大象传媒

This is my grandads story, written in his own words, he meant to write the whole story for us but became ill and died before it was finished, here is the story as far as he got:
My Call up papers arrived on 4th December 1942, three days after my 34th birthday. I was a bricklayer(a reserved occupation), and married with a child. I was to proceed to Crookham Barracks, Fleet, Hampshire, for infantry training. This lasted for six weeks, I was then posted to the RAMC for 8 weeks training. After nine days leave I was sent to the no.9 Military hospital in Colchester, to get used to treating the sick. I was there for seven months, after this followed 18 days home leave, then off to Glasgow, after about two weeks in Leeds, to catch the boat, I had an overseas posting. The ship that I was on, The Ruiz, was among the smaller craft of of a very large convoy of ships. We encountered 40ft high waves through the bay of Biscay, and I was told that our convoy had an escort of twenty-two destroyers and a battle cruiser.
After a brief stop at Gibralter, we headed into the Mediterranian, and that was where the trouble started. I had been ordered to spray the holds, to keep the cockroaches down, whilst doing so, I saw a red danger rocket go up. The Germans were bombing the convoy! Well, all guns opened up, the noise was deafening. We were ordered below and told not to panic. An officer, carrying a revolver, said that anyone who did panic would be shot. It wasn't until much later that we realised how lucky we had been, many ships in our convoy had been lost, and we picked up three hundred survivors. Transport ships are always overloaded in the first place, so conditions were very cramped. We continued our journey, the survivors were put ashore at Philipville in Tunis, and we sailed on through the Suez canal to Aden and on to Bombay. There was a large sign up saying 'Welcome to India'. We were soon off ship and marching to the station, en route to Deolali. It was very hot here, and discipline was very strict. If you were caught without your topee on during the day, you were confined to barracks, and had to march around the square, the temperature was 110 degrees. Thankfully, I was soon posted to a hospital in Dehra Dun, at the foothills of the Himalayas. It was very nice there, and not too hot. I began helping to tend the sick and wounded. It was a large hospital (in peacetime it was the forestry research institute) I was there for eight months, and sorry when I had to leave.
Next I spent 14 days at a transit camp called Ratu, I should say it must have been one of the worst places on earth. Then I went to a hospital at Namkum, near Ranchi, where I worked on the base switchboard for four months. I was soon back on the wards though, we were very busy with all the sick and wounded coming down from Burma. It was here that I became friends with Maurice Camp, Jack Jeffries and Bob Bennett, we were working together for quite a time, with Maurice until he was demobbed. We saw some terrible sights there, and work on the wards was tiring. When on nights, we had to go and help with the wounded on the Red Cross train, we were given surgical work, dressing wounds. It was awful at first, but as with most things, you got used to it. Medical wards were much easier to work on, for a while I was on the senior officers ward. That was very good, there was plenty of food too, no need to go to the mess, where the food was awful. After a while I was back on the other ranks ward, and by now found it really interesting and got along well with everybody. We were always busy, there was so much to do.

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