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Sid’s Story Part 4

This story continues the edited extracts from the transcript of an audio recording made by Sid Read of his memories of service in the Royal Engineers. It is submitted to the People’s War site by a member of Market Harborough Branch, Royal British Legion on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Read fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

In Part 3, we left Sid on the Mediterranean Sea aboard a Canadian cargo boat, having escaped from a German bombing raid.

"We had to unload the boat before we could get off and you can just imagine how everyone was working so that we could get off that boat and get on the shore somewhere.

"When we lifted the 70 tonne lighter over the side the boat listed, but they got it off and dropped it. Then the Bren carriers and everything had to go on this to get to the shore. When we had done this we got off the boat and went ashore on Sicily. With our kit, 50 lbs of it, rifle and ammo’, we got onto the beach. I’m sure it was called Red beach where we landed, and from there we moved up into an orchard where there was a farmhouse building and we dug in.

"I can remember that night when we lay in this orchard, as soon as it got dark the German planes were there bombing the ships that were left out at sea. They started hitting these boats with the bombs and I can remember hearing men being burnt alive and you couldn’t do anything about it. Not a very pleasant experience.

"The next day we knew that we had got to go and unload the boats that were left. We used to go out on a Z craft with an Indian crew, and they were marvellous, those Indian lads. We went out on these things and I can remember that next morning after hearing what went on in the night, seeing what was left of the ‘poor sods’ that we had heard the cries and the screams, and what was left of them. Skulls - and I can’t explain what it made you feel like when you saw these things, because it was dreadful, awful, terrible. And we always used to think like this. I wonder what they’ll think at home when they get the letter to say that these people have been killed’.

"That was one of the things that you always thought about when somebody was killed, it was always ‘home’. And you always thought like this, ‘I wonder if I shall ever see that again’. Because what we were living through, and escaping, I can’t to this day imagine how I survived all this, but I did, I did, and I was very fortunate.

"Anyway, after that we moved out of the orchard into Siracusa. We were in Siracusa for a while and they said the Germans had been driven out of Sicily into the heel of Italy so then we had to go to Italy. We went from Siracusa to Catania to get on an LCI, an Infantry Landing craft.

"We sailed from Catania across to Taranto, where we stopped to refuel, and then I’m sure we went round the heel of Italy. We weren’t allowed to talk or make any noise because they said there were U Boats about and there was a possibility that we would get hit with a torpedo. But, fortunately again, I escaped and we went right round the heel of Italy to Bari. The company went to a hotel along the front in Bari, where we were billeted.

"We worked the docks in Bari and when we were back at the billet at night, the Germans came over to bomb the harbour. I don’t know how many ships they hit in the harbour but there was a lot of carnage and explosions. One of the boats blew up and it broke nearly every window in Bari because it was loaded with ammunition, octane and all sorts, and there were many more like that."

Sid worked on the quay at Bari docks for at least three weeks, despite the danger of unexploded bombs.

"I can remember seeing bodies floating about in the harbour. They hadn’t got out and had been killed when the bombs dropped and the boats went down. It was the Red Caps who were getting the bodies out to identify them. They fetched a Negro out on a MT net because that was the only way they could get him out of the harbour and we were working on a boat close by. .I can assure you that that was another experience that is still there to this day - I can’t forget that. Well, I’m talking about it and it’s bringing so much back to me."
Christmas was spent at Bari and afterwards there was a rumour that Sid’s company were going home.

"We weren’t sure, but this is what happened to us. We moved out of Bari to an army camp about 14 miles outside Naples and we were told, ‘You have got to march from here to Naples dock where you will get on a boat and - we’re going back home to England’.
"We assembled at midnight to start the march with our rifles and 50 lbs of kit, all the other stuff was taken on the lorry. We had only been marching for about an hour when ‘the heavens opened’ and it didn’t stop raining until we got to Naples. By this time we were soaked to the skin and I can remember walking down this side road (from what I can remember Naples is built on the side of a hill) and we had to sit on the doorsteps until we could get on the boat in the harbour. There was no other way for it, the clothes just dried on us until we got on the boat.

"They told us that we could get strafed and bombed coming out of the harbour or getting across the Bay of Biscay and out into the Atlantic. The convoy that was in front of us had had a bashing, but we got away with it again. You have to remember that we had an escort, a destroyer and battlewagon, I think it was the Nelson, and the Ark Royal. We sailed into the middle of the Atlantic, and then the escort left us.

"At night we bedded down where we could on the boat. I remember waking up one morning, dropping anchor, and we could see the trees. We didn’t know then where we were, but we were outside Greenock, and then we moved off into the docks in Glasgow."

To be continued in Sid’s Story Part 5

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