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ARRIVING IN NORTH AFRICA WITH THE KRRC’s

INTRODUCTION

My dad was in the 8th Army with the Desert Rats. He was a rifleman and radio operator in the KRRC in the North Africa campaigns in WWII under Montgomery. I remember him teaching me Morse Code as a kid. ‘Di-dah-di…’ he’d go and ask me what it was. I wish I could remember it all now. I don’t know how he did memorise it all even after all those years, but I suppose going through something like that it does stick.

I still have his army issue notebook. It is of a stiff card cover containing extensive notes about Morse, circuitry and radio valves and stuff. I still have his medals but, regrettably, I have lost his Desert Rat flashes he brought back when he was demobbed. I remember him explaining to me about the desert rat.

The Desert Rat was the jeroboam. The flash from his uniform was a black jeroboam, or desert rat. It was embroidered on a beige square of coarse cloth. He had two. One was taken by my uncle George to use as a template for my mum and dad’s wedding cake. George must have kept it because my dad never got it back. The other has since disappeared.

I have his War Office ID card for Mechanical Transport Drivers (Army Form A 2038) valid from 22/5/40 to 13/11/41 with his name and no: 6852157 (description) RFN B605 2nd Q.V.R. (K.R.R.C.). The ‘2nd Q.V.R.’ is crossed through and replaced by ‘B22 8th’ and something that I cannot quite decipher.

His Soldier’s Service Book mentions a Major Watson. His Release Certificate and testimonial is signed by a Major Cox at the No 4 Military Dispersal Unit and dated 4 Dec 1945.

His service medals include The Africa Star with a clasp marked 8th Army; The 1939-45 Star; The Italy Star; The France and Germany star; and The 1939-45 War Medal. He also earned some shards of shrapnel in his left arm, some slivers of which he carried all the way to his grave.

But I remember he never did like all that pomp and circumstance associated with war celebrations. He’d say, ‘War is something you have to do sometimes to put things right in the world; it’s not something you celebrate or glorify.’

He was born in 1910, the year of the Great Comet. His date of birth was the 6th of June — the day of deliverance for Europe in those dark days of the Second World War. Curiously, he died in 1984 when that same Great Comet was sweeping in toward the sun upon its return. He died one night alone, except for a nurse spoon-feeding him with morphine, in hospital of a cancer that had been diagnosed by his GP as arthritis and, previously, as malingering!

I am going to write his memories as I heard them, in the first person, as though he is telling the stories for himself. Here, he writes of events journeying from Durban to Egypt.

BACKGROUND

I was born in Brentford, Middlesex in 1910. We had to live on five shillings a week army pay. My father was in the army in India for many years. My mother had to work to make up the extra to live on. We were comfortable, but things weren’t easy. When I left school, there was the General Strike and all the unemployment that followed. You could be in a job one day, and then out on your ear the next because someone had offered to work for less money. No-one would stick together; that was always the trouble.

ARRIVING IN NORTH AFRICA

After our little sojourn in Durban, we sailed north, up the east coast of Africa. Everything was going just fine until, somehow or other, we got separated from the convoy. We woke up one morning to find nothing but sea. Not a ship in sight! We had no protection, nothing. Without an escort, we were a sitting target!

Everyone was nervous. A permanent lookout was set. One night, the lookout on duty shouted, ‘Man overboard!’ There was mayhem. We didn’t dare circle round to look or make a thorough search because of the danger of u-boats.

Everyone was called out on deck to take roll call. And everyone was accounted for, although the lookout still insisted he’d heard someone falling into the water! The next day, the cook complained there was a sack of potatoes missing. Well, you can see what had happened, can’t you?

Some days later, the same lookout saw a light on the horizon. We were all put on full alert. For an hour or more, no-one could make out what it was. Then, the full moon came up! He never quite lived that one down. Although, in his defence, the full moon coming up over sea is an extraordinary and eerie sight!

We carried on like this, everyone on tenterhooks, on full alert, up round the horn of Africa. Then, at last, we joined up again with the main convoy and made our way on to Suez. I'll never know how we made it all that way with no escort, but make it we did.

We ended up in Cairo. It was all turning out to be quite an adventure. It really was.

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