大象传媒

In a letter which I had received in 1995, from a comrade who was also taken prisoner from 155 Battery at Sidi N'Sir, he asked me if I had seen Rommel, because he was there in the axis front line, sitting on the end of a log, his hat cocked on the side of his head. This comrade said that Rommel had uttered a statement saying "You British b....y good fighters!"

Now, according to the Geneva Convention, POWs are not to be detained in the enemy front line for more than 24 hours. So we were later transported to Mateur, where, in a small building we were lined up in front of a desk, behind which was an obviously high-ranking officer. He handed us a long list of items and asked each one of us to read it very carefully and to declare if we possessed any of those items. He then proceeded to pace to and fro behind us, with his hands behind his back.

Thereupon, he then issued an ultimatum -"If you have any of those items and do not declare them, then you are later found to have them, then heaven must bless you!"

We were now further transported to Ferryville between Lake Bizerta to the north-east and Lake Gareat Achkel to the south-west. There we spent the night in a small, very dark shed and had to lay down on straw. Something akin to Ryvita and a small tube of what appeared to have been cheese of a sort was handed to us - it was too dark to know exactly what it could have been.

The enemy were now going to wash their hands of us and to hand us over to the Italians, who were now taking us in convoy to some cages alongside the harbour at Bizerta, on the 1st March. En route the convoy had slowed up and a pretty Arab girl was carrying a pitcher on her head, presumably containing some water for us. A German soldier immediately pushed her to the ground!

Soon after we had entered this large compound, I noticed one of our officers from our 155 Battery in an adjoining cage and he said to me "They must certainly take great care of you" Some of us were fortunate enough to have found some straw upon which to sleep on the open ground, but I remember having spent the next three nights walking around and around in order to keep warm.

On the 4th March, the Italians were now having to ship us over to Naples. At least we would then be back in Europe again. The soft under-belly as Winston Churchill had described it. An Italian sailor wished us 'bon voyage' by saying "Your ships come and down we go!"

We were battened down in the hold of the ship and had to sleep on the bare iron bottom and when the anchor was used, showers of rust came raining down upon us. Having now crossed the narrow part of the Mediterranean the ship dropped anchor between two islands on the night of 4th/5th March, which could have been the Lipari Islands off the western tip of Sicily.

We were issued with a small tin of something like corned beef. They allowed us up on deck for a couple of minutes a day, but by now I well remember that the fingers were now finding it difficult to grab hold of the iron rungs of the bolt upright ladder, so absolute caution was necessary to perform such a feat.

We had now crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea, passed the Isle of Capri and landed at Naples on 7th March.

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