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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Caroline Morgan from Westree Learning Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Sidney Fancett with his permission and they fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

I joined the Royal Signals on 2 May 1940. I did most of my training in Richmond Park South West London. At the time I was working of the County of London Electric Supply Company. From there I was a qualified Electrician but because I was so young it was ‘last in, first out’. From there I worked at the docks de-magnetising the boats. I was called up to be a telephone engineer, stationed at Putney where I lived. From there we went to Newmarket and lived in the jockeys billets. We were still training and moved to Liverpool picking up all our Army lorries and trailers on the way.

I got on to a boat called the Andes on the 3 December 1940(may have 1941) in convoy of about 40 ships, the first stop being Freetown on Christmas Day. The next stop was Bombay, after Durban and Cape Town. We stayed in Bombay for our equipment to arrive by cargo boat which was not in the convoy. From Bombay I went to Basra with all the Army equipment and drove an Army lorry from Basra to Baghdad. There was no connection from Baghdad East to Baghdad West so all the equipment had to be removed form the flat trucks to transport by road. We got to Kirkuck, all the Army lorries were parked in a square and we set up a signal office. There were a lot of pilfering done with shovels, pickaxes and small army equipment. We was issued with chains so we could chain our rifles to our body while we slept at night. We were there for about a month and everything was moved back to Bombay from Basra. We stayed in Bombay to re-equip and to get more or less sorted out. From Bombay we made our way to Burma, going through Poona and various other towns in convoy. I was driving a Stude-backer truck and a 40 foot 2 wheeled trailer with wooden telegraph poles. We were driving across India towards Burma and the last stop was a place called Dimapur. On the way we stayed at Imphal. All our heavy goods were left and we transferred to small jeeps and trailers. We were known as the 30 LM Line maintenance and we had to build a telephone line from Dimapur to Burma 130 miles long. We split up then into small sections of about 10 — 15 men to be maintenance for the line, living in tents.

The telephone lines were used from Burma back to Delhi on what they called fixed time calls. We had lots of land slides going through Burma and that was why the lines were out quite a lot. I spent some time in Kohima. I was then ill with malaria and when back to a field hospital. I was tested several times for malaria. I had injections - mepocrin and panacin which are 2 things to give for malaria. After a while I was sent back to Delhi helping to assemble a new telephone exchange. When it was completed I was on shift work operating that telephone exchange. Eventually, as I had not been home in all that time and I was married, I returned home on ‘The Strathmore’ troop ship going through the Suez Canal. After 1 months leave I was sent to the Orkney Islands as a post corporal going from Island to Island meeting the boats from Stromness with mail on and then distributing this across many smaller Islands which were connected by concrete blocks which were there to stop submarines getting to Scapa flow. The next episode was when I joined a concert party as an electrician working the curtains, lights etc for ENSA going from island to island on a naval tug. I got my release papers but they could not tell me where I was being released to. On talking to the admin officer he told me that although it was secret The County of London Electricity Company had requested my release. I worked in shelters in the road as the war was over and every where was being rebuilt. I was on the way home from India when the Atom Bomb was dropped and I knew something big had happened.

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