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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Lyn Hedges on behalf of Parnell Webster. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

I joined the RAF on my eighteenth birthday in 1939. I was posted overseas on 14 March 1942 when I boarded the troopship ‘Stirling Castle’ at Liverpool. It was a terrible trip as we were overcrowded with 200 sleeping in the hold. There was no refrigeration and after five or six days the food was terrible. We eventually arrived in Cape Town after about eight weeks. We were allowed to go ashore and many authorised locals were in their cars to show us the city and then they took us to their homes for a meal and to meet their friends.

After being in the transit camp for about a month I was posted to the Middle East. My new address was Communication Unit, Desert Air Force. I wrote home with my new address but, as the enemy controlled the Mediterranean, our mail had to be taken to Capetown by sea and then brought home by sea when space was available. The average time for a letter to reach Cornwall was about eight to nine weeks and, as they were so heavily censored, you could only say you were feeling well (even if you weren’t!) and ask to be remembered to your family.

I was issued with my kit, which was two blankets, a steel dinner plate, ‘irons’ (knife, fork and spoon) and a water bottle, which held just one pint of water — our rations for each day! We had a chap in our group called Hunt, who came from Norfolk. He asked the Flight Sergeant ‘Where do we get our beds?’

‘You’re standing on it!’, the Flight Sergeant replied.

Yes, we had to sleep on the sand with one blanket under us and one blanket on top. It could be cold at night in the desert so we kept our clothes on (except for our boots) and put our RAF overcoats on top of us. We used our kitbags as pillows.

We were issued with pink paraffin, which we sprinkled all round us at night to stop the desert fleas. Occasionally, the desert rats would come looking for the warmth of our bodies.

The toilet was a five-foot pit with boards across it and hessian sacks around it for privacy. It had to be 500 yards from the sleeping/eating accommodation because of the flies.

This was the start of my four years in the Western Desert, El Alamein, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Yugoslavia and I came home in early 1946. So many things happened — some tragic, some funny — and I served with some lovely men! I remember most the flies and I caught malaria, yellow fever and TB.

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