大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer for CSVBerkshire, Jim Grufferty,on behalf of George and Barbara Gardiner of Reading and has been added to the site with their permission.

Four years from Reading to the North Africa campaign and back,

I was posted to Greenock in Scotland where we assembled and sailed on the Franconia and another troop ship. The total number of troops was about 6000 to 8000 with all our battle dress on etc. There were fifteen ships in our convoy with warships and destroyers. Each morning we had to do boat drill. We sailed all the way round Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. The sailing time was about six weeks before arriving in Egypt. We stopped in Cape Town and while sitting on the beach enjoying the sunshine some local people approached us asking if we were from England. One lady asked for the address of my family saying she would send them a parcel of fruit and she did, which was much appreciated. I was on duty at Durban before continuing on to the Red Sea and Suez then Port Said. The other big troop ship left us there and went on to Singapore and of course most of them were taken prisoner by the Japanese. We disembarked at a big camp just outside Cairo.

Our first posting was to Palestine which is now Israel One job we had there was collecting and moving hundreds of Jewish refugees from Russia and Europe. At this stage we did not have any of our lorries having left them all in France, by then I had got another rifle. One day the Sergeant asked for anybody who could hold their water for more than a few hours, and everybody stepped forward. He then told us we were going to Baghdad. It was a long journey over the canal and then further to the port of Basra where the Americans had sent huge transport ships with supplies and 10ton Mack and White lorries. It was the type like Ford. It was there I picked up my new 10ton White lorry from which I have still got the name badge. This was on a lease and lend scheme arranged with the Americans. These were diesels that luckily I had been used to driving unlike some of the others. The lorries were packed in cases and assembled by us. I will always remember a very nice touch from the people who packed the cases. There was a pack of beer in the corner of the case for the person who assembled it. We had fifty each of the Macks and Whites and ours was the biggest company out there No1 LFC. We had to check how they performed in the desert before we drove them back through Baghdad to Palestine then the whole company assembled before crossing the canal to Egypt.

I had made up a wooden nameplate with my wife鈥檚 name Barbara chiselled on it. This I had fixed to the front grill of the lorry I was to drive in the desert. There we used them to transport ammunition and any other supplies from Cairo to the front line all the way to Tunis dropping stuff off at various places. In Cairo there were thousands of tons of shells. The lorries had up to three trailers and carried hundreds of 25 lb shells at a time. Once I had to pick up a load of tinned bully beef that had been buried in the desert during the First World War apparently, and was still edible. I liked the taste of this meat and still do today. We employed at lot of locals for loading the lorries, but when we transported peanuts or monkey nuts we had to put armed guards on the wagons to stop them jumping on board and stealing them all.

One assignment was for barbed wire and stakes at El Alamein. We needed two big planks to get across the first trench. I had the barbed wire and my mate the stakes and we were dropping them off each side and the sappers were putting them in laying a path through a minefield just enough room for a lorry to get through. My 鈥淲hite鈥� lorry (No 849) was blown up by a mine and I my mate took a photo of it in flames and also I took from it the 鈥淲hite鈥� name badge on the front bonnet.
That is all I managed to get off it. We got Mack type lorry after that and it was a much better lorry in the desert.

I am not sure if we were allowed supposed to take photos but we did and when anybody was going to Cairo we would get them developed. Somebody made up a trick photograph of a lorry stopped on the road by a scorpion that was as big as the lorry itself. The photo of the scorpion was enlarged and then joined to the one of the lorry. I would not argue with a scorpion that big but give it a wide berth.

To save water in the desert you were allowed just two pints each day, one to the cookhouse, one for personal use and any left was then put it in the radiator of the lorry did not waste any. However whenever we were in Cairo the people based there dressed in their perfectly creased shirts and shorts had showers pools and seemed to be no shortage of water, this was our perception at least. I slept on the boards of the floor in the lorry most of the time, had pressure marks from it and had lost a lot of weight by the time I got home.

My wife sent me a Christmas pudding in a sealed Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin and it had dried up and shrunk so much from the heat. It was like cooking it for a very long time I suppose. By the time I got it had shrunk and very little to eat
The first lights I saw after nearly 4 years was on my way home when we stopped off in Gibraltar It was a strange feeling after all the pitch darkness in the desert and the blackout in Cairo. It took us two weeks to get home as against six going out.

The army printed their own currency notes for use by the forces during the war. I still have some of the notes from Eqypt and Italy. I had three periods of leave in four years while in the desert, to Cairo, Alexandria and the hot springs in Saudi Arabia.

I later life I have suffered severe deafness from the noise of the big 88 mm guns going off. However it was many years later that it affected me. I was tested by ministry people and receive a pension as a result of it. Another of my friends has been affected in exactly the same way, but another is perfectly OK. Nobody thought of ear protection then.
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My final Pay slip in 1946 before discharge was for 112 days was approx 拢56 less than 10 shillings per day or 50 pence in today鈥檚 currency. It also included a note to the effect that my 鈥淕reatcoat retained鈥� valued at 拢1.18.9. I was passed out as A1 fit.

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