大象传媒

My name is Bert Meakin and I was a gunner with the 51st Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery. After our involvement in the defeat of the Germans in North Africa my regiment landed in Italy as the continuing pursuit of the German forces. We sailed from Tripoli in September 1942 and landed at Solerno in Southern Italy on about day 4 of the assault. The Germans were still overlooking the port from the surrounding hills and it was touch and go whether we were going to have to retreat, we were making no progress in land. We were still in our dessert battle dress and it was raining and miserable but we managed to clear the beach and move up the road into the hills away from the town. We found some woods to provide cover and set up firing positions and were shelling every day for most of the day. After a week we moved on and crossed the Volterno River. From there we moved forward slowly for about a month setting up positions and firing most days.

In about the November, before we reached Rome I fell ill and the Medical Officer arranged for me to be sent back to Hospital in Naples. It was there that I was diagnosed as suffering from Diphtheria. I was there for about a week, there were a lot of American troops arriving suffering from polio. I was flown with about 12 others in a Dakota to another hospital in Palermo, Sicily and after a further 2 weeks taken by hospital ship to Philip Ville in North Africa. During my illness I received no particular treatment; I just had regular swabs taken to check whether the infection was still there. After another week I was moved by train to Algiers. A month later I still wasn鈥檛 clear and was put on troop ship (a commandeered liner) that took me back to Liverpool. I went to a hospital in Ormskirk. I was here for another 2 weeks and by this time beginning to feel reasonably fit. I was discharged from Ormskirk and sent to the main Artillery barracks at Dulwich, I was downgraded from A1 fit to B1 and I was posted to Hobart House in London, made a clerk and put in an office with 3 other chaps. Our job was to sort out officer war service releases. I was at this post for a year and a half and saw out my military service here. I was discharged in January 1946.

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