大象传媒

Memories of a Sapper, Royal Engineers Part Two 鈥� From Iraq to Egypt (posted to 50th Northumbrian Division) and Operation Husky, the Invasion of Sicily 10th July 1943.

Part two of an oral history interview with the Hon. Alderman Bill Astle conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

鈥淲e went from Iraq down to the Middle East. So, I was detached from a Unit and I went from there to the 50th Northumbrian Division, 151 Brigade, 50th Northumbrian Division and I went obviously to partake in the Campaigns in the Middle East, that was it.

We were lifting the mines! There weren鈥檛 many bridges in the desert! Laughter! I mean that goes with saying, but it was mines. Predominately mines. You鈥檝e got to realise that some of these mine fields were about nine miles deep. Because they鈥檇 mine field and then we鈥檇 mine field and then 鈥� we鈥檇 leap frogged each other. They still find them they still find them from the Second World War. The sand, the wind blows the sand and it uncovers them, it shifts all the time, the desert, it is ever moving, the wind changes it, ever moves it you know.

People get misconceptions, they normally to be fair they think that the desert is all sand but it isn鈥檛, it鈥檚 shale, pieces of rock, shale and camel thorn and there is wild life there, gazelles in the desert, there is wild life there and so on. You very seldom used to see a camel that had been blown up. The camel has got an unerring sense, like a dog I suppose really, you very rarely saw a camel blown up. You see donkeys blown up but you very seldom saw camels - also they had got very broad feet which helped I suppose. They鈥檝e banned it now, well the assenting Nations have universally banned landmines now but there鈥檚 still millions and millions of them. Alamein, they still explode when the winds blow in that area, they still come to the top, they still explode. You never know they are on the beaches in England come to that. There are parts that were mined and they still find mines. Yes. Where the sea has moved the sand a bit and moved the mine, still find them.

Well, the mines were charted when they were laid, if you have laid them, yes. But you鈥檝e got no way of knowing of where they go, where the enemy have laid them. And they became very sophisticated as war continued. They made a Sch眉mine (S-42) which was made of pottery so that it couldn鈥檛 be detected with a mine detector. A metal detector would obviously detect a metal mine.

We also did water supply that was another job. Purification of water that was a Field Company鈥檚 job, a water point we called it, that鈥檚 another job we did. That鈥檚 where poor old Salmon, was left there on his own and they blew it to bits. He got back and the RSM said, 鈥榃hat are you doing back here?鈥� He said 鈥楾he water point has been blown to bits鈥� he said, 鈥榳ell get another load of stuff and make another one鈥� he said, but by that time poor old Salmon鈥檚 brain had gone, that was it.

I was there until the Campaign finished. Then we came back from Enfidival in Tunisia down to train for the Invasion of Sicily. That was, late 鈥�42 in my case, 鈥榯il we went to Sicily, which was 1943 after the break out from Alamein. My Brigade then, in 50 Div. was three Battalions, 6th, 8th and 9th Durham and Light Infantry and Alex Wakenshaw incidentally in one of the Durham Battalions got the Victoria Cross. It鈥檚 not that there are no 鈥榖orn鈥� heroes. I鈥檓 trying to explain, you do a thing because you don鈥檛 become immune to it but it alters your brain so to an extent you are busy doing other things but to an extent it alters your brain which dispels a certain amount of fear. You know, you don鈥檛, it doesn鈥檛 cross your mind that at any second you could be killed you know, you automatically do it. But that鈥檚 all Services whether it鈥檚 a Bomber Crew or whether it鈥檚 the Royal Navy, anybody. That was it, you all had to work as a team, you couldn鈥檛 all do your own thing. There was a sort of drill between you and that鈥檚 the only way you can progress, you can鈥檛 do it individually you鈥檝e got to do it as a combined unit. That is teamwork, absolute teamwork! That鈥檚 what it is, absolute teamwork. That鈥檚 where the training came in. It was drummed into you time, time and time again, it was drummed into you, you know. It didn鈥檛 mean that you couldn鈥檛 make mistakes because mistakes or I prefer to use the word accident, blokes lost their lives because they either stood on a mine or tripped against a trip wire or set off a booby trap. Booby traps you see could be anything. It could be a cabbage in a bucket or a toilet cistern. You go there, the luxury of going to the toilet properly, if you were stupid enough to use it, is to go in there and then when you鈥檇 finished you pull the chain and the whole bloody lot goes up!

