大象传媒

I went away in March 1942 and hadn't been home. I had a choice of either going back home in the Mauritania or flying. They said, 'Well the Mauritania will take ten days.' I thought, well, flying would be quicker, wouldn't it? I'll go flying then. Big mistake. Went up to Deolali where the planes started. 'Have you had cholera in the last 12 months or no? Have you had tetanus?''No.' 'Oh well, you'll have to have them before you go back.' Of course, you know that's a fortnight's wait to make sure they act, so I was a fortnight in Deolali when the Mauritania was sailing into Southampton. Eventually we got into the plane, oh good. Got as far as Karachi, everybody out, there's about 5,000 troops waiting at the transit camp , wait your turn at the end of the queue. So I had three weeks in Karachi, this was from October onwards, got into November. Eventually I got to the head of the queue, went off in the next plane, touched down in Bahrain, re-fuelled, carried on to Lydda, Palestine. Transit camp with about 10,000, but if you wait your turn you'll get out. So while we're here for three weeks we'll have a look at Jerusalem. It was out of bounds. 6th Airborne Division were keeping order, and we'd done parachuting so we'd got the same red hats so we decided we'd go. We hired a guide and we had a day in Jerusalem, went round all the sights - Gordon's tomb and all the different places, Mount of Olives and all the rest. We had lunch in King David's Hotel. A month later,a gentleman named Begin dressed up as a milkman came in with, I think, a dozen milk churns, milk in the top half and explosives in the bottom and blew the place to pulp, so we missed that.
We had got on as far as Tripoli, North Africa, and it was the same, waiting. On Christmas Eve, or the day before, I had a word with the transport man in charge and said, 'Look, we've been on our travels since October, what's the chance of being home for Christmas?'. He said he'd see what he could do. We got on this plane on Christmas Eve and flew off. We'd been flying about an hour and I caught a terrific smell of petrol. Word came back, one engine's packed up, we'll never do the trip now, we've got to go back. One poor devil was asleep and he woke up when the wheels screeched on the landing field. 'Oh thank heaven to be home again after all these years!' And the doors opened and all he saw was palm trees and a ruddy camel! So we had Christmas in Tripoli. On Boxing Day there was a horse race meeting and I thought I'd go and have a look. Two Americans were there and one said,'Who's going to win in that lot?' These horses were paraded around and I saw one that had a long thin neck and a little head and I thought, well that reminds me of a picture that used to hang in one of the classrooms at school. It was either Byerley Turk or the Godolphin Arabian and that was the top race horse stud. I said,'Oh, that one's got as good a chance as any'. 'Thank you very much, thank you very much.' And these Americans went off and put a pile of dollars on this blessed horse and it won! They came back with a fistful of money - I think it was Italian lira. They said, 'You'd better have some of this.' I said, 'No, it's alright, I'm not a racing tipster, Italian lira are no use to me anyway.' 'What's going to win this next one?' I said, 'I've been lucky once, I can guarantee a second try.' And believe it or not, there was another long necked thing with a little head. I said, 'I rather think thast one.' Off they went and put the biggest part of the money on that. That came in too! They were absolutely loaded with Italain lira. They said, 'Well, if you won't take any money we'll stand you the best dinner Tripoli can provide.' So I accepted that.
After that we did get a plane for home. It was a Stirling bomber, it wasn't very fast and we had a head wind of 80 m.p.h. and we just got to England. It wasn't even home, we got as far as Tangmere on the south coast with about a pint left in the tank and that wasn't the worst of it. In Tripoli I thought, well, there's not much fruit at home, I'll buy a bag of oranges. I got a sandbag, oranges were ten a penny there, think nothing of them, so I filled it with jolly nice oranges and put them on the floor near where I was sitting. But what I didn't know, there was a hot pipe to keep the place tolerably warm when we were flying high up and it had rotted the blessed lot by the time I got home. And that was it. I was home for the New Year, and that was the end of my military career other than spending time in Norfolk training young boys to look after what was left of the Empire. June 1946 I got de-mobbed and that was the end of that. I was lucky to survive it!

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