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This is part of an interview with John Potter by his Grandson Sam Dudley (11)

SD: What was the best thing that happened to you in the war?

JP: The best thing was, I got a letter in the post saying my girlfriend (Hazel Glaze) would marry me. I was a silly ass because I only met her on embarkation leave and then I was sent abroad and I actually sat on the troop ship on the Mersey on a sweltering hot day and I wrote ‘Dear Hazel, Will you marry me?’ and I didn’t know where I was going or when I’d hear from her, but in South Africa when I had my 24th birthday [26th September 1942] in Cape Town I got a note from her saying ‘Oh yes, Oh yes‘ So I made whoopee that night. As for War Time experience, the best thing was that troop ship out through the tropics and round South Africa with millions of stars and the porpoises leaping alongside at night, because it was absolutely black because you couldn’t show any lights. It was absolutely wonderful.

Another good thing was the food. In Italy we had the bully beef [corned beef] or we’d exchange for a chicken and one of the fellows would go into the fields and pick some plum shaped tomatoes. And then when we came down through Iraq into Palestine there were all these laughing Palestinians and there was all the citrus fruit, because there was no market for them so we could help ourselves. The oranges were the size of grapefruit and the grapefruit were the size of footballs. And we made pigs of ourselves. Later on, we drove up through Egypt into Tunisia and we’d strip off and have a good swim on the Mediterranean and wash the sand off.

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