大象传媒

I volunteered in 1939, for the army, as a kid and they were saying that it鈥檇 be over in six weeks; I was in 6 陆 years, I鈥檓 91 now! I was sent to France. I was run out of France, and draughted to the Welsh Regiment in Cardiff. I did three years training and was sent to North Africa where I was based for three years. I was in the A.C.C.: army catering core, rifleman and a driver; as the force became depleted they needed people to cover. I remember one of the cooks throwing fuel on a fire to cook and the flashback caught him; the next day he died. He was my fiend; I never got over that. I wanted to tell his family what had happened, but they wouldn鈥檛 let me. Sometimes in North Africa we鈥檇 sit there and look at the sunset, I鈥檇 be saying 鈥淚 wonder if that sun鈥檚 shining over Liverpool?鈥� You were always on the alert though, you slept anywhere. There used to be these awful winds, and the temperature was often 102.
We were in the second invasion of Algiers, 3am we got attacked by planes, The Windsor Castle ship used to sail from Liverpool, she was in our convoy and she got hit, we got machine gunned, shrapnel and all that. I never thought we鈥檇 get through it. I won lots of medals, but I don鈥檛 like to dwell on them.
We went to Rome, the Vatican, we used to get our water from outside there and all the lads used to say 鈥淣ot more Holy Water.鈥� Chlorine was put in it to stop disease. They reckoned that the Germans had Pisa as a spy base. We were in Monte Casino; we just kept going even when we were lousy.
I didn鈥檛 find out till after the war, in Liverpool, that my brother was on escort duties up the Mediterranean, he got sunk twice.
The army stopped at Christmas, we got as much supplies that we could get for the next day. We played football with the Germans, some of them were great. The Nazis never mixed, they鈥檇 kill one another, they were always fighting. The Hitler youth were hated by the ordinary Germans because they started the war. We played football on Christmas day in the compounds; we used to give them food.
My wife wrote to me, before we got married, a parcel arrived from Central Hall, Liverpool, I didn鈥檛 know who Nora Quinn was. After the war, I came home and she was sitting in my house. We got married in Central Hall Liverpool.

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