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

In Sid' Story Part 4 he described his gruelling spell of duty in the Mediterranean, with a number of lucky escapes, and his return from Italy to Blighty.

"We got off the docks in Glasgow and went to a place called Bonhill and camped in a disused factory. All the blokes that I was with went there and when they had sorted us out, there was infantry and all sorts with us. They said you can have a fortnight’s disembarkation leave. You can go home. Let them know at home that you are here.

"Me, like a fool, I didn’t let anybody know. I thought I’ll surprise everybody. If I had let them know that I was back home after all this time - nearly two years there’d be a lot of fuss, and I didn’t want that. So I didn’t let my wife know, but I know to this day that it was the wrong thing to do. I should have let her know, but I didn’t. But anyway I came home and surprised them and my kids didn’t know who I was. I only had a fortnight’s disembarkation leave and they used to say to their mother, "When’s that man going back Mummy?".

"I often wonder today when I hear all these ‘sob’ stories about things, how you think we felt. How do you think I felt, because I was nearly a stranger to my wife and she was to me, but I still loved her and I do to this day?

"But having had that leave we went back up to Scotland. We assembled in the factory and they said that a man named Lieutenant Colonel Arthur was coming to talk to us. He was a Royal Engineer, I suppose, and I can remember him coming into that big room where we were assembled as if it were yesterday. He said, "1055 Company you have been brought back to England as battle experienced troops and whatever happens you are going to open the Second Front with the rest of the army, the infantry and everybody else." After we had had this lecture we looked at each other and said, "Well we’ve escaped so far, are we ever going to get away with it again?"

"Anyway, I got on the phone and made contact somehow with my wife. I told her what was going to happen and said, "If you can leave the two children with your mother, or someone, you can come up and spend a few more days with me before I go away again". So this happened and I went to the station and met her, and I can’t explain to you how we felt.
I could stay with her through the day but they wouldn’t let us go out at night, but I used to creep out. We were all friends, of course, and the officers knew that a lot of the blokes had done the same as I’d done. I used to get out at night and I think it was about a week before they said "You’re confined to barracks. You can’t go out any more." So I thought I’ve got to get out and let her know I can’t see her any more and she had got to make her own way back. You can just imagine what that did to me and what it did to her. She was a country girl, and she was in a place like she was and she had to find her own way back and that was another thing that I can’t explain to you how I felt, because I couldn’t do anything about it.

"After a few days we were moved to Weybridge and then to a place called Havant, I’m sure that’s the name of the place. This was a concentrated area and we couldn’t get out. But somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to get away home for 24 hours. When I got back, somebody had reported me missing, so I had to go in front of the officer. I was a full Corporal, and I tried to explain to him why I did it, and he let me off with a caution, because he was a good man.

"We then got on a boat in the harbour, waiting to go across to France. They had postponed the invasion because it was too rough, so we were rocking about on this boat for 24 hours, until we moved off in the early morning when it was dark. When we were going across the Channel it started to get light and these tugs came through, and they had these great big iron things. We didn’t know what they were — we couldn’t believe what we were looking at, but they were towing them into the harbour and they had assembled them when we landed.

"They tried to get the boat that I was on into the mouth of a canal, but it beached and we had to jump off and wade ashore. I remember pulling a Canadian out of the with a bullet hole through his head, and there were many more bodies about. We ran up the beach and were told to disperse when we got there, so I jumped in a big hole that looked like somewhere out of the way, and there were about 14 dead Germans in it. It was a German trench that had been shelled. I thought, well I’m not stopping in here, and there were two more blokes with me and we ran and got under a wall. We had to stop there all night and then we were told we would be sorted out in daylight.

"When it got light we started wandering about and a Jeep came along the beach with two officers who said, "What do you think you’re doing wandering about, you want to find somewhere to get out of the way because they will be strafing this beach any time". So we wandered about a bit longer and found the officers and the company and they had these what they called R.E. shovels that they dished out to us, to dig trenches to get in out of the way. And we dug in just off the beach under a wall and I can remember there were three dead cows and two horses in this field that had been killed by shellfire.

"When we got up the next morning we lay in these trenches with what bit of kit we had and an aircraft came over the top of the hill strafing. I jumped back in the hole and everybody else did the same thing and they dropped four bombs in the field where we were buried us in the sand in the hole. We climbed out of it to see if anybody was hurt, and nobody was — we were lucky again. After this had happened they started to shell us, and we could hear the shells coming over and you could hear the whistle and the whine and then a crack. We got away with it again don’t know how, but we did.

See "Sid's story - Finale" for the conclusion of this fascinating story.

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