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My 'Heroes Return' application was successful. In April I will be returning to North Africa, a journey down memory lane. Just on sixty years ago I arrived in Algiers with fellows like myself, mostly eighteen year olds. A draft from the 8th Irish Battalion of the Kings’ Liverpool Regiment, destined to reinforce the 6th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The ‘Skins’ part of the initial, ‘Operation Torch’ had been in the forefront of the action. They had suffered casualties in killed and wounded. At the time I was Army Medical Category, A.1. Single and my Next of Kin…Mother. The convoy from Glasgow took ten days. During the voyage we experienced a hectic stormy passage in the Bay of Biscay. Our troopship the ‘Strathallan’ stayed afloat. It was after passing Gibraltar and entering the clam waters of the Mediterranean Sea that we experienced our first action.

Before ‘turning in’ we had stood on deck watching the lights from the towns on the African coast. After years of wartime blackout on the home front, they looked like Blackpool illuminations. Two loud bangs shattered our sleep. A U-boat had torpedoed the Strathallan. Our position was about sixty miles from Oran. Aboard the 23,000 ton vessel when it left Glasgow there 4,408 soldiers and airmen. Nurses from the Queen Alexandra Nursing Service (Q.A.s) numbered 248. The crew complement was 431. One Q.A. was drowned. She was one of the few that we had got to know during the voyage. It was believed that ten crew members had perished. Some casualties occurred to force personnel and crew. My mate Corkie and I assisted a member of the engine room staff. He was covered in oil and shaken. We covered him with a blanket and left him in the temporary first aid post.

Efforts were made by two destroyers to tow the ship to Oran. According to the ‘grapevine’ the attempt was abandoned because of the possibility of the ship’s boiler exploding. Besides troops, carrying cargo in the hold included supplies and munitions. All aboard were evacuated from the doomed ship by jumping onto the decks of Royal Navy Destroyers. (359)

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