大象传媒

[Continued from "Technical Training for a New Occupation"]

On embarkation leave, I received instructions to report to an hotel in London's Marylebone Road. Given innoculations and kit for tropical areas, we were expecting to be sent to Egypt or North Africa. However staff members at the unit told us that we had been issued with was normally for service in West Africa. At this time our destination was being kept strictly secret.

The middle of June 1942 saw us go round the corner to Marylebone station, boarding an overnight troop train to Greenock on the Firth of Clyde. here we were taken to board one of the many ships riding at anchor. Our ship was the MV "Batory"; a Polish ship and crew. This had been a large ocean liner and so there was plenty of deck space as well as many cabins.

The following day we were moving down the Clyde heading for the open sea. Some 25 ships, nearly all troopships, were in our convoy, escorted by eight destroyers. The battlecruiser "Malaya" was in command, positioned slightly ahead of the centre of the convoy, often alongside our vessel.

Our journey at sea was fairly uneventful and after five weeks we entered Freetown harbour, Sierra Leone. Here we were refuelled and resupplied. It was at Freetown that we heard that a previous convoy had suffered badly from U boat attack.

The main convoy headed southward to South Africa and eventually Egypt. Escorted by a Corvette, our progress was somewhat slower. After calling at Takoradi in the Gold Coast, after three days we arrived at our destination, Lagos in Nigeria. After disembarkation, we were takn by lorry to a transit camp at Yaba, to the north of Lagos.

It had taken six weeks altogether to get from Scotland to Nigeria. British West Africa was known as "the white man's grave" and we wondered what may lay ahead of us.

[Continued in ......]

(PK)

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