´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of James Smeeton, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I spent most WW II with 111 Squadron as a Fitter II (E) responsible for servicing the Merlin engines of the Spitfire fighter aircraft, initially the Mark V, later the much improved Mark IX.

I went overseas with the Squadron, landing in Algeria in November 1942, Malta in June 1943, Sicily in July 1943, Salerno in September of that year, the South of France in August 1944 and back to Italy a month later. I left the Squadron in May 1944.

Memories are very varied, some funny, some sad and a few very traumatic.

Unplanned Take-Off…

Our first aerodrome in Tunisia was Souk-el-Arba during the winter of 42-43, which was very wet. The grass runway proved far too soft so the ‘Somerfeld’ tracking (reinforced chicken wire) was laid on cork, which made the aircraft bounce and many ran off the end. The main problem was taxiing across the soggy ground. This required a fair amount of engine power which inevitably lifted the tail. So one or two airmen sat on the tailplane and hopped off when the aircraft had reached the ‘runway’. One day the pilot failed to slow down and took off with LAC Donoghue still on the tail. The pilot had little alternative but to persist with the take-off, complete one circuit and land again. The wheels immediately sank into the mud, the propeller dug itself in and the tail whipped up, catapulting the unfortunate airman through the air. He hit the ground hard and we bystanders all feared the worst. He escaped with a compound leg fracture and a severe headache! We were much relieved to move to a sandy bend above the Medjerda river where the ground was much firmer. It did not take the Luftwaffe long to figure out where we were and the river bend must have made an excellent aiming point. The German Air Force had just been equipped with the Focke-Wulf 190, much superior to our old ‘Spit-Vs’. With ME 109’s as top cover we were bombed several times before the increasingly effective stranglehold we had on the German supplies severely hampered Luftwaffe operations in 1943. On one occasion I was working on an aircraft near the perimeter track, not far from shelter trenches. As usual the first intimation of the raid was the whistle of the bombs. I shouted ‘down’ but Cpl Chard thought he could make it to the nearest trench. The bomb beat him to it… The former river bank saved the rest of us, who were covered in sand and pebbles. We lost another airman and several were injured. (I visited the graves of eight of our groundcrew and 7 pilots during a visit to Tunisia last year: very traumatic… it could so easily have been me…)

The shelter trenches became associated with another incident later on. We only had the clothes we stood up in, all our kit having been sunk in the Italian tramp steamer between Algiers and Bone. (I with the advance party did the trip by destroyer, ‘HMS Wilmington’, very exciting since we ran the gauntlet of German torpedo aircraft well established in Southern Sardinia.) The latrines were also trenches, filled in when ‘full’ and another one dug. During these fighter bomber attacks those who were near a trench made for it. Unfortunately our Engineer Officer who chose the wrong one! Any amount of washing of his one uniform failed to remove the ‘aroma’ until eventually the strong sun did the job.

ERK’s get a fright…

After several disastrous raids all ideas of camouflage were given up and it was decided to build blast pens with sand-filled petrol cans. These were ‘once only cans’, about one foot square and 11/2 feet high. Local Arab labour filled the cans to form ‘U’ shaped shelters to accommodate one aircraft each. I was in charge of the aerodrome guard one night, bright moon and not a sound. About one in the morning the silence was shattered by a loud clatter… we were petrified. After a few seconds I regained my composure and took one of the guards to investigate… we could ‘see’ German paratroopers behind every bush. About halfway to the nearest pen under construction the sudden clatter recurred and the penny dropped: the big heap of empty cans was contracting in the cold of the night after the daytime heat and this was sufficient to cause cans to slip and tumble down the slope of the pile.

The guard was then armed with ‘Sten’ guns which relied on the burst effect but were useless for aimed single shots. One early morning one of the guards fired a shot at a desert rat and to our amazement broke its back leg. I caught up with the struggling animal intending to end its misery… but how? I could only think of drowning it in the river and I can still feel the squirming last moments of the poor creature held under water in my fist…

Sicily proved quite a change from parched Tunisia: oranges, grapes, tomatoes, almonds but flies, hordes of them! Our introduction came soon after landing on the Southern tip of the island. Our lorries had a round canvas-covered hole in the cab above the passenger seat, ostensibly so that the passenger could stand there and keep an eye open for low-flying aircraft. I was there as we lurched through the rough main street of the first dismal village we came to: ‘Pachino’. My lofty position enabled me to look at the house terraces, many of which were covered with trays holding a red and black substance. Enquiries (my Italian was reasonable in those days) soon revealed that the ‘red’ was a layer of drying tomatoes, a real feast for the local fly population! Occasionally the mess was raked through to remove pips and skins and eventually the product was put in jars. It was years before I could face tomato puree! We were actually issued with fly swats and I well remember sitting at breakfast under our tented ‘mess’, putting small lumps of marmalade on the table and waiting until the fly number had reached at least 20… swipe.
The flies had a more lasting effect, however: any break in the skin easily became infected. Within a few weeks many of us developed facial impetigo. The ‘cure’ was ‘Gentian Violet’, a gel initially intended for burns. The locals must have wondered who these monsters were: unshaven for days and with deep purple faces.

The next stop after Sicily was a dicey landing at Salerno…

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