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I remember that we were now getting a ration of rum. This is the only time I ever knew of any R.A.F. personnel to have a rum ration and sometimes we got a tin of 50 Players cigarettes as our ration. Much better than those "Vs" but I must say that life up there in the desert was very primitive. Toilets and washing facilities very makeshift, water scarce, clothes not washed very often and when washed it was in petrol. There was much more of that than water. One thing that was better was the flies were so much fewer. On Boxing Night a very bad storm blew up and it rained very heavily all night. The next morning when we awoke someone said: "Put your gumboots on before getting out of bed". The floor of the tent was about 6" deep in water. You see, in the summer months the sun bakes the desert hard and when it does rain, it does not soak in straight away, it just lies on the hard surface and the desert becomes one huge lake. This storm made all operations by us and, in fact, all the warring armies to come to a complete standstill. Some of the lads had small one-man tents and had dug in about 18". These were now full of water and all their kit was floating and soaked. The Mess tent and cookhouse were flat and useless so meals had to be when any food could be prepared. Every1hing was a real disaster. The coast road was flooded and nothing moved. After some time with everyone walking about it all became very muddy indeed. After a couple of days the water had soaked in and things got going again. New Year's Eve was celebrated by every gun on Benghazi being fired at midnight. It was quite a display. On 2nd January 1943 we had a real treat. We were all taken into Benghazi and we had a hot shower it was real luxury. It was quite some time before we got another. Chapter 6About the middle of January something took place that I didn't understand. We were ordered to pack every1hing up again and to return to base at Idku. I would have thought it would have been better for the rest of the squadron to have come up to us and then to go forward as the 8th Army advanced. I just did not see the logic of going back again. However, we started on our trek back across Cyrenaica, Libya and back into Egypt. This again took us five days. The convoy started off but for some reason our truck was delayed and when we got to the road that went inland the way we had come we took that road but, unknown to us, the convoy had taken the coast road. So, for two days we were on our own. We had no food with us but luckily we came upon an Army food store. After explaining our plight to the Sergeant in charge we were given tea, sugar, lovely tins of American bacon and some potatoes. When we again reached the coast road before Tobruk we met up with our convoy and so we arrived back at Idku. As we drove into camp I noticed we had now got some new black Beaus, so we again returned to a night fighter unit. We had only been back at Idku about three weeks when I was again picked to go on another detachment, this time it was back up the desert to a place called Bu-Ahmud, an airstrip just before reaching Tobruk. So off we went again across the desert. The date was 6th February 1943. This time, as night fighters, we had quite a success rate around Tobruk, mostly Italian aircraft that fell to the Beaus' guns. On 15th February 1943 I had now been in the R.A.F. two years. This time we were not the only unit on the station. There were various other units and we luckily had there mobile oxygen charging unit so every time we needed full replacement bottles we did not have to go any distance. I had with me in the instrument section a nice chap, Corporal Phil George. We got on very well together. I can't ever recall any nastiness between any of the ground crews of any of the trades. When on night duty we also had to man the fire tender so if there was a fire we became firemen too. I recall one night I was on duty we could see across the desert a tent on fire, so off we went on the tender. When we got there it was a generator on fire. Hoses were run out and I opened the valves at the rear of the tender but instead of water coming out of the hoses it all ran out of the bottom of the tank. What a fiasco! American pilots always amazed me. They never seemed to get things right. They had been warned not to fly over Tobruk at night but they did and all the guns there opened up on them. Also, when our planes landed in the dark they did so down the chance-light. Not the Yanks. They landed against the light. However they could see I don't know. One day we saw many American B 14 Liberators fly over from Gambut on their way to bomb the oil fields at Ploesti in Rumania. What a truly great effort that was, such a great distance to go and the chance of survival practically nil. As there were many units here it was just the right place for inter-unit football matches during our off-duty time. Our organiser was Willie Nichols, a real football-mad Scot. Coming from a footballing family, my father taught me to use both feet when playing. I always got in our squadron team as no one else wanted to, or could not, play on the left of the |
