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The end of January signalled the start of our advance. We set off heading for Dukana some 170 miles north of our present position. This trip took two days. With my workshop at the tail of the convoy, the first leg into the Chalbi Desert was not too bad. We spent the night at North Horr a small oasis with quite at lot of water. At sunrise we left for Dukana 70 miles away, it took 11 hours and was absolute hell. We had the wind behind and frequently rocks and boulders had to be moved from the track to permit the vehicles to pass. With the temperature well over 100F, covered in sandy dust inside and out, we arrived just before sundown. There was such a great shortage of water and that we were limited to two water bottles of water per day for all purposes including cooking and washing.

It was the 31st January 1941 that we really got weaving. Together with the 9th Battery of 18 pounders and one battalion each of the Transvaal Scottish and Transvaal Irish we took 4 hours to make a 20 mile trek. This was across country to Dibbanddibba in a valley between the hills just inside Abyssinia. That night we slept inside a square formed by our vehicles with the infantry guarding the outside. This was for protection against raiding Abyssinian banda not the Italian soldiery. It was reminiscent of early American settlers and the Indians.

At daybreak, now joined by armoured cars, we formed 6 or 7 lines abreast and ploughed through virgin bush and deep sand. We arrived outside El Gumu mid afternoon and had taken it by sundown. That night we had to crowd into a very small perimeter and had only just bedded down when two Italian 5 ton supply trucks rumbled in from the north with their headlights blazing. The drivers were quite unaware that they no longer had an outpost at El Gumu!

We moved off again at daybreak NW making for the Italian fort of Hobok 18 miles away. This time we moved in two lines ahead in the bush, one each side of the Italian made road. We did not use the road for fear of mines. With a handful of Mari Teressa dollars, the Italians had enlisted several groups of Banda to try and cause havoc to our flanks from the bush. At one stage we had to set fire to the bush on one side of the road to keep them at arms length.

It took two days to take Hobok and 'my' 4.5 howitzers did a great job. I went up to the artillery observation post that was on high ground about 1000 yards from the fort, to see how the guns were behaving. Although highly informative, it was a bit hazardous from rifle and machine gun fire. Our casualties 2 dead, 9 wounded. It turned out that our skirmish had not been a raid but was the beginning of the 'push'. I had come up with them as a technical observer without my workshop and was promptly ordered back to Dukana pdq. I got back smartly on 5th February over roads bulldozed and graded by the South African Engineers since we came up a week earlier. The difference was incredible. The temperature at Dukana was now 120F in the shade! On Feb 8 we heard that Benghazi had fallen. I received a signal that my springs for the 18 pounder recuperators were being flown up from the Union. Bannon, another Italian fort, was taken by the Transvaal Irish.

Four days later the workshop moved forward with the 5th Infantry Brigade up through El Gumu again, to Kanchura, a bit further up front. The Brigade then went on with objectives to take El Sod, ‘El Something Else' and then Mega.

By the end of February some rain had helped with our water shortage and we had taken Mega in addition to Moyale. It was in Mega that we managed to get a couple of the Italian 120mm field guns into a serviceable condition. They were made in Germany in 1808 and off one of the other unserviceable ones I have its identification plate as one of my few souvenirs. It was also about then that I joined the current South African cult and had my head shaved. It was supposed to be cooler. That I question and anyway it never grew again on top as much as it used to!
In the meantime Wagir had been taken, very heavy rains had made life very uncomfortable and rumours were rife. Authoritative opinion had it that we were going forward into Eritrea, or to South Africa for leave, or to Egypt for police work, or to Greece. None of these occurred. Communications were dreadful and as an attachment to the 1st SA Division I was always getting instructions from both Division and EA Command in Nairobi. This was all very confusing.

The 2nd SA Division was now in our area and taking over from the 1st. At this point I found myself together with the workshop going with the 1st Division back to Kenya via Nanuki. Here I was officially 'detached' from the South Africans and returned to East Africa Command control. During this trek back we came across much more and varied big game than I had seen already, including a really magnificent eland very close to.

Within very few days of getting back to Nairobi the workshop was increased in manpower and equipment. I was briefed by Col Gaisford, the DDOS, and we were soon off again north to Mogadishu and beyond. The roads or rather tracks were appalling. After a week of continuous driving, starting at 04.30 and camping at sundown our last four days mileages were 170, 117, 126 and 124. Broken springs and burst tyres punctuated each day's progress.

