大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Raymond V Gregory and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We left Freetown and two days later we saw a large waterspout between the coast and us, another two days later and the engine stopped and we were left on our own for 2陆 days, then the navy kept an eye on us. When we did finally start it only took about 7 hours to catch the convoy up. When we arrived at Durban the Lady in White met us and gave a selection of popular songs. The following morning we boarded 鈥楾he City of Paris鈥� and people were asked to volunteer to work in the bake house so John Burkinshaw and I volunteered, after our first shift a captain met us at the bake house door and said C.O. troops wants to know what shifts you are working, so I told him 12 on, 12 off and he said that the C.O. troops would not stand for that, and said that it was hard lines he was having as John and I had just done an 18 hour shift as the other team had not come on and now we were looking for somewhere to get our head down, to which he replied, 鈥楤ut you have a cabin鈥� to which I replied, 鈥楴o.鈥�

We landed at Port Tewfur and were transferred to Genefer where we stayed for three weeks waiting for someone to make up their minds as what to do with us, we were getting bored when they asked for volunteers to go on a cooks course, so John and I volunteered. Halfway through the course I went into the NAAFI for a drink of beer and met a Kiwi coming out and he said the Tommies had all beer, but he came in with me. The first person that I saw had his back to me but I could see he had half a dozen bottles in front of him and when Kiwi asked him for one he was refused, as I walked past I thought 鈥榤iserable 鈥榮o and so鈥�, then it struck me, I had seen the back of the persons head before so I turned round to look and got the shock of my life, it was Harold my uncle, so I took a bottle of beer, he grabbed it before looking up then he said, 鈥楤limey, they are robbing the cradle, what are you doing here?鈥� We spent three days together and then his unit pulled out and I did not see him again until after the war.

My last posting in Italy was to take charge of a cookhouse in 51 British Liaison Unit attached to an Italian division where I met a lad from Old Basford, Nottingham, so we palled up. We were sitting in the billet one night when we heard a crash from outside, and on investigation, found an Indian dispatch rider in the dyke. How he missed the telegraph pole nobody knows, on pulling him and his bike out of the dyke we found dispatches in his satchel, so we took him to our signal section that was in a water pumping station, called the MP鈥檚, who turned up. One Gurkha officer and two Sikh constables, they made an imposing trio, the officer, 5鈥�2鈥�, and the constables, 6鈥�4鈥�. They took charge and threw the unfortunate dispatch rider into the 50 cwt they had arrived in and left. It was obvious that he was drunk.

Our last move before the end of the war was to a place on the River Po. We pulled into the farmyard and half a dozen of us stood talking when suddenly there was the rattle of small arms firing coming from the field across the lane, without thinking we dashed upstairs into the front bedroom and out onto a balcony and saw in the middle of the field a stand of wheat or corn, and all round the four sides of the field were idiots firing into the centre and those in the centre were returning the fire, how many of their own men they hid is anybodies guess. After a while it must have dawned on someone what was happening, someone on the outer ring threw a German grenade and when it exploded in the centre two men stood and as they started to raise their hands they were shot. As the men from around the sides of the field past us they only said one word, 鈥楩asity鈥�.

P.S. Harold had served with the Foresters in France during the First World War and joined up in 1939.

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