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PART 2

We disembarked that morning as far as the quayside. There we lined up, in the midday African sun that was hotter than anything anyone had felt before (there were very few foreign holiday makers in our sort of people before the war). There was no shade and despite our khaki drill uniforms we stood and broiled.

After about three hours we were told we were to march to the racecourse; not far, the Sergeant said 鈥� it proved to be about three miles, mostly uphill. We were in tents there. About midnight there were several explosions and gunfire down by the docks. The three others in my tent were very upset; with my experiences of bombing in Coventry I reckoned that it was far enough away to be more or less safe to watch the Germans trying to bomb our newly arrived ships. The attack only lasted about a quarter of an hour. After a few days during which we were able to explore Algiers, we were marched off to the station. No carriages this time; the train consisted entirely of goods wagons. These had clearly been used for military purposes before; since on the side of each one was stencilled the words 鈥淒ix chevaux: quarante hommes鈥� 鈥� Room for ten horses or forty men! So we piled on and sat on the floor. Some at the back did little but play cards the whole time. I dangled my legs in the open doorway and watched the countryside go by. I do not think we ever exceeded thirty miles an hour. There were frequent stops for no apparent reason. Some thirsty souls would start a fire by the lineside and attempt to boil water for tea. Often, before the water was hot enough the train would jerk onward without warning and there were screams of rage from those who had lost their fire and sometimes their water container, which was far more serious. To speed things up the next time, some bright lads hit on the idea of begging really hot water from the engine driver. This was fine until the demand threatened to lower the water level in the engine too far and the supply was cut off with a resulting exchange of curses in English and Arabic. At night we slept sardine fashion, feet to the middle. At every wayside station there was a collection of ragged Arab children begging for food and especially for chocolate. If you did not keep a lookout, they would steal anything else that came within their grasp. Early in the dawn of the second day I nearly lost a pair of boots that way. We rumbled on past Setif and Constantine, which is an amazing town, built on a mountain split into two by a deep ravine over which there is a flimsy looking bridge. The journey lasted over three nights and on the morning of the fourth day we rolled into Tunis.

Here things took another odd turn. We were met by lorries that were not regulation Army three tonners in the usual khaki and green but pale blue foreign looking affairs driven by Englishmen who were sloppily dressed; indeed one or two wore only a pair of shorts. We climbed aboard and were taken about twenty miles into the hinterland of Tunisia to a large French style chateau surrounded by vineyards. We learned later that it had been the German Headquarters in Tunisia before their defeat two months earlier. The lack of formal Army organisation was still noticeable but no explanation was forthcoming. We started work in the chateau joined by cipher experts whose job was to decode messages coming from Cairo. No one was told what the messages were about and our Tank Corps friends seemed to have disappeared. We slept in a large marquee in the grounds. One evening clouds began to gather and then a few very heavy single drops of rain plopped onto the marquee followed by an enormous downpour. In seconds there was a small river running through the middle of the marquee, which we had to jump over to reach the 鈥榖eds鈥� opposite. (鈥楤eds鈥� made up on a waterproof groundsheet).

The marquee became untenable and we were allowed to sleep on the marble floors of the chateau. As it was hot we were able to use a blanket as a hip pad and lie with no covering: but those floors were hard! A day or two later some small one- man bivouac tents arrived. They were just big enough to crawl into. We thought that if we could find a dry patch they might be more comfortable on Mother Earth than on the chateau floor. There was a rush to find anything to augment the groundsheet and I thought that I had done well to get a sheet of corrugated iron and one or two folded cardboard containers to put on top. The next night I slid into it. Down came the torrents of rain. Next morning I was dry but lying in a lake. The trouble was, that the humidity and my body warmth had softened the cardboard, which had taken on the shape of the corrugations in the iron sheet. It was worse than a bed of nails! I left my belongings there and I was not able to go back for them until late that night by which time it had started to rain again. A transfer back to the chateau was agreed and I started out to recover my blankets, etc. covering myself in a gas cape. (This was a kind of waterproof coat with a hood, designed to protect against gas attacks). (We also had a gas mask, military type, which was something else we had to lug about with us). I made my way slowly across the grounds in the pitch black with rain bucketing down. I must have missed the path because I came up against the long hedge of cactus bushes separating the bivouac area from the chateau. Trouble was that I didn鈥檛 know whether the gap in the hedge was to my left or right. It was a case of feeling along the hedge of prickly cactus until a gap appeared!

At last some information became known. Someone was ordered to take a message to one of the barns in the outlying area of the chateau. He came back with the news that the barn was full of captured Italian rifles and ammunition being packed into canisters to be dropped by parachute to the Partisans fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. We were part of the semi-secret organisation called Special Operations (Mediterranean). Our units apart from I.S.S.U.6 were simply identified as Military Establishments. I later served in M.E. 53 and 54. Meanwhile it was again getting very hot. I remember having trouble writing anything about midday because holding a pen caused a trickle of sweat to form in the palm of my hand, which ran down on to the paper smudging what I had written. One day we were warned to avoid a certain path in the grounds 鈥榖ecause of ants鈥�. Those nosey ones off duty (myself included) could not understand the order and went off to investigate. We found an amazing sight. The ants in question were nothing like British ants. They were about half an inch long with a kind of claw, which looked as if it would give you a nasty nip. One, O.K, but here there were millions crossing the path at speed in a nose to tail stream about a foot wide. One or two jokers jumped over the black tide but no-one was daft enough to try impeding it!

We spent several of our days off duty in Tunis. It was the first time in our lives that any of us had seen Muslims; the women veiled in black robes with only their eyes showing. The male supremacy required (especially in country areas) that he would ride the donkey and she would trudge behind with the baskets or sacks etc. This was too much for some ignorant Tommies and attempts were made to unseat the riders and make the animal at least carry the luggage! One day we took a train across the lagoon to the ruins of Carthage, a wonderful sight on the shore of the blue Meditterranean. (Remember, the only sea in my life up to then had been the grey North Sea!).

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