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I was in Iraq with 55 Bombing Squadron Bristol Bleinham Aircraft.
A week before the outbreak of WW2 the squadron travelled from Iraq to Egypt and eventually the Western Desert, before the battle of Al Alehemain. All the aircrew from that squadron were either killed or taken prisoner of war. When Romill’s German army joined the Italians before the big push to Al Alehemain.

Twelve of us in that squadron should have returned to England in 1939 but RAF records didn’t catch up with us until 2 years later. Fortunately for myself and the remaining eleven we were taken out of the battle area for return to the U.K. via South Africa because the Suez Canal was closed. Two years later I received P.O.W. letter cards from friends in Germany who had survived the Battle of Al Alehamein. News in the letters was restricted to the size of a card, except the prisoners were well treated by the Germans compared to the Japanese P.O.W.s.

One personal friend who was killed in the Western Desert gave me his parents’ home address and I was able to visit his family on my return to the U.K.
The day that he was killed, his officer asked me to go to his tent and collect his personal belongings. On an upturned empty petrol can, was his bible, opened at a text which said :: The Lord has called you out of Egypt out of the furnace to be unto him as you are this day.
On that day, his aircraft had crashed and became a blazing furnace just out of Egypt into Libya. That bible, I took home to his family. After the war I remained with the RAF and as a civilian instructor until retirement in 1981.

In 1945, I was moved to an RAF training establishment near Blackpool. On the same day, unknown to me, an attractive WAAF by the name of Mary also arrived. Cupid scored a direct hit, love at first sight, a proposal in August, engaged in September and married in October. All within three months. A war time wedding. We were married at the Parish Church, Bispham, Blackpool and were married for almost sixty years by 2006.

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