- Contributed by听
- Burnham Library
- People in story:听
- Harold Nisbett
- Location of story:听
- Africa
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A3387224
- Contributed on:听
- 09 December 2004
This story was submitted to the Peoples's War site by J. Marshall on behalf of Harold Nisbett and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions
When I was 21 I was called up to the Royal Artillery as a militiaman. I did 6 month鈥檚 training at Oswestry and Catterick and was sent to the Norfolk Yeomanry and posted to Egypt. In 1940 we set sail from Gaire Loch in Scotland on a Dutch ship 鈥 the Costa Rica which used to be a Royal Yacht. We went down the west coast of Africa in a convoy with other ships.
One morning we woke up to find ourselves on our own, the convoy had changed course during the night and somehow the message had not reached our ship. We were not allowed to make radio contact because of the enemy monitoring the air waves. Two days later, a shot was fired across our bows from out of the mist. We all rushed to the decks to see the masts of a ship approaching us rapidly with no way of knowing if it was friend or foe.
We slowed to a halt and were very relieved to see it was the Cruiser 鈥淪omerset鈥 from the convoy that had come looking for us. But because of the mist they didn鈥檛 know if it was us or not! We rejoined the convoy and our journey continued with no more incidents like that!
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