Horace Wisdom World War 2 memoirs

the War Memoirs of Horace Wisdom

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I have been encouraged by lots of people recently to write of my memories of the war. These are only a few that I have written down. Some I have left out on purpose, that I think may be read by younger members of the family.

It has been difficult to remember after 60 years the order in which these things happened, but they are all still very fresh in my mind and in two diaries I kept secretly during 1941 and 1942.

What many young people lack is the discipline of war. Although I saw terrible things and was injured at any early age, I don’t think I would like to have not taken part, with so many others of my age, some of who made it, some like Les who did not.

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After reading Albert’s memories of our family I would like to add some of my own to his, going a bit further back in time before the First World War. Our father was brought up in the Orsman Mission in Hoxton, where his father and mother were caretakers. He was obsessed with this mission for most of his life. Until I was sixteen, I was expected to accompany him there every Sunday and some weekdays - that was before the vicar decided to run off with a woman from the choir! By this time he was around sixty years of age, then the war came along and my few memories begin.

I was twenty-one and playing football in goal to a fair standard and amongst the team were a few Irish boys. When the war came they joined the London Irish in Albion Road, Stoke Newington and I likewise wanted to join up but this regiment soon filled. Hoping to see them sometime I found I could join their senior regiment in Ballymena,

A 17-year-old sergeant in the Boy’s Brigade Band in the garden at 82 Northchurch Road, Islington

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Horace Wisdom, goalkeeper, pictured with the team

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Northern Ireland. So a month later I found myself in Northern Ireland. Being an officer in the Boy’s Brigade for some years I knew the drill book backwards (it was the army drill book) and within a few days I was drilling squads of twenty-five recruits.

One Sunday morning before church parade, the major of the pipe band asked if anyone could play drums. And again, the Boy’s Brigade had left me in good stead, having taught me to play base and tenor drums so I had a go. What a great thrill, playing base drum in a great pipe band marching down Belfast High Street. The parade appeared on the front page of a Belfast paper.

I remember I wore an orange kilt, green socks and a beret with a blue feather. I sent the paper home to mother, what happened to this I have no idea. I would truly love to have it now. After several church parades the pipe major asked if I would stay in N.I. in the band for the duration (fool why

1940, Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Lance Corporal Wisdom of the Royal Ulster Rifles

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Frank (left), Les (middle) and Me, three Lance Corporals in Welstead during 1940

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percent, but when the 500 of us got aboard it straightened up. On the following six weeks of our journey no one was allowed to change sides of the boat, or we would get back the ten percent list. The top row sleeping arrangements were hammocks, swung from The cap badge of the Royal Ulster Rifles the meat hooks, others ‘Who will separate us?’ slept on benches where the meat had been chopped and finally the rest slept on the floor. Now, if you can imagine 500 men and the toilet arrangement, at night, on the high seas, in the slowest boat in the convoy. Men in the hammocks climbing out for a pee, onto the men on the benches, then onto the men on the floor, and this repeated in reverse on the way back!

didn’t I?). But new friends were made who had completed their training and I had elected to go with them: Frank, Les and I kept together into the desert war for two years until Les was killed by my side when I was wounded which I will expand upon later.

After ten days leave Frank, Les and I reported back and were sent to the Range Bank Mills, a disused clothing mill in Halifax. Here, some 500 men gathered, all sleeping around the walls on straw mattresses. We had multiple injections and were kitted out with toupees and tropical kit and told with the kit came no more writing letters home and all the doors were locked and machine gun guards placed on the main gates.

The next day we were off to Gurrak in Scotland and marched straight onto the ‘boat’, I use this word lightly - it was a meat boat named ‘The Tamaroa’. It sported a list to port of about ten 7

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think to test the film. That evening when they returned there was a queue a mile long at the M.O’s cabin.

One day I was dodging my way along the side of the boat to stretch my legs and surprise! - I met one of the boys from back home. Alf Fisher was (‘a plonk’) in the Navy and was on route to join a ship called The Barham in Alexandria.

I wasn’t going to include this next piece because it may not be believed, but I have the proof in my diary which I kept (when I could). After the stampede off the boat in Durban, when it had quietened down, Frank said to Les and I, “let’s find somewhere to get a beer.” After six weeks on the Tamaroa we agreed. So we walked down the gangplank at the bottom of which waited the equivalent of a black cab, a horse and trap. We said “beer” and the driver indicated to get in. We didn’t go far before we stopped in the black area of Durban outside a house with steps leading up to the front door. Les said again to the driver “beer”. He again said “yes” and pointed to the house.