When we reached conquered Italian Somaliland, destroyed bridges caused us to make a number of detours in order to go forward. We found one intact at Ionte near Kismayo to cross the River Juba and then on through Gelib to Brava, where I was determined that we would all have a swim in the sea, hurry or no hurry! It was marvellous. All petrol was carried in rather thin 4 gallon square tins packed in flimsy wooden cases, 2 to a case. The jolting of our two week journey caused many to leak and we found ourselves very short of fuel I had to dispatch a truck into Kismayo for more supplies. This enabled us to continue on to Mogadishu which we finally reached on the 26th March.

There followed a hectic refitting and refueling to leave two days later for another week of driving over the next 700 miles.

After the awful buffeting up from Nairobi, we set off on a magnificent Italian tarmac road that lasted for 225 miles where it stopped at Belet Eum. From there on the track was worse than awful. It was the original rough road made by Graziani in his mustard gas push against the Abyssinians when the Italians invaded the country in 1935. We pushed on through Daga Burr and Gigigga reaching Harrar on 2 April. It was 692 miles of awfulness in 6 days. Here I was given the job of starting up a small Ordnance Depot, re-equipping some of our own units, together with repairing and evacuating large numbers of captured enemy guns and small arms.

Two weeks later we pushed off to Dire Daua further north to do a similar job there. This time however it was a very much bigger operation. Dire Daua was the end of the railway line from Djibouti where one of our supply ships had just made the first cargo discharge. The REs had got a train into commission and a train load of army supplies of every kind was sitting in the sidings there at Dire Daua with no one to unload, store or issue any of it. Someone at Command HQ said "Potter is RAOC, he is up there, tell him to establish an Ordnance Depot". So we did.

When I had the Ordnance Depot all running smoothly with 4 European NCOs and a handful of Africans, a complete Depot establishment of 3 Officers with umpteen NCOs and Other Ranks arrived to take over. By this time it was supplying the whole of the East African forces in Abyssinia. Although it was never spelled out as such I have the feeling that this episode may have contributed to the MBE award. Col. Gaisford, the Director Ordnance Services at Command HQ, sent me a very congratulatory signal afterwards.
So off once more, this time for Addis Ababa where we arrived on the 4th of May. My immediate boss now was the Divisional SOME, Major Barton, tragically killed some time later in a car crash when I was travelling with him. He had already set up a Depot cum Base Workshop with two other Mobile Workshops. One of these was commanded by Sutcliffe, one of the two Officers that I had sent down by river steamer to Kenya from Egypt before I left by air. With my workshop in addition, we had a fairly complex and useful operation. There was a hell of a lot of work to be done repairing our own field guns, armoured cars, instruments, machine guns vehicles, etc. From time to time one or other of these workshop units peeled off to support various battles, skirmishes and forays that were continuing all around the capital.

Although capital of the country, all I remember of Addis at that time was the Emperor's palace which was quite impressive, some outdoor hot spring baths - centuries old, one hotel built by the Italians and a relatively small collection of 'shanty town' shops, money lenders and stalls. They were all perched on the top of a very steep hill. During their occupation the Italians had built a very efficient network of roads throughout the mountain ranges. They had introduced fleets of 10 ton lorries, principally Lancia and Fiat and built a very large and well equipped Lancia factory to assemble and maintain them. It was this factory that I later turned into a base workshop.

Early in June I took my workshop off to the Omo River where we were preparing to take Gimma. This took a week and except for a bit of Italian shelling was not too uncomfortable. Later on in June the Nigerian Light Battery had a hefty skirmish on the Didessa River, I left the workshop at Lechempti and went up to check that 'my' 3.7 howitzers were still functioning OK. They were.

The terrain up to Lechempti from Addis was all between 6 and 12 thousand feet, it rained all the time, was bitterly cold and the roads slithery mud tracks. Two events are recorded in my diary at this point. Mhindi, my 'boy', insisted that I have my bath ("3 foot square canvas, officers for the use of") in the rain in spite of the cold. He bribed me by producing a dozen eggs obtained from the local Habash that he had exchanged for a pair of my very old socks. The other was that on the way up,in Dire Daua, I met Michael Gray, a South African, who stroked the Fraser and Chalmers boat the year I coached them in June 1938.

