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Another diversion which arrived in Dover, and caused great amusement, even among the least academic AA gunners, was a 鈥榋鈥� Battery RA. At the time of our arrival in Dover we really were, if not an experienced mob, at least a very well trained one. We all had an intimate knowledge of the Bofus gun, which, particularly in it鈥檚 early forms was quite a beautifully made weapon, and quite an expert learning tool of what direction a shell should be fired to meet up with a plane diving at say 30掳 and at 300mph. We were literally astounded when from various trucks a crowd of some 100 or so called artillery men set up an L-shaped lay out of bullet ejectors composed of two iron girders about 6 foot long set at an angle to the ground and powered by a flash-lamp battery. On these they set some form of bullets and at a roar of 鈥淔ire鈥�; about 50 bullets were launched in the direction of any attacking aircraft. The sight was really spectacular but it so outraged the purists that I saw otherwise dedicated AA gunners rolling on the ground in mirth. This AA Laurel and Hardy act, viewed from any attacking plane must have been far from hilarious.

On one occasion, out of sheer frustration, I fired the quad-Lewis at a plane at least a mile away and I was immediately backed up by reports from adjoining sites that a plane had flown 鈥渟traight over me鈥�.

During this period we went through a battle course at Hertford. This involved us from 9.00am until 6.00pm tearing around the country like maniacs; we simply ran all day, leaping hedges and ditches carrying a Lee-Enfield rifle. I had a good, fat friend named Herbie Rowan, he and I would dash into a pub in our half-hour lunch break, order four pints, down two each and dash out again. Except for Syracuse, July 1943, I got less sleep in this place than at any time in my life. Run all day, guard duties at night, and if we were off we would go to a dance. Here I met a Jewish girl called Helen, who was kindness itself. She would have plied me with cigarettes, money, food, and coffee. She found it difficult to understand an independent Irishman. She was a champion sprinter, a good dancer, wore a very nice fur coat and was indeed a very nice girl.

Our next stop was East Hampstead Park, near Bracknell in Surrey but eventually we turned in our journey south via Wellington and Stratford-upon-Avon until, after a most disorganised ill-fed journey, we arrived in Forfar. Having had some experience in organising motor rallies in Northern Ireland, I must say, the organisation of this war was an absolute shambles. It was typified by the fact that a group of half-witted lieutenants had lorries with their beds and armchairs aboard, while the troops went unbilleted and almost unfed. It was here that I first encountered the indignation of the regular sergeant-majors and sergeants, who had been brought up in the admirable dictum of 鈥淗orses first, men next, selves last鈥�. Many of the officers we had were really stupid nitwits. They had just enough wit to be instructed by the senior NCOs. Of the RSM鈥檚, BSM鈥檚, etc. they were terrific. The BSM鈥檚 were probably the backbone of the British Army.

Few, if any, of these officers went abroad with us. It really was not their fault that they were officers anyway. The general rule appeared to be that only the least useful were allowed to go up for an interview for a commission. Which just goes to show the treacherous nature of the duties of the ones doing the interviews.

We eventually arrived in Forfar, Angus and took up our abode in a deserted mill, which, on the whole, was reasonably comfortable, judged by reasonably uncomfortable soldering standards. The local people of Forfar were extremely kind, they were used to playing host to soldiers due for overseas. A proclamation was made that married men could bring their wives to stay with them and a frantic search began for digs. One dreary day, tramping through Forfar in the snow, being told 鈥渇ull up鈥� at second-rate digs in one hotel after the other. They were nevertheless clean and respectable, this was Scotland. Just about exhausted I called into the Church Hotel canteen for a cup of tea and shortly was telling my difficulties to a Scottish lady named Wilson. She asked me to call back the next day, to see what she could arrange, and when I came back she said that she had talked to her husband and that, if I liked, we could stay with her. Her husband was Willie Wilson, head master of the two local schools and they were a kind, good Scottish couple. My wife Margaret 'Peggy' McManus came over for a few weeks, her first trip 鈥榦verseas鈥�. She said she lay in the Glasgow boat thinking of 鈥渁ll that water and the fish swimming about underneath鈥�. I got time off to meet her, stayed a night in a ghastly Glasgow commercial hotel, and proceeded to Forfar. Here she was 鈥榓dopted鈥� as Margaret by the Wilson鈥檚 and was a big hit. She was a great pal with Mrs Wilson and their daughter. In my part, we soldiered on, spending weary hours down on a lake cleaning the guns and even, through a toughening-up process by a silly Colonel, being denied the consolation of a cup of tea and a bun at the Church canteen. The ignorant Colonel did not even have the manners to inform the kind ladies of the Church who were left standing with teapots at the ready waiting our arrival.

