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GOING OVERSEAS 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 tells of how he was shipped overseas with the KRRC.

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.

GOING OVERSEAS

After we were called up, we had to report for duty. We had been called up, but we volunteered to go overseas. I for one didn’t want all that square bashing and spit and polish. And I know a lot of the others didn’t want all that nonsense either.

We were assigned training and I had to learn radio maintenance and morse and all the etiquette of radio communication. It was all rather a crash course. When we were ready, or they thougt we were ready, we were all shipped off up north to Liverpool to embark on the troop ships.

We were at sea for some six months. The troop ships left Liverpool and sailed due west out into the Atlantic Then they turned south toward the Cape. We couldn’t go through the Med. The risk was too great, although there were u-boats based along the West African coast.

Crossing the equator, we had to endure the court of King Neptune, of course! Our first sight of South Africa was Table Mountain sitting above Capetown. We docked further on, though, round the Eastern Cape, in Durban.

Coming into Durban, flares lit up the night sky. All the ships in the convoy were letting off flares. It was to keep off the u-boats. If their periscopes had shown themselves, they’d have bought it with depth charges.

We were allowed shore leave. Durban was quite an eye-opener I can tell you. The blacks were expected to give deference and step off the pavement to let the whites by. My army pal, Johnnie North, and I weren’t going to have any of that rubbish!

We used to have fun taking the blacks into the white bars for a drink. We’d walk straight in, bold as brass, all good pals and jolly good company. That used to cause a stir I can tell you!

It wasn’t Apartheid then you understand; there weren’t any laws as such. It was just a convention that everyone followed, a colour bar if you like, of the sorts they had in the southern states of the U.S. Well, that’s not right, is it? You might just as well go and join the Nazis.

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