Two other entries record the receipt of a cap from home and my activity in the photographic field. The cap is a relic of my past attachment to the 98th Field Regiment. When I joined them at the Worthing County Cricket Ground in September 1939, prior to going to France, I was wearing the cap I bought at ‘Alkits’ when first commissioned in the TA. The Adjutant took one look at it and said "You can't wear that with us"; "Go up to Town and get a proper cap at Bates".

Now a 'proper cap' in the eyes of the Yeomanry was one supplied by the exclusive hatters in Jermyn Street that had had the stiffening removed from the inside of the top. This allowed it to be pulled down on each side over each ear. The overall effect was not unlike that of a Nazi general's headgear, nevertheless it was both comfortable, distinctive and unlikely to be seen other than in gunner regiments. I became quite fond of it, but it went the way of most things when the balloon went up and we took to tin hats in France.

Early on I had discarded my ridiculous topee, insisted upon by the War Office before leaving the UK and wore a felt 'slouch hat' with a wide brim. It was sometimes clipped up on one side. They were comfortable, gave some protection to face and eyes from the sun and, when occasionally necessary in Africa, were more or less waterproof. They were the regular headgear of the Askaris. However the climatic conditions had changed somewhat and as it looked as if the war up here was beginning to tail away, I wrote home to Bates and requested a cap. It duly arrived.

The photographic thing was the acquisition of a Lica camera, a piece of captured enemy equipment that did not find its way to the custodian of such things! So now a new hobby to pass what was now becoming a pretty boring existence.

My workshop was stuck at Lechempti from the middle of June until the beginning of July when we moved back into Addis. During the whole of that time it seemed to be a continuous thunder storm with everything awash. Under makeshift tent condition - this was not funny. At one stage Bengy Skeen and his Nigerian Mountain Battery of Hausamen came back through us on his way back to Nairobi and 'home' to Nigeria. This was the unit I was attached to when I first came out to East Africa.

Although the campaign was almost at an end, there were still several pockets of resistance holding out. The largest was Gondar in the north. Back in Addis the scene was becoming much more regimental. We were housed in the Italian Artillery officers mess at the bottom of the hill which was somewhat of a change from the last 18 months. I was given the job of combining the resources of the three other mobile workshops with my own to form a base workshop for the entire Force in these northern areas. We first used the Italian Artillery Depot but this was too small. So by devious means I acquired, from the EAASC, the captured Lancia works, a single span building of 37,000 square feet that was much more suitable for the purpose.

Here we 'opened' on the 1st August 1941 and were soon doing almost everything from making tents to the repair of guns and armoured cars. The POW code permitted me to use Italian prisoners of war in the workshop for any duty that was not directly the repair or manufacture of armament. This was a bit difficult to control, but most of them were very fine craftsmen and turned out some very fine work. Oddly enough they thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Regrettably the considerable amount of Italian that I picked up during this period has long disappeared.
The two Transvaal regiments to which I had been attached from time to time came back through Addis on their way up to the operations against Rommel in the Western Desert. We dropped everything to get their guns and instruments back into shipshape order. They brought with them a number of Italian 20mm aircraft cannons normally fitted into the wings of the Italian fighters that they had captured. The regiments had no anti-aircraft weapons whatsoever and asked me to design a mounting to enable these guns to be used against the German dive bombers in the Western Desert.
This was far from a simple operation as the guns had no stocks, their fixing points were such that did not lend themselves to a central fixing to a tripod for ground use. Also the ammunition belt feeding facilities had to be radically changed. However we did it, making the tripods out of water piping and ammunition pans from mild steel sheet. We decided to test one out in a sand pit and one of the Regiments insisted on bringing one of their own armourers to do the testing. They also brought Uncle Tom Cobley and All, who formed a semi circle behind the gun. It had been set up loaded with tracer bullets to fire horizontally into the excavated side of a sand pit at a range of about 40 to 50 yards.

When they all arrived I was a bit concerned to see that the armourer was a wee little fellow as light as a feather. He was too short to fire the gun horizontally so had to stand on a box to do so. I warned him that the tripod was designed to take the recoil when fired upwards, but when fired horizontally he'd have to watch it. The South Africans were always a little laid back about attitude to officers other than their own and the look he gave me in acknowledgment suggested that I was unaware that he was an armourer! The long and short of it was that when he pulled the trigger the kick from the recoil knocked him off the box. The muzzle of the gun dropped, he forgot to let go of the trigger and the gun, still firing, began to swing round in a semi circle. I don't think that I have ever seen so many brass hats move so fast. However the mounting was a roaring success.

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