At the end of February 1943, I again got time off to see Peggy back to the Glasgow boat. A thick English red-cap chased me as I saw her through the entrance to the shed, and I stood on a bridge looking at the boat, this was one of the low points in my life. I did not see Peggy again for two years and 8 months.

One day, Willie Wilson arrived on a bicycle at our mill and asked could I come up to see them at Lilyfield, their home. There he revealed the fact that soon we were to go by train to Greenock, to embark for overseas. Sure enough, within the next day or so we were issued with tropical kit and pit helmets. It was around the 15 March 1943 when we were lined up outside the mill, informed that we were about to embark overseas, and warned that under no circumstances would we divulge this information to civilians.

A sympathetic row of civilian heads listened mournfully over the wall behind the speakers, as we stood rigged out like Christmas Trees. Two kit bags each and a pith helmet dangling at each right buttock. The march to the station was the most undignified shambles. Even the toughest soldiers cannot march in a smart and military manner with full field service marching order (F.S.M.O) plus two kit bags, not to mention a pith helmet at the hip. Struggling like beasts of burden we left our good friends in Forfar. It wasn鈥檛 the struggle we minded, it was the struggle in public. I am sure the good folk of Forfar thought none the less of us for our indignity. They were used to Captain鈥檚 wives sending their husband鈥檚 socks down to the local ladies to be darned.

We embarked by train from Forfar. Herbie Rowan and I sat opposite each other in the railway carriage and listened to the chat of the Scottish boys 鈥渉ome for a couple of weeks鈥�. We arrived at Greenock by train and shortly afterwards were ushered into fenders on the south bank of the Clyde. With waves and cheers from mainly females waiting on the docks, we were moved into the centre of the Clyde, feeling far from heroes, to S.S. Tegleberg . We climbed aboard, up astoundingly steep ladders and found ourselves in the most claustrophobic circumstances we had so far encountered. The decks below were laid out with mess tables, each to seat 24. At night we were supposed to sling 24 hammocks over this small space. We soldiers of two years service were astounded. We were given Green Envelopes, to write home to our 鈥渂eloved ones鈥�. Only one in so many will be opened. We wrote 鈥渨e are all right, and will see you as soon as possible鈥�. Three years said the cynics, and they were not far off.

We sailed from Greenock on 16 March 1943. Some of our Scottish friends could see their own homes from the boat. On 17 March 1943 we sailed past the North of Ireland and out into the Atlantic. I was sick, or more so giddy. We got out on deck and at this level a wave was hundreds of feet high on the seascape. I hung onto the rail thinking to myself, I was G.N.J. and I would survive this somehow. This was the Atlantic; I was far from Johnston, junior in the Ulster Bank, Dungannon. I was a frightened soldier in the North Atlantic.

They threw it at us for about a week. The conditions below were, to any ordinary civilian, unbelievable. At night, dozens of hammocks in a dark blue light, swung together with the roll of the ship and only eighteen inches in between. The obvious thought was, if a hole was blown in the side of the ship, how the hell would we get out of there. The lack of comfort being slung over the mess tables, lying on ones side while the whole 'concert hall' swung from side to side. What made me a hero this way instead of at home in Perry Street, Dungannon? I could have stayed there.

Some days later the weather settled while we swung in our hammocks out on the deck. This was really super. One booked ones place early in the day and at night we swung beneath the stars. Our first stop was Freetown, which is just north of the equator. We pulled into Freetown for 48 hours to take on water, without being permitted ashore to get wasted. I watched a steward leaning over the rail with the ship arrival sirens roaring in the background, he was telling us about an Englishman that was about to return to Britain getting aboard the steamer after buying a few melons from the boys on the shore. The melons were under the vigilant eye of a customs official, and turned out to be full of diamonds.

We didn鈥檛 get ashore at this point, but I did not forget that my Uncle Albert had died out here of blackwater fever. We sailed on southward. Life aboard the ship was really a very pleasant affair. We had a good breakfast in the morning, cleaned the mess-deck for the officers inspection, which was a degree of ruthlessness, which would have astounded any civilian. A quarter of a matchstick not picked up was criminal. We had such a 鈥榖asket case鈥� in charge of some of our present establishment. We lay on deck until lunchtime. Lunch was revolting spuds and equally revolting tinned rabbit. In the afternoon we lay down again and played cards. Occasionally we had a boxing tournament. I found myself up against a young chap from Belfast who persisted in knocking everyone鈥檚 block off. By good judgement, I advised him to forget the head and to go for the 鈥榖read box鈥�. The results were really quite spectacular. He developed a really devastating right to the solar plexus which left him standing like an idiot in the first round, his opponent flat on his back, I don鈥檛 think he really understood.