I will say no more of the boat journey except to say that there were some 115 ships and an escort of destroyers when we started, we lost five ships and most of their men and two destroyers before we finally landed at Durban, South Africa.

When we neared port a film was shown on deck about all the things that could happen to your ‘bits and pieces’ if you had a bit of fun with the black girls in Durban. If you did happen to go astray you had to report to the Medical Officer (M.O.) as soon as you got back onboard for injections. We called the film ‘Gone with the Wind’ or something - I can’t quite remember, but when we got to Durban there was an almighty rush down the gang-plank, I

We got out and slowly walked up the steps. I think we tossed up to see who should knock. The door 8

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touched your wife!”). Frank at this point stood up and said “I think we had better get back to the boat” and we made our way to the door. We wanted to pay for the ‘beer’ but they wouldn’t let us. As we went down the steps the taxi was still there waiting and as the horse pulled away the six girls stood on the steps waving like mad, we could not stop laughing. Les said “Do we still need to see the M.O. when we get back onboard, or take a chance?”

opened and we were greeted by a big black woman who smiled and said “come in.” Les said again “we’re only here for the beer.” She said something along the lines of “Yes, alright.” In the hall stood about six young black girls who indicated for us to go into the front room which was a kind of waiting area I take it, with chairs around the walls. We all sat down and all asked together “have you any beer?” By now I think the big fat black woman had got the message and climbed up onto a chair and found a few bottles of home brew from the top of a wardrobe (the blacks were not allowed to have any beer). We had a sip of the home brew which frankly did not taste like ‘Becks’! One of the girls took some wedding photos from a drawer and passed them around to us explaining her husband was serving in North Africa with the South African Medics.

(I now wonder if he was one of the two, that two years later would pick me up off of the sand in the desert? I could have said to him that “I never

At this time we were so weak that they set up a camp Springfield and over a period of three weeks we were fed and retrained before boarding a real liner which was wonderful, ten days of real bread, good food and clean sheets on our way to Suez, which is where I said farewell to Alf Fisher. He joined The Barham the next day and it was blown out of the water by torpedo with all hands lost. I now knew what the war was all about.

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Off the boat and onto the sand of Egypt, the big build-up was starting and the whole camp was buzzing with regiments of every kind. There where lines of maple leaf (Canadian) RHD Chevrolets, armoured trucks, tanks and the Arabs sold their wares - mangoes, eggs and bread.

I make my first big mistake and bought a couple of mangoes. Our regiment was asked who could drive - very few could in those days, but as I could, volunteered to train some in the art, taking on a non-driver. This is the point at which the mangoes came in - or out! I had dysentery and for three whole days I was in and out of the truck every second. And to compound matters, we were now setting out into the desert, and what’s more, with no toilet paper. But this ‘passed’ and by now all the non-drivers were bumping into each other less and less. We passed through Sidi Barrani and Derna amongst other little coastal villages until we came close to Tobruk.

The final seconds of the Barham - victim of a torpedo attack

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5 star accommodation in Springfield Camp, South Africa

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During my first year in the desert, we were fighting the Italians and things were fairly easy and we took lots of prisoners. In fact, this was my first encounter with the enemy. Thousands of prisoners were taken around Tobruk and they were put on trucks to be taken to the rear, fifty in a truck with only one British guard. They didn’t want to fight.

You could have made it one to 500.

The Italians were holding a line west of Tobruk, but this was to be our base. Tobruk is the only place with a harbour large enough to take big supply ships and this is why the Germans wanted to capture it so much with their supplies coming from the far western end of North Africa.

Before the war started, some farsighted bloke mapped out the desert, and where there was a wadi (or ridge) in the desert, it became a hidden store for supplies and gave these areas recognisable place names from home such as The ‘Jerry Can’ Knightsbridge, Marble Arch, Piccadilly, Oxford circus etc. Each of these places were marked with a five gallon jerry can with a pole in and a board on top bearing the name. Although these were originally hard to find, tracks soon formed by lorries travelling from one to another, and some of these dumps were so well hidden.

Tobruk Harbour after one of many German attacks

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Each Italian had his own goatskin full of water and we only got a tiny ration per day. So you can imagine what happened. When our bayonets went through the goatskins they all cried like babies.

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An Italian prisoner of war. This photograph was given to me by the man pictured.

The desert could be an inhospitable place. The sandflies were difficult to kill and loved to bite.

While you ate from the ‘dixie’ one hand was waving over the top to stop them eating before you did. And then there were what was rudely called ‘shite hawks’ who could dive down and grab and meat that was in the dixie, so it was a constant fight to eat all your food, which also had the gritty taste of sand, so I must have eaten half the Western Desert!

to like their curried lamb, chuppaties and onions and was truly sorry when it was time to move on an leave them.

