´óÏó´«Ã½

WITH THE DESERT RATS IN NORTH AFRICA

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 some narrow escapes.

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.

THE CONFUSION OF THE NORTH AFRICAN DESERT.

The desert wasn’t all sand dunes like you see in the films. It’s only like that around the coast. No, it’s rocky, not at all like that.

Rations were always running low, especially out on a tour, but we’d always improvise a meal of some sort. When we had eggs, you could fry them on a rock in the sun. But we more often than not had none. So — we'd improvise!

We would put together a concoction of bully beef and dog biscuits to make into a stew. We would crush the biscuits by putting them in a sack and then drive the truck backwards and forwards over them. It’s no good being finicky. You make do or you starve.

It was all bluff then. We didn’t have the materials Gerry had. Much of our time was spent on long tours round the desert driving in bottom gear making tracks to look as though we were a tank division.

During the night, we towed oil drums behind, up and down, to fake the tank tracks. Sound carries in the desert and, driving in bottom gear, it would make Gerry think it was tank movements.

They’d send out reckie flights next day and, from the air, it would really look the job. It wouldn’t fool you on the ground but it certainly fooled you from the air. We went hundreds of miles behind German lines, hiding up during the day, then out again at nightfall.

AND SOME NARROW ESCAPES.

We’d been out on a tour. We were making our way back to the truck. Shells started falling all around us. We thought it was our lot finding their range. ‘Daft sods,’ we thought. When we got back to the truck, we realised they were Gerry shells. We had to get the radio out of the truck in short measure in case it was hit.

I said to Nobby, ‘Here, give us a hand can’t you, it’s heavy?’ I looked at him and he was just staring. ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ he asked. I didn’t know what he was talking about and shook my head.

He was still staring and started shaking his head in disbelief. And then I looked. A shell had passed between my legs. There was a great hole through my greatcoat. I thought it was just the wind!

Another time, we were making our way on foot. We didn’t know we were making our way through a minefield. I dropped back to pick something up we’d left behind. But a young lad jumped up and said, ‘Here, I’ll get it for you; I’m younger than you are.’ He went across to get it and trod on a mine! Just like that. He bought it. It should’ve been me. He was just a young lad with his whole life in front of him.

It got that no-one would make a move without me. When we got an order, they’d ask me what I thought first. Or they'd stay close by when there was action. I suppose they thought some of my good luck might rub off on them. War makes you like that — superstitious.

You know, sometimes I look back and I think, I just shouldn’t be here. Somehow, our little group got through it. Not totally unscathed, but in one piece, at least. Apart from my best pal, that is, Johnnie North.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.