After a month from Greenock we arrived in Capetown. As we steamed in towards Table Mountain, there was a sudden fuss, some fool of a Polish soldier in another ship had fallen out with an officer, saluted, and swankily walked over the side of the ship. The destroyer steamed to pick him up.

We arrived in Cape Town in mid-April and were allowed ashore each evening. But night was the thing. No black outs, steaks to eat, fantastic. We had three days there and we had the address of some people from Carrickfergus, it was a nice house outside Cape Town where a maid greeted us. Herbie Rowan had come with me and they said they would write home to say we had called in. We enjoyed a fantastic meal there and said we might see them before we set sail.

The next night Herbie Rowan, Harry Murphy and myself, found ourselves free in Cape Town. We had a fantastic lunch after which we wandered around, ending up later in the evening in a pub called King Arthur鈥檚 Seat, which was on the east coast outside Cape Town. Here we had a right session and discovered very early that this pub had been the headquarters of a previous British Lions tour. Photos of the team, with Sammy Walker and all where on the walls. Late in the evening Herbie and I started to stagger our way back to the ship, without Harry who had at some point had simply disappeared after saying he was going to the toilet. We were worried about him but staggered on, eventually arriving in a caf茅 where we discovered we were surrounded entirely by black faces and two black women wanted us to go home with them. We were too wise for that number. The docks at Cape Town, as in any town, presented a problem. After a zigzag excursion down one pier ending in tankers and god knows what. We found ourselves back on the main dock road. At this point I was considerably worried, we were thinking we were lost in khaki drill shirts and shorts in the early hours of the morning in this strange town, and drunk. If we missed the boat goodness knows what would have happened. We understood now as soldiers what it would be like to be without a unit to report to, especially in a foreign land.

Herbie and I were heading to the pier when we were suddenly hailed by a Northern Irish voice and in the distance appeared Harry 鈥楽pud鈥� Murphy with his melon coloured head catching the dock lights. He had met a kind couple in the pub that took him home and stuffed him with coffee and sponge cake. Half an hour later we were thankfully slung in our hammocks aboard S.S. Tegleberg.

Early next morning we woke to find Cape Town fading astern. Outside the port the convoy formed up. We had a good time in Cape Town. The town was dominated by Table Mountain, which was beautiful to see. We were simply inundated with hospitality. Every restaurant and caf茅 in the town was ready to feed us. We were however the troops on their way to fight in the desert, we were men from Carrickfergus, Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Cardiff. In our four day stay we learned that there were three main groups in Cape Town, the British, the Dutch and the Blacks. The British were great; the Dutch didn鈥檛 bother while the Blacks were nonEuropoeans. Some of the Blacks wondering around Cape Town were unbelievable, apart from the obvious black gangster clad in Western clothes; there were some really startling apparitions from the jungle. Wrapped in blankets, bare feet and hair set with cow dung. I don鈥檛 know how us Europeans could avoid having toilets.

We sailed between Madagascar and the African coast and after a few weeks we arrived in Aden, which is about the hottest spot, where I spent some time in a fatigue squad in the wok house. The cookhouse staff stripped to the waist were, with typical British song, found dishing up a bubbly mixture of what might loosely be described as Irish stew.

Ashore we could see a main street with cars moving up and down, we wondered what it would be like living in such a place. From here we sailed up the Red Sea. This was in a way a puzzling trip. For months we had been in the open sea with 360掳 of ocean around. We had no maps in our possession and we appeared to vary from, a canal to a lough, with one morning, shoals of porpoise leaping past in the opposite direction. We did not have a clue what was to happen to us. Rimmel had not yet been chased out of the desert, the Germans were still in Greece and Italy. We could easily become heroes, a startling prospect. On 11 May 1943 we landed, ferried ashore and soon partaking of small Egyptian eggs and dates. As we ate these, we were surrounded by a swarm of flies. We were on the east bank of the Canal, up to our knees in water was the only way to get rid of the pestering flies.

George Nolan Johnston was awarded the Africa Star on 22 January 1944.

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