大象传媒

This contribution was submitted by Ray Merrett and is added to the site with his permission.

Now apparently there were only six of these units anywhere...three in the Middle East and three in Great Britain, and there were about 130 in each unit. I was accepted, I went down for an interview in Egypt and I was accepted...and who should I find when I got there but old Emrys. I told him what had happened and what I had done. He called me a mad nutter and everything else he could think of and then he joined it himself...and we were both on the same unit.

We were divided up into sort of numbers. When you got on a LCI - Landing Craft Infantry - these things with a motor on the front which was always driven by a seaman, and the rest of us were on three benches, you were twelve to a bench. We went out off the thing when you landed, and a ramp came down on the beach....but it didn't always come on the beach, you might hit a sandbank and you jumped off hell for leather ready to go and you ended up in the drink - and that's the way that happened with us on more than one occasion. They were a wonderful mob of people in it...we had two officers - a Squadron Leader and a Captain - It was all RAF people, but the second officer was army I think....

We went to Hadera...right up the north of Palestine...and we were up there for training, galloping up and down sand dunes, and jumping over dirty great walls..and getting down nets into these LCIs...you'd have a net on a big ship and you'd go down the net into the LCIs to get into them. We had that sort of training at Hadera. We were trained for the Italian campaign and you had most of the troops from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa..and all those troops were going into Casino...and we went up the other coast - the Adriatic coast with the 8th Army. It was the autumn of 1943 we went to Brindisi (on the heel of Italy) , Foggia, we met up with the Yanks there at one stage. We were involved in a tremendous explosion in Bari, with a load of troops coming in to the dockland at Bari, they were brought in by a Naval patrol, which then pushed off to sea as the Stukas came over just after. And when the Stukas came over there was a hell of a bashing going on. The Navy Patrol pushed off to put the barrage up outside. Bari was partially destroyed...there were several ammunition ships there and we were taking ammo of those ships in our lorries back up the road to camp and I think it was from there we were on the road to Foggia- to our camp just above Foggia. And as we were going in to get the ammo the ammo was coming out, hell for leather. We took all that rubbish away we were at Foggia for a few more days....somewhere on that post in one of those villages Emrys and I jumped in the river at one end to swim down to lunch - they used to rattle the cans down on the bottom end where they were - it was more or less out in the open, we had tents out in the open. And we jumped in the river and swam down the river...but nobody had told us, but there was such a terrible plague of mosquitos there that they'd sprayed the river with arsenic - it was all we could do to swim across it and get out let alone any more...so our intention to get early to lunch was somewhat delayed!

We went to Catania and that was badly knocked about - and I know the British had the blame for knocking it about - but it wasn't the British that did it. We went right up to Catania town in Sicily and then across the Straits to Reggia Calabria. It was at Reggia that we had George Formby visitng the base. George Formby and his wife Beryl, and we were told we could go to the town centre where they had a big bandstand ...and we met George Formby there and he told his wife Beryl to go for a walk because he was going to tell the boys some stories, which he did! (his wife Beryl used to go everywhere with him because she didn't trust him with the ladies apparently)

On the Adriatic coast we got up to level with Sorrento on the other side of the peninsula...then we came back down to Taranto ....and I think half the Italian navy was sunk there. When we were coming home they used to tell us we'd get all the wagons waterproofed because we'd go home tomorrow....so we'd get all the wagons waterproofed all ready to go home and next day we'd be on another op somewhere!

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