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CAPTURE — AND ESCAPE - WITH THE DESERT RATS IN THE LIBYAN DESERT

INTRODUCTION

My dad was in the 8th Army with the Desert Rats. He was a rifleman and radio operator in the KRRC in the North Africa campaigns in WWII under Montgomery. I remember him teaching me Morse Code as a kid. ‘Di-dah-di…’ he’d go and ask me what it was. I wish I could remember it all now. I don’t know how he did memorise it all even after all those years, but I suppose going through something like that it does stick.

I still have his army issue notebook. It is of a stiff card cover containing extensive notes about Morse, circuitry and radio valves and stuff. I still have his medals but, regrettably, I have lost his Desert Rat flashes he brought back when he was demobbed. I remember him explaining to me about the desert rat.

The Desert Rat was the jeroboam. The flash from his uniform was a black jeroboam, or desert rat. It was embroidered on a beige square of coarse cloth. He had two. One was taken by my uncle George to use as a template for my mum and dad’s wedding cake. George must have kept it because my dad never got it back. The other has since disappeared.

I have his War Office ID card for Mechanical Transport Drivers (Army Form A 2038) valid from 22/5/40 to 13/11/41 with his name and no: 6852157 (description) RFN B605 2nd Q.V.R. (K.R.R.C.). The ‘2nd Q.V.R.’ is crossed through and replaced by ‘B22 8th’ and something that I cannot quite decipher.

His Soldier’s Service Book mentions a Major Watson. His Release Certificate and testimonial is signed by a Major Cox at the No 4 Military Dispersal Unit and dated 4 Dec 1945.

His service medals include The Africa Star with a clasp marked 8th Army; The 1939-45 Star; The Italy Star; The France and Germany star; and The 1939-45 War Medal. He also earned some shards of shrapnel in his left arm, some slivers of which he carried all the way to his grave.

But I remember he never did like all that pomp and circumstance associated with war celebrations. He’d say, ‘War is something you have to do sometimes to put things right in the world; it’s not something you celebrate or glorify.’

He was born in 1910, the year of the Great Comet. His date of birth was the 6th of June — the day of deliverance for Europe in those dark days of the Second World War. Curiously, he died in 1984 when that same Great Comet was sweeping in toward the sun upon its return. He died one night alone, except for a nurse spoon-feeding him with morphine, in hospital of a cancer that had been diagnosed by his GP as arthritis and, previously, as malingering!

I am going to write his memories as I heard them, in the first person, as though he is telling the stories for himself. He tells here of when he was taken prisoner in 1941.

BACKGROUND

I was born in Brentford, Middlesex in 1910. We had to live on five shillings a week army pay. My father was in the army in India for many years. My mother had to work to make up the extra to live on. We were comfortable, but things weren’t easy. When I left school, there was the General Strike and all the unemployment that followed. You could be in a job one day, and then out on your ear the next because someone had offered to work for less money. No-one would stick together; that was always the trouble.

THE CONFUSION OF THE NORTH AFRICAN DESERT.

The desert isn’t all sand dunes like you see in the films. It’s only like that around the coast. No, it’s rocky, not at all like that. It was all bluff then. We didn’t have the materials Gerry had. Much of our time was spent on long tours round the desert, driving in bottom gear, making tracks to look as though we were a tank division.

During the night, we towed oil drums behind us, up and down, to fake the tank tracks. Sound carries in the desert and, driving in bottom gear, it would make Gerry think it was tank movements. They’d send out reckie flights next day and, from the air, it would really look the job. It wouldn’t fool you on the ground, but it certainly fooled you from the air. We went hundreds of miles behind German lines, hiding up during the day, then out again at nightfall.

CAPTURE — AND ESCAPE!

We’d been out on a tour. We were making our way back to our truck when shells started falling all around us. We thought it was our lot finding their range. ‘Daft sods,’ we thought. It wasn't until we got back to the truck, we realised they were Gerry shells. We had to get the radio out of the truck in short measure in case it was hit! That was our first priority.

I said to Nobby, ‘Here, give us a hand can’t you, it’s heavy?’ I looked at him and he was just staring. ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ he asked. I didn’t know what he was talking about and shook my head. He was still staring and started shaking his head in disbelief. And then I looked. A shell had passed between my legs. There was a great gaping hole through my greatcoat. I'd felt the wind; I thought it was just the hot desert wind! The barrage stopped. We thought it had all blown over. And it seemed as likely best to stay put as wander off into a Gerry division.

We scratched together a meal of sorts. Rations were always running low and we’d have to improvise a meal. When we had eggs, you could fry them on a rock in the sun. But we had none. So — we improvised! We put together a concoction of bully beef and dog biscuits to make into a stew. We crushed the biscuits by putting them in a sack and then driving the truck backwards and forwards over them. It’s no good being finicky. You make do or you starve.

We all sat round eating this when we noticed a German Panzer division away off up on the hill. We looked round and realised that our lot had just vanished, made off without a word of warning! We decided the best thing to do was to just sit tight. So, there we sat, calmly eating our grub as though it was a Sunday picnic as the panzers circled round to us! As our RSM said to us before we went overseas: “Better a live coward than ten dead heroes!�

We were taken prisoner. Of course! No point in putting up a fight. I think they admired the way we just calmly ignored them as they drove up. Or it may have been just disbelief at these crazy Englishmen! We were treated alright. We were the Desert Rats and Rommel was the Desert Fox after all! There was a bit of a mutual respect. They later told us, ‘We wondered what we were up against when we saw you calmly walking through the barrage of shells, and then sit down to a meal!’

We were shipped off to a holding camp for POW’s and held for some days waiting our chance. Then, one night, calmly as you please, we all slipped out!

FOOTNOTE

My dad said he was at Tobruk. I imagine this was in the capture of the port from the Italians in the January of 1941. The events here described appear concurrent with when Rommel and his Africa Corps advanced and drove the British forces from much of Libya. I'm not sure.

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