While in Tunisia we did the same as we did through the desert, lifting mines or building different bits of fortification or what have you. Exactly the same as all Field Units did, that was your job. There were other Engineering Units you see - they never saw action, the never went into the 鈥榣ine鈥�. They were AW Companies, Artificers and Works, now they constructed things and worked on things like hospitals and new barracks, things like that but they weren鈥檛 live Units. You had Bomb Disposal which came behind us, they didn鈥檛 actually normally go into the 鈥榣ine鈥� at all the Bomb Disposal Unit they were back following you up clearing up the mines and booby traps and things that you had gone into.

It was terrific heat, it could be and icy cold at night. You find yourself in your shorts and your bush shirt, etc. in the day and at night time you鈥檇 have an overcoat and a pullover on and a balaclava helmet, yes. It was very, very cold at night, intensely cold. But we got over it. Later on we had snow. We finished up in Italy, we were up in the Appennines and in the winter the snow came up to your waist in there and you had a tent between two of you, a little pup tent. And the strangest thing of all, even in that, I never had a cold! Now that鈥檚 strange isn鈥檛 it? And there were hundreds and hundreds and thousands like me who never had a cold, that was a strange thing, it was a phenomenon that you never, I never had a cold.

鈥極peration Husky鈥� 10th July 1943, the Invasion of Sicily.
We landed at a place called Avola, which is near Siracusa, we went ashore there with the Infantry as well and of course we went straight into it because our first job was to see if we could sort the mines out that were there. So we were straight in there for a start. I went in off a landing craft, you go off the end into the water and there must have been a hole, this poor little blighter who went in with me he went down the hole and disappeared! I had to grab him and pull him up again. And also when you go in you had your pack and everything on. You鈥檝e got your pack and steel helmet, your rifle, the whole shoot because we used to use the bayonet for prodding for mines, prodding for them. You didn鈥檛 always use a detector in fact if you were around Mount Etna in Sicily you can forget about a detector because of the lodestone that was in the ground from the volcano. So that was magnetic so it rendered a mine detector pretty useless. The same would have applied anywhere around Mount Vesuvius near Naples anyway. That went up during the war as well, that, it washed one of the villages away, Pola I think it was and also the Germans heavily booby trapped, they built a dummy wall I believe. I wasn鈥檛 there, it went off and the Post Office in Naples and it had a time fuse and the Post Office, it had people in it and it went off, it blew it to bits, blew the Post Office to bits.

The Germans were there! They were in SITU! We were fortunate, I wouldn鈥檛 tell any tales. I suppose, to be fair, on the initial landing the Americans had the worse bit because they were facing German troops but where we where landing there were Italian troops. Well, there wasn鈥檛 much fighting, I mean you got the sporadic round went off but their hands soon went up. I鈥檓 not making out a heroic charge or anything but the awful bit was of course everywhere was mined. The Argyll鈥檚 lost no end of chaps and so on, the Infantry lost no end where the mines were put down in the reeds and so on. They had to go off the beach, go through these reeds and what have you and the sort of growth whatever the growth was and they were heavily mined you see. Another of theirs was a stick grenade. A stick grenade is like a round pod on top of a stick, there鈥檚 a cord goes down in the sort of hole down through the middle of the stick to a like a marble and at the bottom of the stick there is a screw cap. Well what you do to operate one of those is you undo the screw cap, pull the cord and then throw it - that鈥檚 theirs. Ours was a 鈥楳ills 47鈥� grenade, a different thing, like a pineapple, pull the pin out and then, the pin holds the lever down, you pull the pin out you hold it tight and then you throw it. And then some of those, you had to be very quick with them because they cut the fuse time down from seven seconds to four seconds so you hadn鈥檛 got a lot of time to muck about with the thing, you had to get rid of it pretty quick. Then the Italians had what they called, 鈥楻ed Devils鈥� they were like a, ooh roughly an egg shaped grenade, they called it 鈥楻ed Devils鈥�. These things laid about like marbles all over the place some times, you knew how to get rid of them, you know. It wasn鈥檛 just a case of lifting a mine because the bottom of the mine they could put gelignite in the bottom of the mine and it was screwed so they could insert this and that went to a booby trap. So you could be dealing with a Teller mine and whilst you were dealing with it, where you were standing one would go off underneath you. So in the end, there were no heroics, at the end of it all mines were pulled where possible. So we used to put a piece of dannit signal cable around the handle of the mine and then you put a jack, and the mine is like that - you鈥檝e got the mine there and say, then you got a piece of wood, a brick, anything. You tied a piece of dannit cable around it, up over the top of this, then away at a very, very respectable distance, preferably under cover, you pulled it. So what happened was you see, as soon as you pulled it the mine went up like that you see. So the reason we did it, we lost so many men on mines that had been booby trapped, well we still lost a lot of men but we didn鈥檛 lose so many possibly.

