大象传媒

My Experiences of the Second World War
鈥淎 Thomas Cook鈥檚 Tour鈥�

I joined the army, the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers in June 1940 aged 18 years and trained in Omagh for 6 weeks.

Then I went to Belfast and was stationed in Belvoir Park. It was here I found out that Matt had died. The army refused me leave so I went AWOL. When I got to Derry I discovered that Johnny, Joseph and Gerry, who were all in the forces in England, had been given leave to attend his funeral, yet I wasn鈥檛 even given permission to come from Belfast. On the way back I was arrested by the military police and was put in jankers back in Belvoir Park for a week or two.

There was also a cemetery in Belvoir Park, actually within our camp. We were told one day that someone had broken into the vault. We went to investigate and after climbing down I saw that some of the coffins were broken into. The lead was tore off and it was scary. We could see red hair but then I didn鈥檛 look too much. I was down in the dark and somebody yelled AAAHHH to scare me and they succeeded. I just saw the name on the stone outside was a 鈥淟ord and Lady Dunleith鈥�. Later we found out that rings had been stolen.

Belvoir Park, Belfast, was an ammunition dump at the time. Fortunately nothing hit it - It was certainly no place to be, in an air raid. In fact Belfast was the worst air raid ever I was in. The bombs mostly fell about the docks area and but they were scattered all over the place as well. During the biggest raid in Belfast, I was in Craigavad, near Hollywood so I was a good bit away at that stage thankfully, but a few mines fell about there too. These were far away, but they didn鈥檛 seem far enough away for me.

From here I ended up somewhere outside London and was there for a while during some of their air raids.

My next port of call was bomber command near St Ives or Newquay, Cornwall and I stayed there until 1941-2 approx. Here the bomber planes were going out and in. Planes were coming in shot to pieces and crash landing and stuff. All the usual war stuff really.

The army then gathered up troops from all over. Our regiment was sent to Glasgow and from here we set sail, not knowing where we were going, but it was really for the invasion of Madagascar. It took us about 6-7 weeks at sea to get there, on board the troop ship, The Franconia. At that time you had to zigzag every 6 minutes to avoid U- boats, so it took a good long time, as we also had to go into Sierra Leone or Freetown (at that time it was called the Gold Coast) for a day or two, for water and supplies because everyone had skin infections such as scurvy. When we finally got to Durban it cleared up immediately because we got oranges and other fruit.

We invaded Madagascar in May 1942. On the Island were up against the Vichy French and the Senegalese (Black troops). They didn鈥檛 put up much of a resistance and the island was taken in about a fortnight or month. We all caught various diseases. We went to India from Madagascar in the same ship, which was quarantined with a big yellow flag on it. When we got to Bombay, people were taken in Red -Cross ambulances and trains to hospitals.

I took sick sometime after we landed and I was being treated with quinine for malaria. It took a long, long time for me to recover and I failed away, lying on the hospital bed. I was unconscious for most of the time and I remember coming to and passing out all of the time and the nurse told me then that I actually had typhus. When I came round, I was sent to convalesce in Puna, a cool place in India.

By the time I got better, my regiment had already left for Iraq. They sent me on then along with others to join my regiment in the desert somewhere near Basra. We went from there to Baghdad, sometimes by trucks but mostly by foot. We were camping out all the time. We travelled on to Persia (now Iran) to beyond Tehran near the borders of Russia. From Basra to Russia right through Iraq and Persia was the route that they brought the American 鈥淟ease and Lend鈥� through ie. transport, ammunitions and supplies to the Russians.

We were installed there for the Winter but we couldn鈥檛 do much, only try and keep warm and try to survive because of the freezing temperatures. We dug about 4 foot into the ground and covered it with the tent then the snow covered that. The temperature was 30 below outside and it was never above freezing inside. The only thing we had to keep warm was a wee primus stove and a piece of tin, which we burned, to try and get heat to survive. But we never really got warm of course. When the Summer came, everything flooded. The rain came down from the mountains and big storms washed us out.

