大象传媒

I am willing to have my story entered onto the People's War website and agree to abide by the House Rules.

I was poultry farming at Purtington when war was declared in September 1939 and in November I was warned that poultry feeds would be rationed to about half of my normal requirements, so I decided there would be little hope of making a living with half of my normal stock, at that time egg prices varied from sixpence (2.5p) in the summer to half a crown (12.5p)in the winter. Poultry dressed ready for the table, half a crown (12.5p)each. Wides of Hemyock had a depot in Chard at that time and collected the produce each week. They also took rabbits if we had any. I decided there was little hope of being able to carry on so in December I decided to sell up and I joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a driver. My first night away from home was in a derelict chapel in Cornwall, most of the windows were missing. We were given two blankets each and told to make ourselves comfortable. We were very glad when morning came. After two days we were put on a train again, this time we landed up in Nottingham and given billets in private houses. We had just begun to make ourselves comfortable again (this is a big mistake in the army) so they put us on a train again. We got as far as Hereford when they shunted us into a siding. We had no rations and it was the following day before a lorry turned up with tea and biscuits - the army nearly had their first mutiny here. After this we landed up in the barracks of the South Wales Borderers in Brecon. After a couple of weeks there we were being sorted out for various destinations. As I had reached the dizzy heights of lance Corporal in the Territorial Army in 1928 I was passed fit for overseas service and with a trainload of others we landed in Southampton the next day and straight onto a troop ship. We sailed during the night and the next day we landed at Charbourg. We were put on a train there which was quite a long one. The train drriver started off with a tremendous jerk and the end of our carriage fell out. This meant a couple of hours delay. Some of the lads thought they would get some sleep by climbing up onto the luggage racks. One of the things which I took particular notice of going through France was the number of two wheeled carts with dogs harnesses to them and pulling quite large loads. The scenery along the Mediterranean coast was really beautiful; we eventually arrived in Marseille where the troopship Devonshire was waiting to take us to Palestine. Porposes seemed to have taken a fancy to us for they followed us for the whole of the sea trip. We were billeted in an old warehouse in Haifa and the officers in private houses. We had a very good cook and when he found that the daily rration was more than was needed if he used it all, decided to keep some back each day and build upa reserrve for when we were on the move. But one day the orderly officer saw this big stock of mostly tinned foods and told the cook he must use the rations each day even is some of it was wasted. He then sent round a lorry to pick up our stock and had it deliverd to his billet in the town where it must have been a useful little earner for him. Needless to say our cook used the rations each day after that and the Arab Children who soon leaned our mealtimes used to come around with tins and pans and they did very well out of our surplus food. We were next moved to Nazareth and put up in the one and only cinema. We were formed into a Field Ambulance Unit there and attached to a medical unit. During our stay in Nazareth we had the opportunity to visit the holy places and in the course of our duties got to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. We had the chance to swim in the sea of Galilee which is 686 feet below sea level but the hottest place in Palestine was the Dead Sea which is 1299 feet below sea level and the water is so thick with minerals that you couldn't sink in it. Our next move was across the Sinai desert to Geneifa in Egypt on the edge of the Bitter Lakes through which the Suez Canal runs. We were kept busy here meeting ships at Suez and At Alexandria and running to hospitals in Cairo. After a couple of months we were loaded onto a River Nile steamer which had a barge attached to each side which our transport was loaded onto. About a week later we arrived at Halfa in Sudan, after that onto another train which took us to Khartoum. Away from Khartoum there were no roads, it was desert all the way. After a few days we were held up by the Italians holding the only road through the mountains, while we were stuck there. One evening the Quartermaster sergeant invited some of us to a game of cards and to our surprise produced a bottle of whisky. We wondered where this had come from as there were no NAAFI or shops within 200 miles but apparently he carried a quantity of whisky for emergencies but as the officers were having an occasional bottle in the mess, he thought it only fair that we should have a little of it. So he had taken a quarter from each of the remaining bottles and then filled them up with water. We thought much better of the sergeant after that. It was here that I was ordered to help in the officers cookhouse which was quite a nice change. The cook made two of everything, one for the officers and one for the staff. If there was any difference we always had the best one. On one occasion the pans were put on the fire to make the tea when it was found that a piece of sacking had got into one pan and the water was the colour of tea but being short of water the teas were put into it and the officers drank it without complaint, much to the cook's relief. We finally arrived at the port of Massawa in Eritrea on the Red Sea coast where we were billeted in the Old Italian barracks and attached to an Indian division. While here an Indian officer died and they found enough timber to make a funeral pyre in the barrack square, the body was puton it and the pyre set alight and some of the Indians stayed until it had burnt out. Another Indian died shortly after and as there was no more timber they found a rough coffin from somewhere and I was given the job with two Indians with shovels to find the cemetary somewhere out in the desert and bury him. But after about an hour with nothing but sand in sight we decided to bury him where we were but then we noticed some camels in the distane so I drove over to them but I couldm't make the Arabs understand so I took them to the back of the ambulance and let them see the coffin. They then pointed away to the right and eventually we saw some sticks with pieces of white material tied to them which were marking some of the graves. Others were marked with pebbles and others with petrol cans filled with sand to prevent them being blown away. My two Indians dug a hole just deep enough to cover the coffin, said a prayer then took a petrol can from one of the other graes to put on theirs and in about half an hour we were away. I had been praying all the time that the wind wouldn't get up to obscure our wheel marks or I might have had difficulty finding my way back. A few days later I was given orders to load up the ambulance with medical supplies, my kit and rations for three days and the same for the officer as we were going to visit the advanced dressing station but before I had finished another driver asked me if I would let him go as he wanted to see a friend. I told him to ask the officer if he was agreeable. I didn't mind so he took my place and after that day we heard that they had struck a landmine and were both killed. I began to feel then that it might be my destiny to get home again sometime. One time out in the desert I was stopped by six Italians with their rifles and thought I was going to be taken prisoner but to my relief they wanted to give themselves up. They just wanted to get away from the war. Everyone looked in amazement when they got out of the ambulance back at the camp. I thought they were going to give me a medal for bravery. After this campaign we returned to Egypt and our next job was leading ships in Alexandria harbour for the invasion of Sicily. When finished our ambulances with our kit and personal belongings on them were loaded onto the ship, thinking that we would sail with them but despite our protests we were ordered off and put on another ship. We sailed during the night. The next day we entered Syracuse harbour and saw two funnels sticking up out of the sea and it turned out to be the ship we had wanted to sail on. We lost our kit but should probably have lost our lives if we had been on it. Another memory of Sicily was when Mount Etna erupted. There was a terrific rumbling noise. We were in Catania at the time and the buildings seemed to be swaying but there didn't seem to be any serious damage. We then travelled on the Messina which had first been bombed by British and American planes and later by the retreating Germans. There wasn't a complete building standing. We crossed over to Italy from there and I was stationed at a hospital in Bari, from where we were taking badly wounded troops to Tarante for repatriation to Britain. A little later we were handling large numbers of wounded from the Monte Casino battle. After this we got to Naples where the NAFFI were living in style. They had occupied one of the royal palaces. From here we had a good view of Mount Vesuvious which was smoking all the time but did not erupt while we were there. We were waiting here for a ship to take us home and meeting up with some who we were parted from when we split up among different units and we found there were quite a lot who went out with us and would never return. Most of us returning had been abroad for five years and the last few weeks of waiting were a real trial.

