大象传媒

They drove a Matador lorry with all the maps in it. He remembers the feelings of tension before the battle and then a flare went up and 鈥渁ll hell let loose.鈥� He readily admits that he was 鈥渟cared stiff鈥� and has vivid memories of the battle and of men
Mr Cobby was at the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. He was with the Field Artillery and remembers that they knew something was 鈥渂rewing鈥� but they were not told what. He was with a small unit of 18 men. The RAF flew over the area and marked where the enemy forces were and his unit plotted the positions on the maps.burning in tanks. The surprise attack planned by Monty left them all in a profound sense of shock. He told me he had been very lucky and only received a shrapnel wound in his left knee but because of the sand and the heat it never really healed and he finally had it repaired in 1964 in the Royal Free Hospital, leaving him with a long scar. After El Alamein he was sent to the Silver Fox Camp near Damascus in Syria and then on into Turkey. When the units were broken up at the end of the war he joined the PWB (Prisoner of War Bureau) in Suez where he looked after both German and Italian prisoners. Prisoners were taken by train to the ports and then shipped back home from there. He remembers how he learnt a few words of German and some Arabic (mostly swear words!) and that one German prisoner spoke perfect English to him. He was 25 when he finally got home.

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