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This story is taken from an interview with Robert Adams at the 2nd Batt RIR event, Campbell College, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Bruce Logan.
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[rations]
We were always very well looked-after, and food-wise we were very well cared for, I think. I could tell you a wee story. In North Africa, at the bottom of Wadi Acra, the detachment that I was with — a combined detachment of tanks, infantry and engineers — and we were instructed to try to get round the German flank. So we penetrated into the desert, away from the Mediterranean, and tried to get around them. We were told there would be an American force coming in the opposite direction, trying to do the same thing. We were to watch out for them and try to meet up with them. After a day or 2, sure enough, we spotted a cloud of dust in the distance and it turned out to be our American friends. And they insisted on giving us foodstuffs, and 1 thing and another. And we amazed them by giving them bread, because we had bread to spare. The 8th Army had its own bakeries, and as long as you could send back you could get bread. So we were very rarely without bread. We were very well looked-after. And regarding that detail, we were looked after well-enough.

My experience of Africa was always advancing, the whole way. With some obstacles on the way, mind you, of course. Delays are inevitable. But by and large, a steady advance. And remember, seeing these large columns of German soldiers surrendering and coming in over the desert. They were very well conducted, and some of them were under the control of officers, marching over the desert. Quite a sight to see. We had quite a high regard for the Officer Corps. We had some of soldiers, some of our men, who were wounded. Unfortunately they had to be left at the track. And they were taken over by a German force, the Afrika Korps, and they themselves and the German captors were themselves overrun after a time. These things happened in the desert. And our men came back to us eventually, and they spoke very highly of the way they had been treated by the Germans in terms of first aid and food stops and all the rest of it.

[because the Germans were afraid of being captured themselves?]
I don’t think so. It’s just a … we need to be clear about this. I have no experience of any wrongful behaviour by German soldiers. No personal experience of it.

I’m inclined to the view that …
Any German veterans still alive would have been the same age as me when I was in the war, and they were in no position to give orders during the war. They shouldn’t be blamed for what decisions were made.

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