大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Reg Wickstead and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was working at Sankeys and Harold was working in the Foundries (at Ketley, I think). The Foundries were closed down when war started and Harold came to work at Sankeys. Whilst chatting together, we discovered that we both had to go to be examined on the same day. So off we went to Shrewsbury where we got our papers.

We travelled on the train from Wellington to Aldershot where we both joined the 23rd Field Regiment. We were put into the 23rd as the Regiment needed reinforcements as it had fought the rear guard action at Dunkirk and been completely wiped out.

Harold went abroad before me. He was posted with the 15th Field Regiment to the desert, Egypt, and then he went round South Africa and to El Alamein. Either during or after El Alamein, Harold had trouble with his eyes, either due to the heat or the sandstorms.

I remained with the 23rd Field Regiment. After we finished the campaign in the desert, we went to Libya and were then ordered to go to Salerno in Italy. From there the regiment went straight through to the top of Italy, to Udine, where we stayed until the campaign was over. It was about 11 o鈥檆lock one morning when we were told to finish as the Germans had given up and the war was over in Italy.

I came back home through France. After that I was sent to Greece and it was from Greece that I got demobbed.

Whilst in Italy I had to go into hospital. From there I had to go on to another camp, quite a big camp, whilst waiting to be transferred back to my regiment. One day I heard someone say that Harold Clarke was there. I looked him up and found he was now in charge of the defaulters in Salerno. I had a week or two with him, before I was ordered back to Monte Cassino.

When we were in the desert we used to get a little newspaper, the Eighth Army News, which gave us information on what was going on. With it was a small book of cartoons. I still have several of these books. We continued to receive this newspaper when we were in Italy too.

I remained good friends with Harold and we used to meet regularly until his death earlier this year.

It was all a long time ago. It will be 65 years this October that we first joined up.

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