大象传媒

Earlier, when war broke out my brother was helping to evacuate people from the East End; he caught flu, and sent his brother instead. Me ! my first experience.
I had to go to a school where there was a large crowd of mothers and children waiting.
A man asked me if I would look after his wife and child, I asked him to point out his wife, and then asked where was the little one.
He replied that would be about four months later!

That wasn't the only time I became involved with pregnant women.
I was on a train in a slam door carriage, you know, no corridor, with six heavily pregnant women.
That journey seemed to take forever. Eventually the train slowed down as it came to Virginia Water.
One of the women said, 'We can't stop here, we're no virgins'.
One of the expectant mothers told me that if she had a son, she would call it Patrick.
When we arrived at our destination we were told there had been an air raid warning. I was so glad we didn't hear anything on the train, or things may have turned out differently.

When I tried to enlist officially, the sergeant asked how old I was, I said 'twenty', and was told I was two months early, I said 'no I'd forgotten I was really twenty three'.
'That's fine, sign here', he said.
And so I joined the army, first in the Western Desert and then the Sudan in the Royal Army Service Corps.
I ended up in Italy and then eventually home after serving for four and a half years.

During my time abroad I was at the Battle of Monte Casino, attached to the Polish Division.
The Poles fed us, and I remember often there was apricot soup on the menu -- that was 'interesting'.

Can I tell the story of having to requisition 200 donkeys in Tunisia?
I was a very young second Lieutenant and was told to report to headquarters.
When I got there I was asked if I spoke the local language. Before I could reply I was told they wanted 200 donkeys - and ordered to get them. I was dismissed.
I had a batman who was twenty years older than me and treated me like his son. I told him about the order for the donkeys, and off we went.
We went to the local mayor, it was around midnight, he came downstairs in his nightgown and cap, and I explained that I wanted donkeys. He seemed somewhat surprised and told us to come back in the morning,
The following day we met again and he told me he'd managed to get twenty, but he'd contacted the police on the island of Gerba, and that they had the other donkeys we needed.
We would need a boat, even though the island was not very far, probably no more than 500 yards, but nevertheless over water.
We saw the chief of police, and confirmed that the animals would be available that afternoon.
We drove down to the port, every single road on the island we could see donkeys heading towards the dock.
When we arrived there were Arab tradesmen and donkeys, everywhere. Lots of them.
The donkeys had to be priced. We agreed we would pay the Arabs for each day's hire.
Each donkey had to be priced, in case there were accidents and could not be returned.
A committee was set up, the chief Arab, the policeman, and I.

The chief Arab opened the donkey's mouth, looked in, and said '200 francs', the policeman looked and said '150 francs'.
I thought it was much safer to look into the donkey's ears than its mouth.
I used a method that made it appear that I knew what I was doing. I looked in the ears and said '120 francs', not really having a clue what they were really worth.
It worked! They cost 120 francs each.

One problem, the donkeys were not individually identified, so if one didn't get back, they'd never know which one was missing, but by this time I didn't care.
We had the donkeys.
There was a clerk recording the owners name and a description of the donkey.
It appeared not to concern them that the description of each donkey was described identically.

The next problem was shipping them to the mainland.
There were little boats that crossed between the mainland and the island, we put the first five donkeys in a boat, unfortunately it capsized.
I decided that the water was too rough for the crossing that night, and we would wait 'till morning.

The following morning I was contacted and told that the donkeys had been arriving all night. I agreed I would take them all at, but at a set price.
The finest sight ever seen, were some sixty boats, all containing five donkeys.
Meanwhile lorries had arrived to transport the donkeys back to our headquarters.

It became quite an art, into getting the donkeys on board the lorries. Putting their forelegs onto the lorry, getting a large pole behind their rear legs, and pushing.
One piece of advice I learned the hard way was never, never put four female and one male donkey in the same lorry.
There was chaos!

The donkeys were to be used as pack animals to go around the German lines.
I never found out if the animals were returned to their owners, or whether the boatmen ever got paid.
I suspect they got a cut of what I had paid to the owners.

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