I spent one month with the 4th Indian Division driving a Bren Gun Carrier as anti-aircraft cover with Frank and Les. they were a great bunch. They would take with them live meat to kill and butcher themselves (to do with their religion I think). I got

The other side to food - We were taking an English Regiment forward at about this time and some of the lads spotted an old bedouin by a tent, with a sheep tied to a peg he had been milking. The boys did a bit of bargaining and came back with this 1 3

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on. This was horrible as you can guess, many bad things happened and some now seem weird or even funny. I want to include those later.

‘lamb’ which could hardly walk, it was so weak and had dysentery. There is always somebody in every regiment that could butcher and he used my tailboard as a bench. They skinned and cut this old bit of mutton up and threw it in the bucket that was used for all culinary events including tea, and soon with a fire, was boiling away. We all chipped into the bucket, with corned beef or any other tins of meat we had around (I think this was to bring flavour to the old lamb). Perhaps we would have got more flavour if we would have stuck the old bedouin in the pot!

When the only enemy in North Africa were the Italians one of the horrible things I saw, from a mile or so away in the desert as we pushed on past Tobruk was what appeared to be a low wall about ten yards long and two yards high. When we got nearer (my writing is getting worse as I think about it) we saw it was dead Italians made into a wall to use as a barricade, built like bricks. Now, imagine the desert heat and what animals had done - who could do this to their own men? At least we never witnessed anything like this with the Germans.

Sometime during 1941 I did a trip down to Siwa Oasis, it was about the furthest we could go with lorries or tanks - the sand was deep and loose that’s why the war was only fought along the North African coast. We took about 500 Indians to Siwa to relieve the Free French. On the journey back I

Thinking back I can’t remember a lot of the food we ate, but I think it was ‘hard tack’ - bully beef, hard biscuits and never bread. The first time I tasted bread in a long while was on the hospital ship back to South Africa, and I can still taste it now - hot and straight from the ship’s bakery.

I have not yet mentioned any of the fighting going 1 4

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CRETE

MEDITERRANEAN SEA Tripoli Tobruk ‘Knightsbridge’

CRETE

El Adam

Alexandra El Alamein Cairo Siwan

L I B YA

EGYPT

Nile

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Tuesday Sept 16th 1941; Lost the convoy - sand in the carburretor. 65 miles from Williams Pass - not much food

ran into trouble and got sand in the carburettor. In a convoy, nobody stops, and as it was getting dark, I had to wait for morning. I had 40 French on board and they wanted to get some leave. That morning I managed to get going but we were totally on our own as by now all the other trucks were a few hours in front of us. We only had the water I was carrying in my can between all of us and it was a two day journey. By following the sun as it rose in the morning, we managed to hit camp east of Tobruk with questions like “where have you lot been?” But they did give us sausage and beans for our first food for a day and a half.

Wednesday Sept 17th 1941; Still no sign of convoy we must be near line feeling a bit weak Thursday Sept 18th 1941; Hope they find us soon. Nearly finished the emergency rations. Water getting bad. My pal seems about worn out Friday Sept 19th 1941; My pal sick. Ran into big convoy - got some sausages and tea and cigs, now we are alright!

The entries in the diary read: Sunday Sept 14th 1941; Leaving for the line

This was a nasty time, lost in the desert. I don’t think either Cliff Broadhead (who was my second driver) or I will ever forget that feeling.

Monday Sept 15th 1941; Left base out into desert - camped 1 6

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Another entry: Dec 25th 1941 - Christmas Day; No dinner at all - wet bed too. Raining Dec 26th - Boxing Day; On the move up. Getting our dinner sometime Jan. Many things happened to us that were sad or funny and if you are an animal lover don’t read the next paragraph.

The Desert Rat (Jerboa) was the emblem we wore on our shoulders and the boys used to capture them and keep them as pets, tying them to the spokes of the lorry wheels with string round their necks to keep them from running off.

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Sometimes there could be half a dozen tied round the wheels. The trouble was if we had sudden orders to move off, the pets were forgotten and at 20mph they found it hard to keep up.

