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Harry Baker’s Journal Part 111. Extracts from the Journal of 1429538 Gunner Thomas Henry Baker - Royal Artillery, of Hull

Harry Baker served throughout the war both at home and overseas; he was born in Hull in 1913 and died there in 1998. The journal has been kindly loaned to Iris Middleton by his daughter Joan Wright of Hull.
111
We had Christmas at home in 1940 before setting off for Blackburn. Then, on the 19th of January we were sent to Liverpool, and boarded the Cunard liner Samaria which I was surprised to find was packed with troops including Americans and French —some of whom had their families with them. Sydney Lipton, the well known dance band leader was on board as an officer with an ack-ack regiment. Conditions were not good; we were overcrowded and the ship left dock the following morning only to anchor in the river, where in the fog, a tramp steamer crashed into our ship’s bow. Damage was slight, and so we eventually sailed north after four days hanging about. We joined a convoy of about thirty ships off the Clyde, and Sunday morning found us out into the Atlantic with an aircraft carrier and a good escort of destroyers; I wondered how many would reach Africa, if that was our destination.

The weather was terrible, we were running into an Atlantic gale, the ship was rolling with heavy seas crashing over our bow; seventy per cent of the men were seasick — I was laid flat on my back and I don’t think I would have moved if a U-boat had surfaced alongside of our ship. Very few of the lads were interested in food so those who were not sick had some wonderful meals. At night the place was unbearable; the heat, lack of fresh air and overcrowding made the sick men worse, but after three days we assembled on deck for lifeboat drill and the fresh air did much to revive my spirits which were at very low ebb. Slowly but surely we ploughed our way through the Atlantic. Cards and chess were the only means of passing the time away. On Saturday the 30th of January we saw land, and the convoy began to separate. About twenty ships left us but I was delighted to see that the aircraft carrier stayed with us, we knew from the newspapers at home where the U-boats packs were hunting, so as we approached the Straits of Gibraltar we expected trouble. But Sunday found us in the Mediterranean with blue sky and sea, and heading for Algiers. We were shocked to discover that a ship with part of our regiment, that had left England before us, had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean; however, thankfully, the ship had sunk slowly enough for a destroyer in the convoy to pick up everyone.
If it hadn’t been war-time, conditions were ideal as we steamed along the coast of north Africa, the sea was like a millpond, and the sun was too warm to stand out in it for any length of time. The lads all cheered as we caught sight of the city of Algiers, after thirteen days at sea it would have been a pleasure running on to a sandy beach but Algiers looked wonderful. From the dockside to the hills in the background, white buildings, large and small were everywhere. All we wanted to do was to get our feet on to terra firma, the more firmer the less terror. We packed up our kit and staggered off — I mean staggered as our kit was big and heavy. At the gangway we were told that we would only have to carry everything for 500 yards but a mile later we were still going and it was another five miles before the matadors [army lorries] reached us, and took us to a wine-distillery. Our first night was terrible, the distillery walls were two feet thick, to keep the wine cool, and sleeping on a stone floor must have been the origin of the term ‘night starvation’. Breakfast was bully-beef and hard biscuits, but just beyond the Domaine Ben Aida distillery was an orchard full of lemon trees whose fruit we greatly enjoyed. Some of the lads found wine-bars in the nearby village of Rouiba and came back the worse for wear. A few days later we retrieved our equipment from the docks; some was badly damaged so we were given spares from another unit and set off to Chateauneuf where I met a pal from the section that had been torpedoed en route to Algeria. Their ship, the Strathallen, sank slowly so that two destroyers, Lightening, and Orin had time to save them. Chateauneuf was pretty good, we had beds and were allowed into Algiers to go to the Turkish baths. Algiers was a vital supply depot which the Luftwaffe used to bomb but the raids here were only small affairs compared with those on Hull, but our radar and guns kept the Germans at bay. Soon we moved on to a small port, Dezelli where the Royal Navy had a base. We set up our equipment on some land two or three hundred feet above the bay facing the sea with the Atlas Mountains behind us, which we thought was an ideal position but the Germans even outflanked the heavy ack-ack. They came from Cyprus and Italy, crossing the coast about fifty miles away, then came very low from the Atlas Mountains and swooped on our camp with machine guns blazing and dropped bombs on the port. However, one bitten twice shy! The signal units along the coast warned us when the Luftwaffe fighter bombers were first sighted and when they came over the mountains our bren-gunners were ready. The navy started to accumulate a number of invasion barges in the harbour and when a raid was expected they lit smoke canisters as cover. One afternoon John Todd and I decided to go into town to see a film in a cinema that the navy had taken over. During the film the alarm was sounded and all gunners were told to report back for action, so I headed back to camp. I climbed the cliffs and had only gone about a hundred yards when our guns opened fire and a fighter bomber was swooping low over our camp with machine guns blazing. I dropped face down on the ground hoping that none of his shells had my number on when a heavy thud shook the ground in front of me; I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes and saw a bomb about ten feet in front of me. I dare not move in case I disappeared in a cloud of sand. After a few minutes (it seemed like hours) I decide to move, my first instinct was to run but my curiosity got the better of me and I walked slowly up to the bomb, which much to my relief, turned out to be only a re-fuelling tank to give extra range to the bombers.
