´óÏó´«Ã½

An engineer in Africa:

Stephen William Bishop, Corporal, Royal Engineers, unit 565.

These are the memories I have of my father at War. He died in June 2004 so of course he has not checked this but I believe it to be correct.

My family was in the car business. From the early 1900s my father was a chauffeur, then it developed into a taxi business and car repairs. So after I left school I trained at night school in engineering, and I became quite good with cars and engines. When war broke out I enlisted in The Royal Engineers aged 19.

On the way out to North Africa I was in a flotilla of ships, travelling together for safety. I was posted to another ship to look after the technical side of things, and the ship I had been on was torpedoed. It went down slowly, and everyone was taken off safely, but down to the bottom of the sea went everything I had brought with me, as my kit was still on that ship. That taught me not to be too bothered about things and possessions. In later life I rarely locked the front door, or even my car, as things don’t matter very much compared to people.

Once in Africa I was put in charge of a small group of men, my unit, no 565. I have records of all of them to this day in my loose-leaf address book. One time we were under fire and huddled in our trenches. I hated it, I have never liked being cooped up in a confined space. I thought, if my number’s up, a trench isn’t going to protect me much, so I got up. I climbed out of the trench and stood up outside. The illumination of the shells was beautiful in a strange way. Anyway it felt better being out in the open, and I did not feel so afraid once I was out in the air like that. I felt I had conquered a fear by facing it in the eye.

The war ran its course and Monty got us back into Europe eventually. I crossed over to Italy, and was one of the ‘D-Day dodgers’ — we couldn’t be there, we had another job to do. It was slow work, fighting up through Italy. I learnt a bit of Italian, which was useful on holidays after the war. We stopped at one town, and did work repairing the bridge, but we had to move on before it was completed. I wonder sometimes if it was finished? I expect it was.

By the end of the war we were near Austria, and before demobilisation I was taught cross-country skiing in the mountains. This and the Austrian-accented German I picked up were also useful for holidays after the war. I even met my wife after a skiing holiday in Austria!

[Written by his daughter, Kathryn in January 2006]

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