大象传媒

This account is dedicated to the wireless operators of Special Operations Executive (SOE) without whom no mission could have succeeded.
They were the keymen.

By one of them:

Ex 鈥� 3969039 Cpl. Austin DeAth

It was night time in the late summer of 1944, and we were in the air somewhere over the mainland of Greece. I have a vivid memory of pausing fleetingly, brain numbed, in the open doorway of the aeroplane, a Douglas Dakota, staring out into the blackness. Blackness slashed by a long blue flame from the aircraft鈥檚 port engine. A flame seeming to reach right back as far as the doorway in which I, momentarily, dithered. My two companions had already jumped so I, casting aside the chute attached strap, followed them. As I fell the strap, catching my helmet, whipped it off my head. I was extremely lucky that it did not take my head with it! My parachute opened and I floated down savouring the peace and quiet after what had been a very noisy flight of some two and a half hours from Brindisi in Southern Italy. Hundreds of feet below me, I could see fires burning, arranged to form a letter 鈥榅鈥� in order to show the plane鈥檚 pilot his dropping point. Quite suddenly I was down and, having lost my helmet on exit, had the misfortune to bang my head on the ground. Happily, I had landed in one piece and, against my beliefs, exclaimed a heartfelt 鈥楾hank God鈥�! My two companions and I had landed on Mount Elikon in Greece.

However, to begin at the beginning. My military career began in May 1940 when I received my call up papers. I was then by no means reluctant to join the Army since I had, for some years, been employed in a rather boring office job in London. I was 23 years of age and at that age young men look for adventure. So here was adventure and I felt a sense of fulfilment. The first stop on my path to adventure was the Medical Centre where, after being poked and prodded by five doctors, I was pronounced as A1.

Next on one bright June morning, armed with a travel warrant, I and others journeyed by train to Weymouth in Dorset, there to be met by an Army sergeant and taken to Portland. An unruly mob, we staggered, sweatily up the hill to the Verne Citadel atop of Portland Bill. Whether the Verne was a prison before 1940 I know not, certainly it is now, and has been for some time, such an establishment. For the first and so far only time in my life, I went to Prison! But back in 1940 it had been taken over by the Army and was in use as an Infantry Training Centre.

Once arrived we were divested of our civilian apparel which was then packaged and posted to our home addresses. Now kitted out in battledress we, at least, bore some semblance to the military! Once settled in to our billets we proceeded to exchange names and experiences. We were given rifles, the old short Lee Enfield 303, shown how to clean them and keep them in good nick. We were assembled in sections and platoons, taught to march in step and how and what to salute. Being left handed I, on more than one occasion, saluted with that hand and consequently suffered a tongue lash for my pains! We were next inoculated against this and that and, I recall, more than one recruit fainted at the sight of the needle.

It was the time when the evacuation from Dunkirk was in full swing and about a fortnight after our call up. In order that the returning soldiers could be accommodated, we were moved from the Verne Citadel to a tented camp at a place called Chickerell along the coast near Weymouth. By this time we were considered to be trained enough to be let loose on the general public 鈥� to whit the inhabitants of Weymouth. I recall that the sea front at Weymouth was wreathed in barbed wire and the town was hosting Dunkirk evacuees some in an extremely rumpled state. The towns folk were doing their best to rehabilitate these unfortunates.

The tented camp at Chickerell was first set up in neat orderly rows until someone pointed out that a marauding enemy aircraft would be able to do maximum damage by firing straight along these lines. The tents were taken down and rearranged randomly.

It was a lovely summer and we were made fit by strenuous exercise, hard but very rewarding. It was, I recall, a carefree existence getting accustomed to being in uniform, making friends and learning the Army language 鈥� liberally interspersed with expletives!

Soon too soon, the war encroached on our Arcadian existence. We were split up into groups and dispersed. Probably as unblooded rookies we were considered to be more vulnerable than those who had returned from France. Anyway, I and some others found ourselves en route by train to South Wales and posted to the Welsh Regiment. During the war it seemed to us rookies that the Army鈥檚 policy was dispersal! In other words men from the London region would be sent to Yorkshire, Scotland or 鈥� as in my case 鈥� Wales. In addition, civilian cooks became motor mechanics and vice versa. Or perhaps it was just the initial stages of sorting out and adjustment!

