大象传媒

My father worked at the Llanerch mine in South Wales, and because he fought to be paid for overtime he was the first and last man to be sent from the colliery when the call up came for the second world war. After him, all those called up were deferred.

So, on 1 December 1939, off he went to Claycross to join the Royal Army Service Corp. There were two hundred men, all about twenty years old. When they were asked if any of them had a driving licence, six men stepped forward, Dad among them. When it came to tuition in driving the lorries, those six men were told they were proficient and all the other men passed their tests within six weeks. The last day there was a Sunday. They had parade in the drill hall and as they passed the stores, they were each handed a rifle. The next day they were moved to Whitney to pick up their lorries, and the following week they were off to France.

Dad enjoyed seeing this foreign country, places like Rouen and Brittany were lovely, but eventually hard fighting meant that the British were pushed back until he was sent from the front to join the 1st Armoured Division and drove down to Brest. Here an Officer informed them they had been called back to England. Dad left on the last ship from Brest to Falmouth, leaving behind one officer and six men who returned on fishing boats.

His section was sent to Cheriton, near Dover for a well-earned rest. This area was known as Bomb Alley. He became an ambulance driver at Dover Castle.

In the Dungeons there they had a main dressing station with an operating theatre that was kept going by a large generator, which I believe is still in situ today. It was his job also to look after this generator and make sure that it was always filled with petrol and oil so that it would start up immediately it was needed. It was run regularly at least once a week.

He could look across the channel from the Castle area and watch the spurts of flame from the guns in France and count so many seconds before the shells pitched somewhere below him in Dover. The firing took place all day long, backwards and forwards. One day one of the British guns took a direct hit - the gun and its crew were blown away.

Returning from a week's leave, Dad overslept and so he was late joining his troop in Kirkham, Lancashire. Here he worked in Preston barracks with the transport, then on 11 November 1941 off he went to the Middle East. He enjoyed a ten-week cruise to Durban, South Africa, with one stop at Freetown on the gold coast. As the ship was anchored offshore in the early morning with the sun shining on it, the coast looked just like real gold; it was a beautiful sight he remembers. He loved that cruise and has many happy memories of the sights and smells of the sea. His first trip to the east must have been exciting.

He arrived at a big base in Egypt and drew his lorry - a Canadian Maple Leaf Chef. But instead of driving up the desert, he was sent to Syria, which was occupational transport. From February to November in 1942 he travelled all over Syria and serviced the forts on the Syrian-Turkish border and then back to Damascus which was his base. Here he unfortunately discovered he had an unidentified skin complaint, which they termed as unspecifically as 'dermatitis'.

He was sent to the third general hospital just outside Beirut where he remained for five months because his weight had dropped to just seven stone. Two or three times he was discharged, only to return almost immediately with rashes and other complaints. The sister there was exasperated - 'Not you again!' she would say. Eventually, he was sent to rejoin his company in Gaza. Two weeks in Gaza and the rashes returned, which meant hospital again. He had noticed that practice was going on getting on and off assault ships on the canal, but the hospital was being evacuated in 48 hours and he was moved to a convalescent camp in Palestine where he stayed for one month. Here the pastor took him on a trip to see the birthplace and tomb of Christ, an experience he would never forget.

He was returned to base in Gaza, where he was posted to a new company and travelled to Sicily. He remained in Sicily for two weeks, where he was only given cleaning and cookhouse duties. In Sicily if you only had a scratch, you had to go sick because it was a bad area for flies and disease. So the medical officer took full details of his sickness record and moved him straight to hospital. After three days he was told he would fly back to North Africa. The plane did not arrive but the hospital ship the 'St David' did, so he sailed back to Africa. There he met a Major Peterkin who was a specialist in dermatology, and he sent Dad home to England after just two weeks.

He was hold he had to practice careful dieting, and so he returned from Algiers on the 'Franconia' and went to Woking, Surrey. Eventually a specialist saw him and 'Dermatitis Herpetiflorus' was diagnosed and he was given a full discharge.

He saw many sights, some wonderful and some he would rather not mention and longs to forget. For me, his daughter, when I think of all the places he had been to, and what could have happened to him, I was rather glad he only came home with Dermatitis.

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