Entries crop up in my diary now and again as W/S. These letters stand for workshops. While carrying troops to forward positions we would run into fire from aircraft or the ground and the “Chev’ would catch some of this. We would scatter and find some cover, there is not a lot of this in the desert sometimes you could just scoop a quick pile of sand in front of you while you layed down as neither side ever really got close to each other and this, at a distance, was good enough to hide behind. Anyway, when the attacks had passed it was my job to recover he vehicle, and if possible, get it back to the workshops. Sometimes it was the 1 7

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My Boy’s Brigade Pocket Diary of 1941 Heavy shelling is entered for most of the days shown here

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see the enemy for miles, that is why when the Germans arrive in North Africa they started pushing us back with their speed - the ‘Blitzkrieg.’

In no time they were on you, their planes, tanks and infantry. This is what happened when I was hit. One minute they looked miles away, the next they were over the top. This speed took them to El Alamein.

It was not until Montgomery (‘Monty’) employed the same tactics that we finally pushed them all the way back and out of North Africa.

radiator that took a hit or the tyres. The workshops were a couple of miles back and would consist of perhaps a dozen trucks scattered around and you would go to one that could complete you repair. I didn’t mind this much as you just sat around and took it easy. I would lay in the back and catch up on my sleep, as it was easier than a couple of miles back up the road. I see from my diary that about 4 W/S days are recorded, so my luck had held out up to now.

Having only been involved in the Chevrolet truck desert war, I think it must have After about twelve months in the desert I had five been entirely different from the war in Europe. In the desert there was no cover to get behind. In fact, days leave in Cairo. I went with a chap called Cliff Broadhead. It took 2 days travel through the desert when an attack was on you got away from the from Tobruk. It was my birthday when we started vehicles for they were the targets. The best place out - 5th February 1941. Heavy rain all the way to was flat in the sand, or behind a little piece of the rail head by truck, and then by train to Cairo. scrub - whereas in Europe you would go into The hotel was rough and there was a hairdressers buildings for protection. In the desert you could 1 9

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Germans mortar bombed in a square formation: 1 2 3 4 So when a bomb landed around station 1, we knew the next would be 2, so we quickly went to 1. Next we went to 2 and so on but didn’t always work.

It was like musical chairs.

on the ground floor.

Cliff and I took full advantage of this and has ‘the works’. We had a bath along the hall and it was lovely Rommel lead the Germans and arrived on the scene in 1941 to get the sand out of our bones and eat some real food such as eggs and bread. We toured Cairo, went to Manonid Ali Mosque and Old Cairo, saw the Pyramids and Sphinx and Nile. We stretched out in the Gasira Park where boys of about nine offered their sisters for as little as one axer (two and a half old pence). We wondered what their commission was! The leave soon passed and it was ‘back up the blue’ (desert).

The Germans had arrived on the scene in 1941 and it was a whole new ballgame. In Tobruk countless

Things were not very pleasant when we got back around Tobruk, the Germans were bombing every night and then there were mortar bombs during the day. We camped in a square formation and the

1941 saw prolonged attacks on Tobruk Harbour

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quiet day we walked into the sea to get rid of them, fully clothed, but when we came out they just seemed to jump back on.

boats were sunk in the harbour. In the light of morning, small boats would scour the harbour for what was left from the boats on their sides and throw anything recovered onto the trucks and make for Marble Arch or Piccadilly. Amongst this could be tins of peaches, bully beef, carrots or motor oil we all helped ourselves to a case or two not quite knowing what was within. Those would got peaches swapped with those with carrots, if you had motor oil nobody wanted to know.

Washing was not on the menu nor shaving, but if we found some water that was not drinkable we would have a shave, and what did we do with this water? It went into the radiators of the trucks. If you did this at night when the vehicle was still, next morning you could open the tap under the radiator and use the water for a wash. The radiators eventually must have been half full of hair. Water was scarce and carried on the side of vehicles in jerry cans as was petrol, and to make some tea about twenty of the boys would throw in a cup of water into a bucket and we would have a brew-up.

Once some idiot poured his cup from the wrong can and threw in a cup of petrol and we had to throw it all away - I never did know what happened to him!

While the bombing continued by night I slept (if possible) in the caves around the perimeter of Tobruk. The harbour was down a single steep road surrounded by hills, from which you could look down and see the bombing in reasonable safety.

The Italians had been here before and the rags and bedding that they had slept on were alive with lice, and the lice were difficult to get rid of. For months they were in the tunic pockets and under the collar, (and many other places I won’t mention) and on a 2 1

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My Diary of 1942 Saturday 23rd May 1942 ‘Same again, petrol, got back early today. Still waiting for something to start.’

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At one point, South of the Hal Faya Pass we had made camp and it was a dark night and Les and I were in our ‘bivey’ now a mile behind our lines.