My South Wales experience began in Swansea where we were billeted for a few days on the local population, two soldiers to a house. Hardly had we had time to get to know the family, before being moved to a railway siding at Ponty-Drafyn, near Port Talbot, there to guard over a number of ammunition wagons. Attached to the same wagons was a passenger coach which became our living quarters. To a townsman like myself doing the night shift was rather an eerie business. To add to the country noises of the night, there was the creaking of the wagons. Usually, of course, one had a companion to keep up one鈥檚 spirits. Whenever a certain wagon was required the whole train was shunted a couple of miles up the line to a junction, and we had to wait until the remaining wagons and our coach were shunted back to where our cookhouse was situated before we breakfasted. I recall that at this time 鈥� late 1940 鈥� Hitler鈥檚 Sealion offensive was supposed to be imminent. Rumours were rife and we were alerted to the possibility of parachutists landing. Fortunately the rumours proved to be false!

I got to know South Wales and its kindly folk quite well; we were moved and moved and moved again, hither and thither.

We were posted for some weeks at Pembroke Dock on the far tip of the Gower Peninsular. I enjoyed my stay there 鈥� Pembrokeshire was much more agreeable than the Valleys. Finally my Welsh saga took me to Pendine Sands where I was to stay until early 1942. Based in a farmhouse separated from the coast by an area of sand and fir wood, we took turns to man a pillbox set just above the beach. The nearest civilised area was the town of Laugharne famous as the one time home of Dylan Thomas. I indeed met the poet at the pub called Brown鈥檚 Hotel, but that was before he really became famous.

My fellow soldiers were a mixed bag; mainly young men but with the addition of a number of old timers, men who had served in the Great War and had either signed on again or, as with some officers, had been recalled. I had by this time got fed up with what I considered to be second rate soldiering and persuaded my elder brother Ken to claim me into his regiment, The Suffolk鈥檚. The claim was authorised and the day came, at long last, when I said goodbye to Wales.

Thus I now became part of an up to date fighting regiment and much tougher crowd than the coastal defence mob which had been my lot previously. Now we had up to date training and up to date weapons. Battle drill was the order of the day with manoeuvres by day and by night; long marches and firing practice. One day we went to Colchester to fire at targets, popping up here and there, on the open range. That evening we made merry in the local hostelry and so to bed. I am a light sleeper and was awakened at some early hour by a sound that resembled someone dropping twenty thousand tin cans! In the morning there on the coast was a rather battered Wellington bomber. Apparently, it had been seriously shot up whilst on a raid. Fearing that he had not enough power left to get back to England the pilot had had to order his crew to abandon the plane whilst they were still over land. They duly complied and the pilot, preparing to follow them, realised that he might make it after all without their extra weight. He must have been very thankful to be able to get down onto the nearest bit of England and freedom. His crew were no doubt 鈥榩ut in the bag鈥�!

It was now early 1942 and a crowd of us, including Ken and I, were posted to the Royal West Kent Regiment; at that time the Fifth Battalion was located near Croydon in Surrey. There followed yet more training and one day in late spring we left by train from Tattenham Corner Railway Station on an interminable journey across England to Liverpool, and there boarded the Orient Line鈥檚 鈥極rontes鈥�. When we were all aboard we set sail in a large convoy and zigzagged southward accompanied by various warships including the battleship HMS Nelson.

In the North Atlantic we encountered rough weather but I, although queasy at times, never suffered from sea-sickness. Many, however, did which meant that those unable to stomach food on our mess table left more for those who could eat!

Life on board was pretty routine, we other ranks were herded together in the same mess decks; some sleeping on the floor, others on the table tops and some in hammocks 鈥� not the most comfortable of beds for a land lubber! At Reveille everything was stowed away and things made shipshape and the day was filled with physical training and lectures and lifeboat drill. Those on board included a bevy of nursing sisters and these ladies, together with the officers lived in some style and, indeed, far more comfortably than did we, lowly other ranks.

