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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Arthur Waters and has been added to the site with his permission…

I joined REME as a motor mechanic at the beginning of the war, leaving a petrol station and repair garage back home.

Following my training, most of which was done on the front at Brighton I went out East, El -Alamain, Tel -Akabar and right on through the Middle East, where our job was to follow the fighting, repairing the vehicles.

At night we used to put the wagons in a circle, the radiator right up as close as we could get it to the back of the next vehicle. We did this to protect the radiators. We would sleep in the centre of the circle, and often during the night the Egyptians would come and silently steal the wheels, they were very good at it. We never heard them.

My brother had gone into the Royal Navy, but following an accident had to be invalided out. As I have said I had left a garage back home so on his return he took over the running of the business, part of which was transporting cotton for the war effort.

I of course was stuck in the middle of the desert and mail came infrequently or not at all. I was sat there on this particular day when a piece of paper blew past me. When I picked it up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a page from the Oldham Chronicle and there on the page was a story about my brother and the garage. He had been accused of using illegal diesel and instead of being convicted, the judge said he should be given even more diesel to enable him to carry on with his work.

We were sent to smoke screen Tripoli Harbour and all our troops were Palestinians. We were due to sail to Malta, but were held back to do one more smoke screen, if we had sailed, I wouldn’t be here to tell this story as the submarine we should have sailed on was sunk.

I went away when my son was one and a half and when I returned he was seven; sadly he died at 32 with cancer. I am 92 now and my wife and I were married 68 years.

This story was told to me by Arthur’s daughter Jenny Harrison

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