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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Don and Betty Tempest of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Henry Foster and added to the site with his permission.

I was 18years old in 1940, when I took the ‘Kings Shilling’ and joined the West Yorkshire Regiment, number 4544639. I joined at York and was initially billeted in Racing Stables at Brighouse. We slept in the stables, there were no horses!

We did eight weeks basic training at York and I passed out O.K. I learnt how to fire rifles and had a Physical Training course and a three weeks small arms course.
We were then based at Weatherby Race Course, sleeping in the Tote Building. That was all right until Boxing Day 1940, when we were kicked out because there was a Race Meeting.

I was still undergoing training and as part of that we went on guard at several Airfields, guarding wrecked and smashed up planes. Of course we also guarded the still active ones, which were fighters flown by the Polish Air Force which was stationed there.

I was transferred to the 11th. Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment and went to the Isle of Wight. During the day we were erecting Anti-tank defences around the island, which consisted of long scaffolding poles, sunk three feet into the ground and standing about 18foot into the air, sloping towards the sea. At night we patrolled the beaches ready for any invasion.

After a weeks embarkation leave, I was transferred to Formby near Liverpool, where we spent two weeks and then boarded a ship and sailed away, not knowing where we were going.

The convoy was a large one, about 90 ships, and we were sailing West, so we thought we were heading for America. However, after three weeks at sea, we awoke one morning and found that we were at Freetown, West Africa.

We never got off the ship and after two days, we sailed again, this time South West, we thought we were going to South America. The convoy was very slow, travelling about 5knots.

After a couple more weeks at sea, we arrived at Cape Town and it had taken us six weeks to get there after leaving Liverpool.

At Cape Town we had two days off the ship and the people there made us very welcome, we were treated like ‘Kings’.

It was at Cape Town that we changed ships, and after our two days ashore, we boarded a very large Norwegian ship and set off up the East Coast of Africa. This time we were on our own, there was no convoy.

We sailed towards Egypt where we docked. It had taken eight weeks to get there. From the dock we went on an Infantry Training Course to become acclimatised. The course only ran in the mornings because the afternoons were too hot and we were supposed to rest, but I spent some of that time learning to drive. It was very important to be able to drive in Egypt.
Training finished and then we were sent to the Second Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment and joined them at Tobruk. For two weeks we were on defending positions in a major Mine Field, guarding Tobruk.

We were there for about two weeks and then we moved into the desert and were told that we were doing an attack. By this time we were in the 9th. Indian Infantry Brigade, part of the 5th. Indian Division. The information we received about the attack was that we were going to close a gap in our defences and form a box.

On Friday 5th. June 1942, we put the attack in. We had been told that we only had Italian Infantry and Artillery to face. Our attack was in 50cwt trucks, and of course we came under artillery and infantry fire. Trucks were being blown up, but we were not hit and eventually we got through the Italian lines.

Unfortunately, what they hadn’t told us was that we had run into a German Panzer Division, and sadly we lost the day. We had 346 men killed, wounded and missing out of maybe 700 of us, and naturally we had to withdraw, back to our Battalion H.Q. which was some distance away, but we walked out in good order. Our trucks had been damaged.

The German tanks and their vehicles kept pushing us, but at last we got through our artillery lines and there was a meal waiting for us. But, before we could eat it, the Germans attacked us and we had to retreat. We left in a hurry and vehicles were being hit, but I was lucky. The retreat carried on for several weeks, travelling for about 800miles to El Alamein. On the way we kept digging in and trying to fight back, but it was just impossible.

When we got to El Alamein, we formed a defence line under a ridge. We were hit continuously and suffered many casualties.

Then, after several weeks of fighting, Field Marshall Montgomery, with his new Army took over, and we, by now there was only about two hundred of us left, we travelled by truck across country to Iraq, arriving in Baghdad at Christmas 1942.

We spent two or three months there, doing internal security and getting re-enforced. The Iraq people were anti-British and we had to be careful.

That was the end of my ‘Jaunt’ in the desert, but not the end of my Army career, far from it. From the desert we went to the Jungle. Another story!!!

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