

In November 1942 Allied armies landed on the coast of Tunisia in Operaon TORCH,

this was designed to trap the German Afrika Corps between this force and 8

Army who

had just secured victory at El Alamein and were driving the Germans back up the coast. The

ghng in Tunisia was harder than expected however and on 24

December 1942, Bill sailed

with the 2/5 Leicesters in the troop ship HMS Derbyshire for Algiers as part of a relief force.

Once there they marched south and were pushed in to bale straight away as part of a

covering force during the bale of Kasserine Pass, they hasly took up posions near Thala

and watched as a stream of American vehicles retreated through their posion. At the tail of

this stream was a column of tanks, the lead vehicle was a Brish tank that had been

captured by the Germans and they used this ruse to get amongst the Leicester’s posion

L i f e S t o r y