The Bedouins pitched their tents and lived off of what they could forage, spare bullets, the odd gun, discarded boots, that sort of thing. As nightime fell, Les and I watched as men from our unit would creep out back to the Bedouins’ tents with tins of corned beef or peaches tucked into their tunics.

These were given as payment to the old Bedouins who would then stand outside the tent while the boys paid their wives and daughters a ‘visit’.

Twenty minutes later, out they would come, smiles on faces. If you could have seen some of those ladies I think the boys would have been better off with their camels. I think all good stories have a little sex in them!

Frank, Les and I were still together but would be apart for a few days at a time, but always met up again at our base near Tobruk. With the war at a new level, the Germans pushed us back to west of Tobruk.

To the south lay El Adam, a flat area where aircraft could land and they loosely called it an airdrome. It was there one day that a chap was doing haircutting to earn a few ‘akers’. By now my hair was very long and included lice, so I took my turn to sit on a five gallon petrol can. I was halfway through my trim-up when I saw this jerry plane coming straight at us, and before I could move, his line of bullets straddled either side of me and the makeshift petrol can barber’s chair. This was one of my nine lives gone.

We were camped at one stage in Libya around a well for weeks, drawing the water which was just drinkable, like milk in colour. When this water was getting low we moved on. It was then that someone noticed that at the bottom of the well lay the skeleton of a camel.

Sleeping, when possible in the ‘blue’ was a big problem, so I thought that if I got eight five gallon petrol tins square, laid side by side, with a blanket 2 3

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and in perfect English said “I have twelve of your men who are badly injured, will you accept them?”

We thought that this had to be a con, but the sergeant went to the back of the lorry, and there they were. We called on the medics who helped those who could not walk out of the truck. The German officer saluted (not a Nazi one), got into the maple leaf Chevrolet and drove off. That was a good one.

on top of it, it would keep me off the ground and the scorpions off of me. But soon after lying down something big would climb into the pouring hole in the tin and run back and forth all night making a noise like a drum.

Well it was Rommel who was leading the German forces in the desert by this time and the Italians no longer feature. We had now found ourselves pushed back to just west of Tobruk and two things happened at this time, one remarkable, one very frightening.

The other more frightening occasion was the sight of German Tanks on the perimeter, looking down on the Tobruk Harbour when Frank, Les and I were on the dockside with many others. The Jerries were about to surround the harbour from the high ground. The Senior Officer cried “Right, everyone for themselves” and all make a dash up the single winding road from the harbour to the high ground and make east for El Adam. I grabbed a lorry loaded with what I think is petrol cans, lots of chaps jumped aboard and off we went. It was like

I was on guard duty on the perimeter as it was called, it was a minefield in front of which was barbed wire with a small opening, at which point we were on duty. It was late evening, becoming dusk, and in the distance, some way off, was a lorry travelling at speed kicking up a dust cloud.

When close it stopped and out stepped a German officer. he calmly walked up to our post, saluted, 2 4

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Division and loads of petrol. We moved off towards Knightsbridge on the front of a column with me on the left, Les on the right (we always drove together) and I had a sergeant sitting at my side as ‘look-out’ for enemy aircraft. In a split second I felt him jump out, without a word, and a plane flying almost at ground level flashed over the

Brands Hatch - the tanks were all firing at the lorries belting up this track - some were hit in front of me. It was a case of weaving in and out and thankfully made it to the top (despite the heavy load!) and made El Adam.

The Germans closed the gap that evening, taking Tobruk with lots of prisoners, mostly South African soldiers including General Dan Pienaar (more about him later).

We stayed around El Adam for some time. The Germans now had Tobruk and what supplies were there and seemed content on sitting there and building up supplies. Now we were bombing the harbour.

We were now building up a big force, I take it, to regain Tobruk. This is where my bad times start.

At dawn on 1st June 1942 we started to load up troops, tanks and planes at the aerodrome at El Adam. I was loaded with fifty of the 4th Indian

A Chevrolet truck after such aerial attack

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remember going into a tent, I think in or near Tobruk and waking up in a plane between two pilots. I was awake when we reached Cairo Hospital. I was laying on the steps outside and as they operated on others, you moved up one step until under a canopy, and then finally inside.

All this is a bit blurred, but I do remember being plastered from chest to toe which was to stay on for nine months with no movement except my arms. Some of my injuries were in some very delicate places as I shall list later on. I already had bits of shrapnel in my left arm from early on in the desert from an Italian so called grenade. It had a wooden handle and what appeared to be a small tin on the end and when thrown they went ‘ping’, typical Italian, but this only meant a field bandage.

top of me firing. I saw Les blown up into the air and my windscreen shattered and I felt nothing until I tried to get away from the lorry and blood poured from my legs. I threw myself out of the side and onto the sand and another wave came over firing on the ground and I was hit again in the right leg. By now all hell was breaking loose, they must have known we were coming.