Sicily is a wonderful place for grapes, beautiful and they call Sicily the California of the Mediterranean because there鈥檚 absolutely nothing that won鈥檛 grow in Sicily. You know those big mandarins you get they come from Sicily that鈥檚 where they are from. Like a big tangerine, isn鈥檛 it? And the grapes are lovely all in the fields the grapes but if you are daft enough and you go marching into the field to gather a bunch of grapes without care then you won鈥檛 taste the grapes, you won鈥檛 be there to taste them! Anywhere booby traps go, you have to be very careful. You can walk over a piece of ground and they still find mines thereafter, you鈥檝e walked over, you are the lucky one you鈥檝e missed it! We didn鈥檛 know what was there because these mines were put in the rubble. We used to find civilians there, the women, children, that had walked over them.

And you have to remember that the man who commanded us, our Officer, our Platoon Officer, he was only the same age as me. So he found himself at the age of 23 the Father of his Command. He was a lovely man. He had a history which I always think was great. He went from a poor family in the Gorbals, Glasgow, that鈥檚 a district of Glasgow, he went to University and studied to be a Civil Engineer, he really made it the hard way. And he was an absolute 鈥榞ent鈥� to his men, absolute 鈥榞ent鈥�. Things that we weren鈥檛 really supposed to do and I鈥檒l give you an example 鈥� we went down one night into Cat谩nia in Sicily we went down to lay mines really, what they call Hawkins grenades in front of the Infantry. We actually found ourselves sometimes doing that in front of the Infantry. And he said, he told his Batman/Driver, whatever, 鈥楻oberts, go and find any spare water cans.鈥� And then he got in his jeep with his Batman they went round the villages filled them up with wine and as we went down where the Infantry where in their slit trenches, etc. he鈥檇 just drop a can off and he said, 鈥楬ave a drink with me!鈥� And that is what he was like, yes, great, oh a lovely man he was.

If anybody ever tells you they were never frightened, the chap with the Victoria Cross admitted to the fact that he was frightened, we were all frightened. There鈥檚 any man, anybody that tells you they didn鈥檛 have any fear, don鈥檛 ever believe them, they are liars. We all had fear. Fear is with you, it鈥檚 in there, it鈥檚 self-preservation. The reason that you鈥檝e got fear is through self-preservation. If you didn鈥檛 know what fear was you鈥檇 always be very careless. You鈥� would go forward and start lifting things over your head and immediately get blown up wouldn鈥檛 you?

The Germans fell back to Italy. They went across the Straits of Messina to Reggio Calabria which is a very short distance -Reggio Calabria is the toe of Italy.

I was in Sicily until I went back to hospital - it had just about finished and I had to go back with a complaint of the stomach. They sent me across to North Africa, to just outside Algiers, I went to a Military hospital there and I came out of there and went back to the Reinforcing Depot.鈥�

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.