While in Egypt I had often seen the Pyramids but didn't have the opportunity to get to them but I was very interested in them remembering that Howard Carter and the Earl of Caernarfon had opened them up in 1922 and discovered the tomb of Tutankhaman who had been interred there in 1340 BC. I had the opportunity to go back to Egypt after the war and pay a visit to the Pyramids and go into the tomb which is right in the middle. The treasures which were buried with him are now in Cairo and were well worth a visit to the Museum. Flies were an awful nuisance in Egypt and anyone going into hospital was always issued with a fly swat. We often wondered how the flies found us in the desert as sometimes we would travel for hours. We would stop where there was no water and no vegetation and not a fly in sight and yet by the time our meal was ready there would be swarms of them and you could not get your fork to your mouth without flies being on it. We never found out how they got there. Did they follow us or did they get a lft on the vehicles?

It was surprising how people seemed to get the jobs they know nothing about as when our cook wanted an assistant the man who had been a baker in civvy street didn't get it but the man who had been a blacksmith did. After a couple of months experience the officers cook falling sick he applied for the job and got it but was soon back at lorry driving as the officers all landed up in hospital with salmonella poisoning which although not very pleasant for the officers seemed to cause a lot of amusement with everyone else. Malaria was also a cause of a lot of sickness in Italy. We were issued with mosquito nets to sleep under and were lined up each morning and an officer would come along with Mepacrin tablets and someone with a bucket and a cup to make sure that we took them but the mosquitoes won with some of us.

Other memories of Africa wer the flocks of ostriches on the desert and wondering what they lived on. The Sudanese Camel Corps who were an unforgetable sight when speeding as the ordinary camel seemed such an ungainly plodding sort of animal. Also how deadly a snake bite could be when one of our drivers knelt in the sand to do something to his ambulance and was bitten by a snake. We had no anti snake serum and I had a couple of hours drive to take him to a base hospital. He was a young healthy man but he died before I got to the hospital.

When picking up South African casualties from their camps at Dire Dawa and Harar in Abyssinia to be taken to base hospitals in Eritrea we would meet groups of 30-40 monkeys who were quite unafraid and would stay around if we stopped for a meal and were quite an attraction with their antics. Another memory was of a vehicle inspection in the desert when the tranport officer gave us a couple of hours to get the engines cleaned up as they were caked in sand. We had to use some of the spare petrol we were carrying which seemed a waste when the folks at home were so severely rationed, but orders were orders and ours not to reason why.

Other African memories were seeing the tanks, lorries, guns and other equipment burnt out and rusting in the desert. Our ambulance always full, five stretcher cases, two each side and one on the floor, or ten sitting cases and some asking for water, which was scarcer than petrol and the courage of the medical orderlies, most of them being from entirely different jobs before being called up. The Pioneer Corps also had an unenviable job; we would come across bodies stacked up and they would have to take their identity discs and then bury them. Much pleasanter memories are of darling Vera Lynn singing the songs that became firm favourites. Also the Germans favourite Lilly Marlene which became one of our favourites as well.

On returning to England the blackout and rationing were something fresh we had to cope with, also the petrol rationing which was causing problems for a lot of people. My two young sons who were four and three years old when I last saw them and grown out of all recognition and certainly didn't recognise me. I think the folks at home did a wonderful job in spite of all the difficulties, as everyone looked quite well and well clothed in spite of the rationing.

Memories of water shortages; we had been four months without being able to have a decent wash when the CO decided he could spare one tank of water. So he had two poles stuck in the sand with a bar fixed across between them and hung five empty margarine cans with holes punched in the bottoms from the bar and the tank driver pumping the water so five at a time we had a shower and each lot were given five minutes, an officer with a watch checking the time. We came across a water hole at one stop. It was about 15 feet deep. There was a small drop in the bottom and had an oily film on it. Someone was lowered to the bottom with a bucket and as it was unsuitable for drinking everyone was told to top up their radiators with it.

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