On one occasion we got a week鈥檚 holiday to Tehran. On the first night I got drunk with a Russian soldier. He gave me vodka and I landed in jail. That vodka was that strong to us because we were young and not able for it. The jail was like an enormous big bird- cage and I slept it out on the floor with a blanket till the morning. The Captain I think, felt sorry for me because I had only just started my holiday the day before, so for my 鈥減unishment鈥� he sent me as a 鈥淩edcap鈥� ie. I was put on police duties doing the same thing that happened to me ie. rounding up soldiers who were drunk, same as myself. It was more or else to keep them safe and warm in the freezing weather.

We were taken then to Syria for further mountain training. Over a period of months we were sent then to Palestine and then onto Egypt. We passed through El Alemein and into Alexandria to embark for the invasion of Sicily. We landed on the beach near Catena in the South of Sicily around May 1943

Another time a dogfight was going on over our heads and suddenly one of the planes was shot down and crashed near us. It was rumoured at the time that the pilot was Mussolini鈥檚 son.

We proceeded through Sicily where I was wounded near the bottom of Mount Etna by German troops. I think they were called the Herman-Goring Grenadiers. I was shot in the head through the steel helmet, more of a crease shot really. I was lucky. But at the time, I thought I was blinded because the blood was going into my eye and I told the first aid man that and he put the bandage round my eye. All the men around me were dead and the first aid man had to get permission to take me out of the firing line.

We tried to get off the field and had to try and stay low and crawl but I couldn鈥檛 help him much because I was paralysed from the head to the waist on the left side. But I could move my legs and he pulled me by the back of the neck to guide me because I had the bandage round my eyes. At one point the bandage fell off and I found out that I could see and then I could make more head- way across a bridge, which was mined by anti-tank mines. These lay on top of the ground, so it was a good thing that I could see.

When we came to a clearance we could see a building lit up occasionally by gun flashes. We were exhausted and landed in there. It actually was a stable and I fell into a trough 鈥� a manger and fell asleep. I can鈥檛鈥� remember much after that except for the jag of a needle and being in mid-air on a stretcher, being lowered into a ship.

I woke up in a hospital on an operating table. I had a squeaky voice because my tongue and part of my throat was paralysed. I scared the nurses because I was trying to laugh and ended up more like a 鈥済urn鈥� expression like a crabbed old man and the more I heard myself, the more I laughed and scared them. Afterwards they actually left a rubber tube with a cork in it, in my head, surrounded by plaster of paris and they used to pour a measure of penicillin directly into the wound. I think the hospital was in Tubruk, which is in Lybia now.
I was hardly out of hospital when I was sent to a training camp somewhere near the Cairo delta near the Suez Canal. Here, I was training a short time for guard duty for the Cairo Conference which was to take place at the Mena Hotel opposite the Pyramids. This took place near the end of 1943 and it seemed to be like a fortress with the 3 powers there, China, USA and Britain.
I was kitted out with a brand new, fine serge uniform, all for show. It was that good- looking, people thought we were officers. We even got keeping the uniform. I remember standing behind a desk like a receptionist at the time along with a couple of Yanks. Whilst there, I saw Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt, General Chiang Kai- Shek and Madame Chiang, coming in and out of the hotel all the time. Madame Chiang was able to speak English to us.
Whilst training I was also working for the stores in the hotel and this was good because we got Whitbread beer and all the scran, including, as it turned out, Churchill鈥檚 cigars.
We were able to climb to the top of the pyramids, where there was an R.A.F. observation post. We also went right into the middle of one of the pyramids. Inside, it was so pitch black. In the centre of the pyramid was a huge open space with the tombs of the pharaohs in the centre. The guide had a light but then when he put it out, you could almost feel the darkness. I have never experienced such darkness since.

We called it the 鈥淐ook鈥檚 Tour鈥� because we were always on the move. The first two years, I spent more time in hospital than in action. because I went from action into hospital and then action into hospital again, except for the winter spent in Tehran.

I was finally sent to Benghazi, Libyia where I worked driving petrol tankers from place to place until I was sent home by ship to France. Through France by train and then travelled Calais to Dover, finally arriving home in Derry, June 1946. I met Phyllis that August in Bundoran and got married the following June 1947.

Eamon Simms,

N.Ireland.

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