大象传媒

WW2 1940
DESERT MAIL
Mail would arrive locked in a canvas bag delivered by a 15 cwt Morris truck from Cairo and had to be signed for before changing hands.
We would also be given (one per man) an airmail blank which we would pocket and write at our leisure ready for next week when the mail truck would (we hoped ) come again.
Sometimes the truck got strafed by an enemy aircraft and the mail would be late but if the truck caught fire due to this action then it was good bye to our mail.
Also two more crosses would dot the desert, the driver and his mate.
While we got the air form as a free issue we did have to buy stamps to stick on them.
Airmail was pretty good in that it took about a week to get to us, but parcels would be transported by boat and took a lot longer but they too were a bit thin on the ground.
Leave was offered to service men after so many months in the desert but some could not be bothered because they had no money in their pay book to go on leave with. To clarify that, a soldier gets so much a week pay, in my case when I joined up my pay was ten shillings a week. Now lets look at that before we go any further. When I first joined up I took the advice of one of the old soldiers and I asked the pay Officer to send two shillings and six pence home as a regular allowance, then the rest would be dispensed or frittered away (depending one鈥檚 point of view) on cleaning gear, soap, razor blades, hair cuts, tooth paste, boot polish, cloths, laundry bill, etc.
That left me with five shillings to pay for cinema once a week, canteen tea and bun every morning a 10 0'clock, writing gear, stamps etc.
And if at the end of the week I had a penny left I would be content.
When I moved to Aldershot to the main Regiment I was no longer a recruit but a regular soldier and my pay increased by 3 pence per day.
I went on the rifle range along with all the other blokes and some of the Sergeants on the shooting range on seeing my targets with the small middle dot blown out from eight hundred yards away suggested Davie Crocket鈥檚 ghost had probably popped into our house while me Dad was out in the dark shooting rabbits about a mile away across the corn fields in the moon light.
The Sergeant suggested I put in for the marksman badge (crossed rifles) and get an additional 3 pence per day.
Before I got chance to do this the regiment was shipped out to Palestine so I missed out on 3 pence a day for the rest of my 7 years active service.
At the time I was a bit peeved but today at the age of 83 I am happy to write this as testimony that Lady Luck does sometimes smile on those who miss out on some minor issues.
This did not seem important to us in Palestine when WW2 was declared and the Australians came to give us a hand, but soon, because the Aussie had a lot more money than us, prices sky rocketed, and we felt like the poor relation all of a sudden.
Later when the American Soldiers began to filter into the Middle East they got paid more than the Aussie, and life for the Tommy Soldier really turned sour, money wise that is.
But if we had any paper money to spare it was useless in the desert unless one had no toilet roll.
On odd occasions if an Officer thought one of our blokes was getting sand happy he would have him shipped to Cairo for a course of looking at by the shrink there. Maybe a month later he would come back looking fit and well and burbling all about the belly dancer in Sisters St in Cairo, and the blokes having been bored to tears in the desert would suddenly erupt with "AW SHADDAP".
If a bloke was lucky he could time his leave to coincide with the British fleets visit to Alexandria, sometimes during a conversation or a game of cards on a blanket laid out on the sand a bloke would throw a cigarette into the kitty in the middle of the blanket and mumble, "Ah 'eard t' fleets in Alex 'arber agi'n (I heard the fleet is in Alexandria harbour again) and if one were watching one would notice furtive glances back and forth between some of the players, and someone would venture, "funny ah wus jist thinkin' it wer time I 'ad a leave, might put in fer it termorrer.鈥�
When the fleet was in Alex Harbour all the matlots would congregate at the Fleet Club and play bingo, of course in those days it was called housey housey, or tombola, and when some lucky b鈥� person got a ticket full he would yodel, 鈥淗OUSE!鈥�
Now a day's we scream, 鈥淏INGO!鈥�
I played there one night and I had been sipping at the sherbet and somebody called house then this next to me bloke leaned over and pointed to no 17 on my card and said, 鈥淎yup numb bum, tha鈥� number wiz oot 6 numbers ago", so I missed out on a full house of 95 quid (pounds) so I asked this bloke to give me a swift kick in the dacks to wake me up, and he did, and he was wearing ammo boots.
Cairo was a good place to go on leave but once the sun went down one kept away from the back streets where it was dark and it was a good move to always go in pairs when away from the main body.
There was always a fresh coffee smell or Turkish cigarette smell and smell of fresh bread as one walked the streets in the main areas and scruffy looking kids demanding, "Baksheesh" (food or money) and little wallads (boys) carrying a heavy box and begging to let him shine your shoes for money.
The video "Sea of Sand" depicts more or less what we used to do, except we were not motorized, we had to march and carry, we did not have the luxury of transport.
If the reader has heard old blue eyes sing "I did it my way" well we did it the hard way because we did not have the luxury of hidey holes and trenches and positions already dug for us to jump into.
We had to start from scratch and dig in the hot sun all day to make these positions and we were not up against Germans, but Italians, who did more or less the same as we did, really had it rough at the beginning.
But even the Italians were organized in that they had moved into the desert and built little Forts that were organized, while we skulked in the desert roughing it like Indians raiding the wagon trains.
And one does not see it mentioned too often, but The Fourth Indian Div. did give Britain it's first land victory, and one unit in that particular action that started at dawn and ended late in the afternoon were The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the cutting edge.
Cutting edge being the operative word because so much dust and sand had been thrown up by shell fire that the rifle bolts that were lightly oiled acted like magnets to the dust and sand and were inoperative so the Argyll鈥檚 fixed bayonets and advanced at the walk for about half a mile while under heavy fire from the Italian lines and as man after man fell to the sand the ranks closed and they carried on until with a final rush they fell upon the Italians and took Sidi Barrani.
One of our lads during a pause in the advance yelled, 鈥淲e micht juist as weel be advancin鈥� hoddin鈥� a f----n鈥� pointy steck (sharpened stick)
However the field guns were silenced and all the dugouts searched.
The silence after the battle was eerie possibly because all I could hear was my ears were ringing from all the noise.
Dust, sand and grit was everywhere, and even though we wore plastic eye shields the grit made one鈥檚 eyes smart and the word was offered, 鈥淒on鈥檛 rub your eyes because it will only irritate them more鈥�
Meanwhile a lot of Italian prisoners were collected and one said, " We ran off, we were not prepared to stay any longer to watch that advancing line of bayonets getting ever closer as we kept shooting but they would not fall down, and suddenly we broke and we ran anywhere to get away as far away as possible to hide from those very angry but resolute faces.

2982252 Pte Barker T.O. 1st Bn Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders,

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