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INTO ITALY AND ON TO BELGIUM.

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. What follows is what he related to me of his impression of Italy and Belgium.

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.

INTO ITALY

Out of the scalding heat of North Africa, we were thrown into the freezing arctic-like conditions of Italy. It was thick snow! I’m sure that’s what started off my bronchitis. The Iti’s were on the run, but then Gerry started fighting back again.

It was a tough run. A German pow once joked with me about 'RAF come, we run; Luftwaffe come, you run' - but there was a lot of truth in that. I remember the ME109s, but the Stukas were the worst. They were designed to put the fear of death into you; strike terror as well as targets. And that they did. They'd go into a steep dive and make an awful, whining, screaming sound, then come out of the dive at the last moment. All you couild do was dive for cover. Believe me!

AND ON TO BELGIUM

We ended up in Belgium. We were stationed at Enghien. We were billeted with local Belgian families who welcomed us into their homes. There was a lot of enmity between the Walloons and the Flemish speakers I remember. I exchanged photographs with the couple who put me up and I stayed in contact with them for a while after demob, but then we lost touch. You know how it is.

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