Luckily, behind me and Les was an ambulance with two black South African medics who quickly smacked some field dressings on me. I must still have had the presence of mind to tell them to get the tin I kept underneath the driver’s seat, in which I kept my diaries hidden, along with Moira’s lucky rabbit’s foot. They bundled me into the back of the ambulance and left the scene as quickly as they could.

The following events are not very clear but I

Back to 63 General Cairo. I was there two weeks or more and by this time the Germans had reached El Alamein. My last view of Cairo was to look out of the train on the way to the boat, laying on my 2 6

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Petermaritzburg, 10 or so miles from Durban.

There were crowds to meet the boat at Durban and a famous lady opera singer was singing a welcome, which she did for every boat in and out of Durban throughout the duration of the war. At Oribi I had a bed on the veranda (or stoop) as it is called in South Africa with a good view of the railway line in the distance. In the next bed on the stoop was Buck Ryan, a sergeant in the tanks what a name for a tank commander! Buck had his leg blown off in that same battle at Knightsbridge and we became great friends.

back looking at two wags sitting under a train eating fish out of a dirty newspaper. The fish swarmed with flies as it went into their mouths.

At Port Taufiq I boarded the New Mauritania headed for South Africa, good food and peace after two years of fighting. I have not mentioned too much about the fighting and bombing that was going on most of the time as this is the painful part war is war and everyone can imagine what goes on.

I have just tried to say what happened to me apart from the two horrible parts loosing friends like Les, whose lorry I saw blown into the air by a bomb just a second before I was hit - 92 were lost in that one attack that day - and others in the unit who you saw in the morning and they weren’t there at night.

I must explain here that I was always known as Bob Wisdom or ‘Wis’ to mates as I thought when I joined up ‘Horace’ was not the right image and this stayed with me quite nicely until one day a nurse handed us our pay books. Buck got mine, I got his.

He opened my book and saw ‘Horace’ and looked at me with a smile, “There’s a sword hanging over your head, Horace, if you step out of line and don’t

But Durban arrived again, and onto the train headed for Oribi Military Hospital in 2 7

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was the daughter of General Dan Pienaar, I wrote about earlier. I was able to tell her I had seen him in Tobruk before his capture by the Germans. He spent the war in Italy in a P.O. camp.

Arthur had had his foot taken off. While walking about on his bed he forgot he only had one foot

do as I say...” But the angels were on my side when I looked at his pay book there it was...

‘Basil’, so we agreed to a truce.

Buck had his leg cut off while he was still in the tank - an armour piercing shell punched a hole through the turret and the piece of three inch round metal from the hole it made spun round the turret, severing his leg except for a piece of skin which his driver had to cut off and wrap around his stump. This was all happened at the battle at Knightsbridge where I was headed for. That is why he is always Buck Ryan to me, not Basil. Buck died some years ago now. Even after coming home with me he had a car accident and smashed his good leg and was almost blinded in one eye. He always kept the piece of tank that cut off his leg in the fireplace of his house in Barnet.

Nurse Penny Pienaar who was to look after me, sent this picture to me 2 months after I left in August 1943

The nurse on our ward (there was only three Buck, Arthur Russ and I) was Nurse Pienaar, here 2 8

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even found eating food difficult lying flat. All the other chaps from inside the ward, most were walking wounded, would gather around my bed every day from morn ‘til bedtime, except for

and jumped out to chase his pal - makes you shudder doesn’t it? They say when you have a foot or limb off the nerve gives you the sensation that it is still there.

A picture Penny took.

I had lost a lot of weight at this point.

I used to flex my muscles under my plaster to help keep from wasting away.

I met some great chaps like ‘Cockney” as he was called. He trained in England, was sent to North Africa and got off the boat at Port Taufiq. The tailboard of a lorry dropped down onto his knee and he was put back in the same boat to South Africa and was sent home from Oribi, discharged on a pension. I wonder what stories he tells his children?

I did manage to get a few letters from home whilst in the desert from Mum, Dad, and Moira. Mum received the usual letter from the War Office ‘wounded in action’, but now in South Africa, I was able to write and tell them a few more details.

‘Penny’ as Nurse Peinaar was called, looked after us well because I was in plaster from head to toe, I 2 9

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meals. This time was the best part of the war - I was the star and all the card games were played on my bed including strip poker, which incidentally the nurses would come and watch, that was until someone would reach their pants and the nurses would run off screaming (as though they hadn’t seen it all before).

