大象传媒

A few days after landing in North Africa (Operation Torch) my Signals section were working in a requisitioned garage in Djidjelli, a small port east of Algiers. As the town was subject to sporadic night bombing we only had a guard on the garage at night while the remainder of the section stayed in billets in the comparative safety of the outskirts. We shared the garage with a few Royal Engineers who also worked there.

The garage was about 80 yards from the Town Hall which was near the harbour wall. The whole building had been requisitioned by the Americans who used it as their HQ. Like most buildings in Algeria, it was painted white and in bright moonlight it could be seen for miles. In front of the Town Hall the Americans had built a huge trench in the shape of three sides of a square which they used as an air raid shelter.
One night, shortly after the landings and about two or three hours after sunset, I was on guard at the workshop and chatting with my two companions in the main road outside. It was bright moonlight and we were actually discussing the possibility of an air raid when we heard the noise of approaching bombers and the sound of exploding bombs getting closer.

We were amazed to see the reactions of the Americans. They came streaming out of the Town Hall and poured into the shelter, soon filling it. Despite the possible danger, the three of us, all veterans of the London blitz, found their behaviour slightly amusing, although it must be remembered, that only a week or so before, they had still been in the United States and had never heard a shot fired in anger.

However, our smugness soon disappeared when we heard another plane approaching and we
thought this one was probably after the Town Hall. I remember we looked at one another and decided that we would be well advised to get into the air raid shelter too. We ran across the road and got into the trench. Because it was already full
we were only able to get in the sloping part of the trench where it descended from ground level to the full depth which was about six feet. I was first in, complete with rifle and wearing my tin hat (thank goodness) and I found myself squeezed agaist an American GI with my two comrades behind me. I remember looking past them to see two civilian Frenchmen at the top of the slope and bending down to make themselves as small as possible. Even from where I was, I could see that they were not fully protected as they could not get into the deeper part of the trench.

The bomber above quickly identified itself as a Stuka dive-bomber because I heard the terrifying howl of the dive. I heard the scream of the descending bomb and felt it hit the shelter, I thought about six feet away from me although it must have been more. Strangely, I did not hear the bomb explode but, of course, I knew it had, because huge clods of earth and stone fell on me, battering my tin hat and beating me towards the floor of the trench. At the same time, again strangely, I felt the side of the trench moving in, not instantaneously as one would expect, but slowly and inexorably. I was pushed against the American at my side and I learned later that my rifle had stuck into him so hard that it had broken his leg.

When the rubbish began to fall on my head, pushing me down, I realised that I would be buried alive and my instincts made me push up with all my strength against the tremendous weight of the falling debris. I strained so hard that I broke my army braces and they were reckoned to be unbreakable.

When the earth and stone clods stopped falling, I found myself completely buried except for the space immediately beneath the rim of my steel helmet. I was completely
immobile, my legs and arms were pinned; all I could move was my head, and that only very slightly. I remember that there was absolute silence.

After a few minutes some rescuers arrived, from the direction of the town. They were native Algerians under the supervision of French civilians. They did not see me at first until I managed to wiggle my tin hat to attract their attention. The Arab workmen freed me after several minutes and I climbed out of the trench and looked around me. There was no sign of the air raid shelter. All that remained was a shallow depression of very rough ground covered with huge clods of earth and stone. Apart from the space I had just left there was no indication that there had ever been a trench there.

Of course, my immediate concern was for my two companions. My release had loosened some of the earth around them and I could see them in a crouching position in the bottom of the trench with a large amount of earth pressing them down. I helped the Arabs dig them out but there was no sign of the two Frenchmen behind them. I never did discover what happened to them, but I never saw them again.

The American was pulled out next, in obvious pain from his broken leg. The last one to be released was a Royal Engineer but I did not see that rescue. I was told that he was badly wounded and died of his injuries later. We three signallers were taken to hospital where our minor cuts and sacratches were treated and we were discharged.

When I was rescued from the trench, I was still clinging to my rifle which I placed against a nearby signpost while I returned to help my companions. When I returned it had gone, obviously stolen! Afterwards, I dare not tell my Section Officer that I had lost my rifle - that would have been a court-martial offence - so I told him it was still in the trench.

He sent me back the next morning to dig for it! You can imagine my discomfort and horror when I returned to the scene to find that no-one else had been recovered alive from the shelter since the previous evening
and that they were only now bringing out the first two or three bodies. I recall sseing my first dead soldier, a very young
American Second Lieutenant, laid out on the ground neatly but with his face horribly mutilated. I saw all this as I went through the motions of digging for a rifle which only I knew wasn't there.

This whole incident had a profound and permanent effect on my life. Not a day passes without my thinking about it and how lucky I was to survive. One Briton and
well over 50 Americans died in that trench.
I lived because, after the explosion I pushed up against the falling debris while presumably everyone else crouched down and were pummelled even further down by it. My current deafness began here, too. I never understood why I did not hear the bomb go off. It was explained to me some forty odd
years later by an audiologist that the human ear can not hear sounds above 250 decibels. This explanation also gives meaning to the expression from WW1, "You never hear the one that hits you."

But the most important effect was that it completely destroyed my self-confidence in my own survival. This was not a thing that I, or indeed any of my fellow servicemen, ever talked about, but I think that everyone who served in the War believed they would live through it, no matter whoever else got killed. Losing that belief was a terrible blow to me, particularly as one who, I am rather ashamed to say, found the London blitz exciting rather than terrifying. Then, I was a very small part of a very large target but in that trench we were a clear target to a precision bomber. It was then that I realised it could happen to me, too. I am not saying that I quaked with fear every time I heard an enemy plane or heard a gun go off but now I knew that I could die the same as anyone else could. And this feeling is still with me now, long after the War; on the road, in a plane, anywhere.

After Algeria I went on to serve in Tunisia then Italy where I made some good Italian friends, some of whom I visited again after the War in 1970 and 2005. But that's another story.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.