大象传媒

My father joined up in a Royal Artilerary regiment based in the south coast before embarking for North Africa. The troops, guns & trucks went on seperate ships, when they arrived they found the ship carrying the trucks had been sunk and so they had to wait in Algiers for replacements. He said to me he couldn't understand why they hadn't mixed them so they would at least have half the regiment mobile. In camp they used to swap cigeretts for oranges throwing them over fences with the local kids. He told me about a ride he took with some Americans the drove their trucks very fast to thier destination whereas our boys always drove at the speed of the slowest vehicle. When they moved out they were route marched through the desert (still no transport) during the heat of the day and when they reached camp were left out in the sun for another two hours my father had just got over a hernia operation and callapsed with heat exhaustion with some others. The C.O. told them he wouldn't have him in his regiment & he was sent back to 2nd. echelon missing his mates who went into action. When back at 2nd echelon he found all the best sportsmen of the day had been recruited by the regiments into football,cricket, rugby & football teams to play against other regiments & as he was a good footballer & cricketer he was soon playing and being coached by the captain of Hampshire. While checking personal documents at H.Q. he found he had blood stained dog tags & identification cards from his company one after another came up, he asked his C.O. what had happened and was told his whole company all his mates had been killed in a backfire of one of the howitzers this badly affected him a strange chance had left him alive when all his friends had died.

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