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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Helen Hughes, of the People's War team in Wales, on behalf of Reg Gibbons and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was in St Athan….joined the RAF in 1938 and was down on a course in St. Athan training to be an aircraft fitter….and the war came and we all got excited about it, we thought it was a marvellous thing was going to happen. That’s how you thought then, I was only 18 ….and then we all got posted away to different places, and that was the start of it.

I went up to Shrewsbury, a place called Shawbury a flying training school and I was there for about nine months. Then I came down to Gloucester to another training course then I was sent abroad then in October 1940. We had to maintain the aircraft ….we had fitters who looked after the engine and fitters who looked after the airframe and electricians and armourers to keep them flying.

I started off at a maintenance unit in Egypt. We sailed from Liverpool in October 1940…and our first port of call was Freetown in Africa, for fuel. Then we ended up in Durban, putting supplies on for about a fortnight. We had a marvellous time with all the people there — the Battle of Britain had just finished — and we got back on the boats then and came up to Port Suez. That took about six weeks in all. I was based then in Egypt…and then I went down to Port Sudan and then I came up back to Egypt through North Africa all the way over to Sicily and to Malta and then I came home.

We weren’t close to any of the fighting….the nearest I got was Alexandria of course El Alamein was about twenty odd miles away….we didn’t see any of the fighting, like I say we didn’t get involved in anything like that, just the bombing raids and different things like that.

Apart from the war there were all the diseases to contend with….and the heat and things like that: you’ve got the mosquitos flying round you day and night, you’ve got to be careful out in the desert because you’re in tents…you’ve got to be watching where you put your boots in the night or you’ll find something in them in the morning, scorpions or centipedes, a small snake, you’ve got to be very careful, apart from the bugs and the fleas — well the bugs really. Those were the hazards of the war…. I was fortunate I didn’t go down with anything a lot of people had dystentry, maleria was rife I was one of the lucky ones who missed it all.

I wouldn’t like to go back there….. I wouldn’t mind going back to Malta that was the end of the war really….we got up as far as Bari in Italy I was nearly four years up there, and then they sent me back to Malta to wait my turn to come home. You had to wait for the boat to bring you home….there was no aircraft. But you know….the different parts I went. I saw a lot of places I wouldn’t have gone. In Sicily I even went up Mount Etna the volcano….half way up there there’s like a holiday resort from years ago - and then Mount Etna itself was a bit further. They formed a rest camp to send you up there. I went up there for a week with a couple of chaps. We went through a village…the last eruption was many years before — but the whole village was covered in lava and all that.

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