We soon moved along the coast to Roueba, and this time we came face to face with the enemy. Hundreds of Germans were being escorted by British soldiers along the road to prison-camps; some of the Germans were not so lucky, lots of tanks had at least two bodies in or near the tank. Now and again we came across a batch of Italian prisoners, and it was noticeable that the Germans had no respect for the Italians. We settled down on our gun-site and soon found ourselves surrounded by troops of all types. The Americans were our immediate neighbours, and most of the Yanks were full of honour and glory, they wanted to know what life was like in Britain during the blitz, and some of the stories told by our lads made my hair curl; I didn’t know that the landmine which hit our camp had killed about two hundred men and blew two of the guns to pieces. I didn’t know that Hull had gone up in flames and thousands had been killed on the 8th and 9th of May — but these stories were always good for a packet of cigarettes or chewing-gum. The Americans regarded us as veterans, and when the lads from Liverpool told them that we should have been in Africa a year sooner but the War Office expected the Luftwaffe to batter England into submission before invading, and that we were not only ack-ack gunners, but had had intensive training in all types of weapons ready for hand-to-hand combat if necessary! It amazed me how the lads could keep a straight face when telling these stories of ‘the fighting 62nd Regiment. However, most of the Americans had just been called up, having done basic-training, and been shipped out to Africa, and were delighted to find war-hardened veterans like us ready to defend them. We in turn were delighted to find that one of the American units were engineers so I suggested to Captain Nash, our section officer, that they might clear the sandy patch near our gun-site, and after he had a few words with the CO in charge, the next day we had diggers, bulldozers and about twenty men ready to make us a football pitch. When finished, we had the best pitch in North Africa, and I was in big demand, taking bookings to use the pitch from the various units which were under canvas in our area in readiness for the invasion of Sicily. The first week we had bookings from 9am to 9pm and almost every team challenged us, to make sure they would get a game. During one of these games my luck ran out; we were playing a Scots Guards team and were drawing 1-1 with ten minutes to go, I was inside-left for our team and was waiting for Stan Sherwin on the wing to cross the ball as I hit it for the first time, the Scots full-back kicked my left ankle and I hit the deck in agony. The ball had gone in the net, but I didn’t want to know, I thought my ankle was broken. Next day, I was hopping about when the Major came to our site, he asked about my foot and when I told him, he took me to the American hospital. We had just invaded Sicily, and I was put in a queue with soldiers waiting outside the emergency hospital tent. I narrowly escaped an embarrassing situation when two nurses came down the line with a tray, giving out cigarettes, gum and chocolate, and asking how the men had been wounded; one had trapped his hand in a gun breech, another, a paratrooper, had baled out over Syracuse where he hit a spire and broke his leg, a third was the only survivor of a patrol that had been hit by a sniper and was injured by broken glass falling on him. I cringed at the thought of telling how I had been kicked when playing football but just then the nurses were called away by the doctor— I think the nurses would have hit me with the tray if they knew. But the American doctor was more sympathetic when I told him he had saved me from embarrassment ‘Never mind’ he said, ‘you will miss the invasion. I don’t think General Alexander would like his troops hopping to the attack.’
On several occasions some of our lads were involved in punch-ups with the other troops around us, usually caused by the Black Watch lads asking our Scots lads if we were the ATS that they had been told were taking over the Anti-Aircraft regiments. We thought life would be easier now the Germans were out of Africa, but they knew we were preparing to invade Italy and all the tough desert fighting men had quite a shock when the German bombers decided to eliminate the invading force. When our guns opened up and forced the planes to keep at 8,000 ft. they dropped their bombs at random; in the next field, two of the Black Watch were killed and twenty injured. The Luftwaffe came every night for a week, and the ack-ack regiments claimed ten shot down. Lots of the 8th Army lads had headed for the shelter of the Atlas Mountains, and eventually, on their return, even the Black Watch admitted to us that it was every man to his own trade! When this area was cleared we moved through the mountains to Brugie, starting about 5am to avoid the blazing sun, passing devastated towns, battlefields, aerodromes, dead soldiers, burn-out tanks and planes of all nationalities. When we reached our destination I looked around for a suitable site for a football pitch and found one but the Germans promptly came and bombed for two nights in a row, however, later we learned that we had managed to shoot down twenty of their aircraft.

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