One lunch time the bell went and everyone made their way to the canteen except one chap who tied my arms to the sides of the bed and took my jelly and custard that had been left for me and placed it on my forehead. I called for the nurse but they were all at lunch. After a while of trying to balance the bowl I tried to throw my head but it all landed on the bed.

Of the ladies visiting the wards to bring gifts, one 6o year old lady, Mrs Ruth Hay, had a husband who owned the largest biscuit firm in South Africa.

When I was able to use a wheelchair she sent a

On the mend - Me and ‘Cockney’ Vicky Busher

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coming. It was a plague of locusts, millions in fact limousine to take me to Sunday lunch. What a and so many were dying in flight and dropping like mansion! With Zulu servants waiting on us who lived at the edge of the grounds in dwellings called rain, as large as sparrows, all wriggling on the ground. So what did the boys think ‘Kraals’. While I was there she said up? Get one of the live ones and one of her women servants was about force it down my plaster at the toe to have a baby and she would now go end (and some went down the into the bush at the edge of the estate nurse’s necks). But in all it was such and bring it back, and in no time, she a wonderful place, and peaceful too arrived with this young one all washed no fighting, who could worry about and promptly handed it to me to hold. things like this?

When it was time to return me to Oribi I was helped into the wheelchair by a After nine months on my back the massive Zulu with tears in his eyes time came to try standing upright. who was wearing just a sort of straw ‘Wound Stripes’ given to soldiers who First, the plaster had to come off and skirt. He bent down and whispered were wounded in action they used a hacksaw to cut right ‘wicked Germans’ in perfect English. down both sides and lifted the top off like a coffin Mrs Hay told me on her next visit that he spoke 7 lid, I was still laying in the bottom half. As this had languages. been put on in Cairo I had not been cleaned inside for two years since the desert. The underside top of One more thing that happened that will stay in my memory - the sky came over black like a bad storm the plaster bore one layer of my body - brown skin 3 1

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Park or make for home. It was a sad farewell to Penny and the boys who were staying, but home was always my goal from the time I went into the desert and I had great faith I would make it.

covered in sand. My body resembled a piece of pork and as I was lifted out of the bottom half there was the other half of my skin. It was like looking at something that had be cloned. Now came the job of slipping off the bedside. I must explain here that I had been flat on my back (no pillows) for nine months and all of my insides had settled at the bottom of the plaster - Liver, kidneys, intestines and all the other bits. As I was helped over the side of the bed all the bits dropped back to where they belonged. I don’t know many people that have been flat for nine months and I’m not going to try to start to explain what that feels like, but I was violently sick over Penny who was doing a nurse’s lift in front under my arms. My head spun and I said “please lay me down and let the bits go back to where they are happy”.

The hospital ship was six weeks from home and I could not swim. Reports were that hospital ships were being sunk. They travelled unescorted with all lights on and we were to pass Dakar on the west coast of Africa, a German submarine base. The German’s excuse was that they carried arms. This was a fear worse than the desert but we came through and arrived home exactly one year to the day that I was hit at Knightsbridge, 1st June 1943.

It was lovely to smell England even one day’s sailing away.

I didn’t say much of Frank and Les, but being in their 30’s they were a great influence on me. They were married and both had a baby. What must it felt like to leave home? Les never made it, but

A week later I had made it upright and had a wheelchair to travel and see where the other boys slept. Now the offer came to see Kruger National 3 2

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Frank, I never knew what happened to him because he was with us on that fateful day. Then, in a shop in Broadstairs many years later, a mirror showed the reflection of Frank, I turned and it was so great to know he had survived.

I have included a photograph of Les’ grave in Acroma War Cemetery where he now lays. This is just a stone’s throw from where he died, ten yards from me just seconds before I was hit. The German pilot must have been a crack shot (only the best for me) as you will see from this list of injuries, just as promised: Gun shot wound, penis.

Gun shot wound, left hip.

Gun shot wound, leg.

Gun shot wound, left arm.

60% injuries, I thought you might as well know.

But I had two lovely daughters, Virginia and

Les’ final resting place in Acroma War Cemetery, a stone’s throw from where he fell

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If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;

Angela with Moira so perhaps that Jerry wasn’t so hot after all.

There is much more I know but that will have to do. One a last note, I met a chap named Harry Daniels just once, when I was feeling very down and he wrote a poem in my diary, which I still have.

It is my favourite:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

IF If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

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If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

Harry Daniels and Rudyard Kipling.