After about a month of slow zigzagging progress we arrived at Freetown, Sierra Leone where we dropped anchor and stayed for several days. Now we were in the tropics and it was very hot. I remember mostly the bright greenness of the vegetation ashore and the contrasting redness of the soil. Native men and boys came out to us in their canoes to beg but we had little to give I fear. In a short time it was weigh anchor and off again, and as we now crossed the Equator there took place the usual but somewhat restricted, ceremonial. Officers only, of course!

Our next landfall after over a month at sea was Cape Town and there we, at last, once more put foot on terra firma. To begin with we were formed up in a long column and marched round the town. This duty over we were left to make the most of our shore time. We were very well treated by the locals 鈥� many amenities were available 鈥� and enjoyed the opportunity, after blacked out Britain, of once more being in a lighted city.

Soon we were once more back on board and sailing round the Cape and up the Indian Ocean seeing flying fish and an occasional spouting whale. The weather was very hot and sticky as, blacked out, we approached Egypt. Passing through the Red Sea after a short stop at Aden, we finally anchored at Port Tewfic at the Northern end of the Suez Canal. The Red Sea was by day of a rather reddish hue due, I was given to understand, to marine life and glittered and sparkled at night around the ship鈥檚 side.

After much delay under a blazing summer sun we finally disembarked and boarded lorries whose metal sides were too hot to touch. Tired, hot, hungry and dusty we boarded a train and, after being shunted and shuffled hither and thither, we at last arrived, late at night, at our base camp at Khat-at-Ba.

Acclimatization was now the order of the day; some found it to be no problem but I, being fair skinned, had to take great care. Amongst the many items of kit issued before we left England were tinted goggles. Parading one day I happened to be the only man wearing them and was told off by the sergeant in charge. I pointed out to him that I had been issued with them; this, however, did not satisfy him and I was ordered to go to the Medical Officer and to get from him a 鈥榗hitty鈥� i.e. a piece of paper authorising me to wear the goggles!

We march and drilled, drilled and marched until finally at the end of three or four weeks now acclimatized, we were loaded onto trucks and driven to the forward lines, and were set down in an area to the north of the Qattara Depression, a vast dried salt lake. Here we proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted. First of all we had to dig slit trenches, two men to the trench. Shovelling away at the sand we soon came at the depth of about one foot to solid rock. With the able assistance of New Zealand engineers, who with their road drills blasted out the rock, we were able to make a sizeable trench further protected by sandbags 鈥� there being an unlimited supply of sand available. The hole was then covered as a protection against the midday sun by ground sheets stretched over it.

As a company we were scattered over a broad area. The daytime was generally quiet; guns and trucks moving forward or returning. The odd spotter plane flying over and being shot at was probably the most interesting happening and relieved the boredom temporarily. The cook's lorry was mobile and provided us with three meals a day, mostly from tins. Breakfast was mainly bread, tinned bacon and tinned tomatoes, and of course a mug of sweet military tea. Midday, the meal consisted of bread and jam and more tea. One had to be careful about the tea, which if not covered was liable to become a watery grave for the flies which pestered us throughout the daylight hours; getting into eyes, mouth and down the front of our shirts, in fact wherever they could find moisture. The tea was, of course, too precious to throw away if flies got in, one simply removed the bodies and drank the tea with no ill effects insofar as I know. Evening meal when the sun had set was more substantial. It was comprised of meat of some sort, perhaps corned beef stew with tinned potatoes and such other vegetables as were available. In addition there was usually a dessert course consisting of tinned fruit. Also there were hard tack biscuits which came in useful for between meals nibbles. We were allotted one water bottle full and this supply had to last all day. It was far from being adequate to satisfy the thirst but one soon learned not to take large mouthfuls, but just to sip or wet the lips. I cannot recall hearing of any cases of dehydration.

As is normal practice with armies, no sooner had we settled to a routine over a period of perhaps two or three weeks, than the order came to move once more. Our task was to relieve the New Zealand battalion in the forward area. This operation was accomplished at night. Once there I was escorted by a New Zealander to his, just vacated, slit trench. It was, as usual of no great depth but well built up with a wall of sandbags. The former occupant giving me parting advice said, 鈥淩ight mate, down there you鈥檒l find a bit of wood. It鈥檚 got teeth marks on it. If Jerry starts shelling you bite on it鈥�.

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