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15 October 2014
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RECOLLECTION OF EL ALEMAIN

by eldoel

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Archive List > British Army

Contributed byÌý
eldoel
People in story:Ìý
Frank Doe
Location of story:Ìý
El Alemain
Background to story:Ìý
Army
Article ID:Ìý
A5712211
Contributed on:Ìý
12 September 2005

The caption for this photo is: Ismalia. Frank Doe is pictured foreground, squating at second right. An inscription on the reverse reads: 'Just out of hospital.'

EL ALEMAIN

INTRODUCTION

My dad was in the 8th Army with the Desert Rats. He was a rifleman and radio operator in the KRRC in the North Africa campaigns in WWII under Montgomery. I remember him teaching me Morse Code as a kid. ‘Di-dah-di…’ he’d go and ask me what it was. I wish I could remember it all now. I don’t know how he did memorise it all even after all those years, but I suppose going through something like that it does stick.

I still have his army issue notebook. It is of a stiff card cover containing extensive notes about Morse, circuitry and radio valves and stuff. I still have his medals but, regrettably, I have lost his Desert Rat flashes he brought back when he was demobbed. I remember him explaining to me about the desert rat.

The Desert Rat was the jeroboam. The flash from his uniform was a black jeroboam, or desert rat. It was embroidered on a beige square of coarse cloth. He had two. One was taken by my uncle George to use as a template for my mum and dad’s wedding cake. George must have kept it because my dad never got it back. The other has since disappeared.

I have his War Office ID card for Mechanical Transport Drivers (Army Form A 2038) valid from 22/5/40 to 13/11/41 with his name and no: 6852157 (description) RFN B605 2nd Q.V.R. (K.R.R.C.). The ‘2nd Q.V.R.’ is crossed through and replaced by ‘B22 8th’ and something that I cannot quite decipher.

His Soldier’s Service Book mentions a Major Watson. His Release Certificate and testimonial is signed by a Major Cox at the No 4 Military Dispersal Unit and dated 4 Dec 1945.

His service medals include The Africa Star with a clasp marked 8th Army; The 1939-45 Star; The Italy Star; The France and Germany star; and The 1939-45 War Medal. He also earned some shards of shrapnel in his left arm, some slivers of which he carried all the way to his grave.

But I remember he never did like all that pomp and circumstance associated with war celebrations. He’d say, ‘War is something you have to do sometimes to put things right in the world; it’s not something you celebrate or glorify.’

He was born in 1910, the year of the Great Comet. His date of birth was the 6th of June — the day of deliverance for Europe in those dark days of the Second World War. Curiously, he died in 1984 when that same Great Comet was sweeping in toward the sun upon its return. He died one night alone, except for a nurse spoon-feeding him with morphine, in hospital of a cancer that had been diagnosed by his GP as arthritis and, previously, as malingering!

I am going to write his memories as I heard them, in the first person, as though he is telling the stories for himself. He was at Tobruk and El Alemain. This is what he recalled to me of the latter.

BACKGROUND

I was born in Brentford, Middlesex in 1910. We had to live on five shillings a week army pay. My father was in the army in India for many years. My mother had to work to make up the extra to live on. We were comfortable, but things weren’t easy. When I left school, there was the General Strike and all the unemployment that followed. You could be in a job one day, and then out on your ear the next because someone had offered to work for less money. No-one would stick together; that was always the trouble.

AT EL ALEMAIN

All I remember of El Alemain is the deafening noise and the blinding flashes, the noise of the barrage and the flashes of light in the sky. It was all dead silence. Then all hell broke loose.

Monty had told us all we had to do was just see it through to the finish and we’d win the day. It was all just mechanical. Just advance. There wasn’t any bravery or anything like that. You didn’t have time to think of anything like that. You didn’t think. It was all just mechanical, like you weren’t really there, just seeing it through to the finish.

And that’s what we did. And, somehow, I came through unscathed apart from some shrapnel in my left arm.

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