To finish on a religious note, I have in my diary, dated 4th May 1942 (Moira’s birthday) the following: I was sitting alone in the desert, (less than a month before I was wounded) with my head between my knees looking at the sand when a piece of newsprint the size of a postage stamp came along on the breeze and stopped dead between my feet.

Moira and I, at home in Barnet October 2000

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I picked it up and saw that it was ‘Thought for the Day” from a newspaper. It said: “Abide not alone, for it was in the desert that Satan himself came to the LORD of heaven” (Schiller).

I wrote this in the back of my diary. I saw this as a message from God to me. That place was Sidi Rezegh, where less than a month later the big battle started, and my time in Africa ended.

I still have my diaries - I always kept them with me because I knew you wouldn’t believe any of this when I returned home.

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My medals (left to right) The Campaign Medal 1939 -45 The 1939 - 45 Star The Defence Medal 1939 - 45 The Africa Star

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The Campaigns in North Africa in Brief mi/97 km inside Egypt) and then stalled. On Dec. 9, 1940, the British under Gen. Archibald P. Wavell began a surprise counterattack with numerically inferior forces and chased Graziani c.500 mi (805 km) along the coast of Cyrenaica to El Agheila (Feb. 8, 1941)

The desert war started in 1940 and for more than two years thereafter seesawed between NE Libya and NW Egypt. The almost uniformly level terrain along the coast allowed tanks and aircraft to play dominant roles. Temporary success was always won by the side that first was able to build up air and armoured strength, but for a long time neither side could achieve decisive victory.

Rommel’s Offensives The collapse of the Italian army forced Germany to reinforce its ally with the Afrika Korps under Gen. Erwin Rommel. The British had cut their strength in Africa to send troops to Greece, and in April Rommel was able to drive them back to the border of Egypt. The Australian garrison at Tobruk in Libya managed to hold out. Gen. Claude Auchinleck replaced Wavell. With the new British 8th Army, he attacked and pushed Rommel back to El Agheila (Jan., 1942). A German counterattack forced the British to abandon Benghazi.

The Italian Campaign Italy’s entrance into World War II (June 10, 1940) made N Africa an active theater in which control of the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea was contested. Fighting began with the rapid Italian occupation of British Somaliland in Aug., 1940.

The first of what was to be three Axis drives into Egypt was launched (Sept. 12, 1940) from Libya

by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani’s Italian forces. By Sept. 17 the Italian drive reached Sidi Barani (c.60 3 8

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him, he abandoned Tripoli, which fell to the British on Jan. 23, 1943. Rommel ended his retreat only when he took up a defensive position along the Mareth Line in S Tunisia.

Auchinleck set up a defense line N of Bir Hacheim at El Gazala, c.100 mi (160 km) within Libya.

Rommel moved against this line on May 26, 1942.

At Knightsbridge (June 13), the British lost 230 out of 300 tanks. Auchinleck retreated c.250 mi (400 km) into Egypt where he dug in along a 35mi (56-km) line from El Alamein on the coast to the Qattara Depression (an impassable badland), only c.70 mi (112 km) from Alexandria. This time, Tobruk fell on June 21. Both sides now raced to build up strength. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander replaced Auchinleck, and Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery took direct command of the 8th Army. Rommel’s attempt to break through failed.

Meanwhile, American and British forces landed (night of Nov. 7–8, 1942) at Algiers, Oran, and Casablanca, thus occupying the territory to the west of Rommel. Under the command of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied forces pushed toward Tunisia. The Germans, however, rushed reinforcements from Italy. Axis forces in Tunisia now faced the British 8th Army in the south, Eisenhower’s force on the west, and the Free French in the southwest; but the hilly terrain favoured the defense. German counterattacks in Tunisia pushed west through Faid Pass (Feb. 14, 1943) and Kasserine Pass (a week later), from which they were dislodged only after heavy fighting. In the south the Allies forced Rommel from the Mareth Line and moved up the coast to

Allied Counterattacks On Oct. 23, 1942, the greatly reinforced British forces launched their own offensive (for an account of the fighting, see Alamein). To save his forces Rommel began one of the longest sustained retreats in history. Frustrating British attempts to engage 3 9

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take Sousse in April. 5 At the beginning of May, the Axis defense crumbled, and on May 7, 1943, the Americans took Bizerta and the British took Tunis. About a quarter of a million Axis soldiers capitulated on May 12. In E Africa the fighting had earlier resulted in complete British victory; by 1942, Italian and British Somaliland, Eritrea, and Ethiopia were reconquered.

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