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SEA JOURNEY FROM UK TO EGYPT VIA SOUTH AFRICA.

In December 1941, I was posted to an R.E depot in Halifax, which is where the overseas reinforcement drafts were made up. Although we weren’t told where we were going, the issuing of tropical kit and various injections indicated that it was somewhere hot. We sailed from Gourock on the Clyde on board a Dutch vessel called the Volendam. After about three days at sea we ran into an Atlantic storm, and practically everyone was violently sick. I was sick for a start, but not too bad. I think there were about 2,000 troops on this ship, and you ate on a mess deck, and slept in hammocks, all in the same area. The toilets, such as they were, had overflowed, and the decks were awash with effluent and food which had been spilled etc. This mess was eventually cleaned up, and the voyage continued. There were though one or two casualties of the sickness, and I was detailed for the burial party. There was a short service conducted by the ships chaplain and then a wooden chute was fitted to the side of the ship, which of course didn’t stop. The body, in a sack covered by the Union Jack, was placed on the chute, and at a certain part in the service was released into the sea. The Union Jack remained in position, which I remember thinking was a bit unkind.

We stopped for about three weeks in Durban, where I met a friendly English family who were able to send a message home to my mother to say I was alright. We then moved on. I remember that as we left Durban, there was a lady with a megaphone singing to us as we left port. We stopped briefly off Aden, and then sailed up the Red Sea — boy it was hot! They attached a big balloon to the after-mast to discourage dive bombers, and finally disembarked at Port Tewfic, opposite Suez. We had been at sea over two months. The sea route through the Mediterranean Sea was, due to enemy action, unsafe for troop ships, so we had to go all round Africa, to get to Egypt.

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