大象传媒

Before the war I enlisted in the TA in 1937 and I worked in the anti-aircraft (ack-ack) division. We were first called up in 1938 for two weeks for which we were paid 10 pounds which was an awful lot of money at the time. We stayed in private houses and my landlady also helped me with my uniform by cleaning my boots because at that time lots of people were very poor and needed any money they could get!

At the beginning of the war we worked at Hornchurch where the RAF headquarters were situated. However, when the Battle of Britain started in 1940 we were moved to Kent to help shoot down aircraft. I also spent one night on Broadstairs cliffs with a loaded rifle watching for a German invasion, but thankfully it never came. My unit used to call me `ace' because I got a regimental prize for shooting. My main job at this time was as a driver transporting the generators which powered the search lights that the ack-ack people used though I also transported supplies all around Essex. Though we were working in anti- aircraft our unit was very lucky as only one person was wounded when they where strafed by a German plane and ended up with a bullet in their ankle which unfortunately never healed properly.

Later on in the war when the planes had stopped coming over in such droves I was trained as a mechanic and was moved to East Africa. My unit was involved in transporting supplies into Somalia and we were the most northerly unit in East Africa. We were so isolated that in order to get our supplies our drivers had to drive south to the railway head that passed for civilisation and then north to deliver their supplies. There were no roads where our trucks went and so each convoy had to have one truck on the back which just carried tyres.

Our camp was right in the middle of the jungle, we even had our own troop of about 200 baboons who would sit round the camp and look at what we were getting up to. Because of the isolation and the bad conditions our toilet area was kept away from the rest of the camp and if you were caught short you had to get in a vehicle and drive there! We never got any leave because we were so far out of the way!

The only pursuits available to us were congregating with the local tribes and getting drunk so there was normally quite a bit of trouble in the camp. However, I spent a lot of my time hunting. I used to hunt small deer for the members of our unit, except the Italians who preferred Zebra and because of this I earned the nickname of `Tracker'.

My unit was quite small as we were only involved in the service section doing transport. However, we had many nationalities in the camp; we had English; French; South African; and Italian servicemen in our unit. The Italians joined after the Italian surrender when they where given the choice between working for the allies or going to a prisoner of war camp. However, there was not much bitterness between us as they were very good mechanics.

I became a mechanical sergeant major and became head of our workshop which meant I had a lot of responsibility. However, I was given a batman, a local servant who used to help me with things. I originally had a Tanzanian servant but towards the end of the war I had a Sudanese instead who used to think that all Englishmen where called George because King George was on the throne.

At the end of the war we moved down from our camp to the railway head and it was only then, when I had finally left the jungle, that I fell ill. I got malaria which made me very ill but luckily was not the reccurring variety and Elephantitis which made my feet swell up terribly. We had been immunised against a few diseases on the boat going to East Africa. However, it was impossible to immunise against all the diseases in the jungle.

After the war I did consider using my mechanic skills to work in engineering but ended up working with the post office telephones. I didn鈥檛 have a bad war as we saw no sort of combat where I was stationed. However, it was very isolated. I have never been back to Africa and I don鈥檛 particularly want to go. However, I did keep in touch with my Batman who was a schoolteacher and me and my wife sent him some things to help with his school.

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