大象传媒

My Dad was posted to the Middle East in 1941, shortly after joining the RAF. He spent 3 months on a troop ship sailing from Liverpool via South Africa and India, eventually arriving at Basra in southern Iraq. His first job was to erect tents for the new arrivals, including himself!

He travelled north at first, to Mosul, doing wireless observation duty along the northern Iraq border with Turkey. It was very cold in the mountains, not at all what he expected when he heard that he was going to the Middle East.

Later it was indeed more a question of the heat! When he was posted south to Palestine, Egypt and Libya, driving a lorry with a canvas roof across the desert, it was 30-40 degrees centigrade. Hot enough to fry eggs on the bonnet, had any eggs been available!

My Dad delivered supplies to small wireless units strung along the front line 10 miles apart. Each post reported in every two hours to confirm that they were OK and no enemy troops or activity could be seen in their area. If any post stopped reporting in, it was assumed that the enemy had advanced... not the most reassuring line of work, even in those times.

One day a boy from a nearby village came running towards the post shouting. My father and his friends managed to work out that the boy wanted them to follow him. It was a difficult decision, but when they did so they found a small unit of German soldiers trying to surrender to them. The German commandos had been sent on a sabotage mission behind Allied lines. Now they wanted to be taken prisoner as their only other choice was to remain in the desert.

My father helped stand guard over the men (about 20 of them) while they waited for transport to be sent to collect them. The British forces commander called to send lorries for them did not at first believe the story my father and his colleagues told, and came out to see for himself! My Dad was very relieved when the Germans were safely in custody as he and his friends had only one pistol and a rifle each and would not have been a great match for 20 well-equipped German commandos had they decided to attack them.

Some of my Dad's best stories are about food. While on duty for months at one of the radio posts, his rations consisted almost entirely of biscuits, tinned beef, tea and condensed milk. He and his friends went to enormous lengths to try and get fresh food, or at least a change of diet if they had any opportunity to do so. One day a huge US convoy pulled up right outside their post, the shutters came down around a large canteen vehicle and freshly cooked burgers, fries and, most miraculous of all, ice cream appeared!

At one place my Dad was posted to for some months, he was given responsibility for a dog called Shute. He acquired this name from his love of going up in the aircraft with trainee parachutists and jumping out with them! He was strapped into his own parachute and would bark his head off all the way down. And the minute he reached the ground, he would ask to go straight back up again for another jump!

My father finally returned to London where he lived (via Liverpool again) in 1945 a couple of months after VE day. He was demobbed and went back to his duties as a postman.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.