大象传媒

In convoy we landed in Port Tewfit Egypt and the temperature was 120 degrees in the shade. About 30 of the squadron including myself did not have the full acclimatisation time to get used to the heat as we were sent up the blue (up into the desert). It seemed strange as everybody was travelling in the opposite direction and were shouting at us 鈥測our going the wrong bloody way鈥� but we did not know that Rommel had started an advance from Elagielie .

It took us 36 hours to get to Mersa Matreu landing ground (LG) 13.
Our only officer informed us about our mission, which was to accept spitfires from Malta, this airfield was on the maximum range of the airplane.

On the following morning 10 spitfires took off from Malta they were told not to engage or fire any weapons during their flight or they would not get there. One ran out of petrol on the way and crashed into the sea but luckily he was rescued, the other 9 made it to the airfield. We then refuelled the planes and checked them over. The planes then took off on what we thought was a mission; as we were never told what was happening. But the planes never returned; we thought they had all been shot down already .That evening when the radio opened up we were told we had to prepare to leave at dawn the following day as the Germans were now well on the way to our position and to put every one on guard duty in the slit trenches with one rifle and five rounds of ammunition.

During the night we heard a tracked vehicle approaching and it got louder but we could not see a thing, it then stopped and we could here guttural voices and suddenly an English voice shouted, 鈥淎re you English?鈥�
The corporal then asked, 鈥淲hat should I say?鈥� Then I said tell the truth, so he shouted, 鈥淵es were English鈥� and then we ducked down expecting a volley of shots. But he then shouted back 鈥� Thank God you鈥檙e the first English we鈥檝e spoken too in 2 weeks鈥�.
The vehicle was a Bren gun carrier and it was full of black soldiers from south Africa with one white officer .We had mistaken the Africans accent for the guttural German.They gave us a small jar of Rum and we all had half a pint of Rum, Just to ease the cold. But we knew nothing else until we all were woke up at dawn by the officer asking where the hell did you get the Rum from.

There was dust visible ion the distance and the officer told us we had no time for breakfast, every vehicle started except the mobile cookhouse and we set of to go back to Egypt in a convoy of five vehicles leaving the cookhouse behind. We eventually got to the coast road, which was full of vehicles travelling back to Alexadria; this is where we found out what the war was all about.

The Germans aircraft staffed the convoy at regular intervals so we had to abandon the vehicles every time for about ten seconds until the raid was over and then we had to run back and quickly get started pushing the vehicles that were on fire out of the way. This strafing continued for the whole day until dark where we pulled off the road to try and get a few hours sleep.
The next day was a repeat of the previous day until we passed through the checkpoint at Alamein. At this time the lorry that we had started off with only 5 passengers and one driver and when we got to Alamein we were stopped and we were carrying 30 passengers so the redcaps sorted us out and fetched all the army personnel off.
We then noticed that after all of the strafing for two days that there was not one bullet hole in the entire vehicle. I remember writing a letter to my wife and telling her that 鈥渋f this war then I wont last more than a fortnight鈥�

We were told that our squadron was at lake Marieut, which was a dry lake that had an airfield built on it. We found the rest of a squadron and found out that they did not expect us to return all they wanted was the spitfires from Malta because there was only 1 squadron of spitfires in Egypt and they were not operational. But we had managed to get our squadron operational in a quick time.

50 years on in 1992 in the local Echo paper was a full-page spread on my wife; who was a WAAF, and me at our 50th wedding anniversary.

About a fortnight later I was stopped in Bedworth by an old School chum who recognised me form the newspaper article, he asked was I in 601 squadron and did you have a squadron emblem painted on the side of a cookhouse at Mersa Matreu in 1942.
He told me that he was a member of an aircraft recovery and parts team and he said that they got the cookhouse going and used it for the rest of the African campaign.

He also told me 鈥渢hat the sausages were absolutely delicious鈥�

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