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 geng 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. Aer six months of training, Bill went with
his baalion, 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 baalion moved around the country on various defence
dues, 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 eect 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 geng the harvest in, all of which went
towards the war eort.
In November 1942 Allied armies landed on the coast of Tunisia in Operaon TORCH,
this was designed to trap the German Afrika Corps between this force and 8
th
Army who
had just secured victory at El Alamein and were driving the Germans back up the coast. The
ghng in Tunisia was harder than expected however and on 24
th
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 bale straight away as part of a
covering force during the bale of Kasserine Pass, they hasly took up posions near Thala
and watched as a stream of American vehicles retreated through their posion. At the tail of
this stream was a column of tanks, the lead vehicle was a Brish tank that had been
captured by the Germans and they used this ruse to get amongst the Leicester’s posion
Lifestory