by Denis Avey
I would finally get to mainland Europe but it would be as a prisoner.
Next, we moved north to Liverpool to camp on Aintree Racecourse, home to the Grand National, though now it was a sea of soldiers waiting to be despatched to who knows where.
We slept al fresco and even in early summer you’d wake with aching limbs and a bedroll damp with dew. Kipping at the Canal Turn with its famous ninety-degree bend was a treat for a lad who had lived and breathed horses on the farm. After three weeks of that we moved to a large civic building and at last we were out of the damp.
It was here I met Eddie Richardson for the first time. He was a fine fellow from an established military family so we called him Regimental Eddie, ‘Reggie’ for short. He was very well spoken, a little posh perhaps compared to the rest of us, and we shared a room. Months later he was to get into trouble in the desert on the same day as my fortunes turned south.
Training in Liverpool took on a different dimension. We were being prepared for house-to-house fighting in streets set aside for demolition. We learnt the delicate art of making and throwing Molotov cocktails, glass bottles filled with petrol. We mastered the Mills bomb, a hand grenade with a segmented steel shell and the appearance of a mini pineapple. I would become pretty familiar with them in the months ahead. They were mean and simple. You could alter the length of fuse, to give you three, seven or nine seconds before detonation but you had to time it right. The last thing you wanted was the other feller hurling it back at you. You’d pull out the pin, run forward and throw with a straight-armed bowling action as you dived on your stomach. If you didn’t blow yourself to kingdom come, the grenade was supposed to end up in a huge pit where the explosion was relatively contained. I had been able to throw a cricket ball a hundred yards when I was sixteen. It was still a game.
We knew as we set off from Liverpool in the Otranto that we were leaving Britain in a sorry old state. France had fallen to the Germans in June, Italy had declared war on the Allies, there were regular dogfights between the Luftwaffe and RAF fighters over southern England and the Battle of Britain itself was just starting.
As I boarded the ship, above me the twin dark-rimmed funnels were belching smoke into the air and all around me in the breeze were the chaotic sounds of men searching for a berth. Some were carrying kitbags, hunting for cabins, others were calling out to their chums and finding their way around the ship. Down below us were the vehicles and heavy equipment.
Les Jackson was there from the beginning. He was a corporal then, a regular soldier – a first-class chap with a twinkle in his eye and a wicked sense of humour. He was older than most of us, over thirty, but we had a bond from the start and we would be together at the end, too. Eighteen months later I would be side-by-side with him when we drove head-on into a wall of machine gun fire.
Les had introduced me to his family in Liverpool and I had taken quite a shine to his sister, Marjorie. She was a very attractive fair-haired girl with a gentle Liverpudlian accent, a kind girl and an excellent dancer. I had taken her out a couple of times but we were innocence personified. In those days you could walk a girl home for miles at the end of an evening and the most you expected was a kiss on the cheek. It was still special. His family had shown me such hospitality. He liked his sherbet, Les’s old man, but it would be five years before I would cross that threshold again to take him out for a beer and it wouldn’t be a happy occasion.
I had Marjorie’s picture stuck on the wall of the tiny airless cabin a few decks down that I shared with four other soldiers, but hers wasn’t the only one. I had always had lots of girlfriends so I had quite a collection by then.
I was on the top bunk, with Bill Chipperfield below. He was a down-to-earth sort of chap from a very poor family in the south, as honest as they come and always good company. There were two other lads but the poor devils had to sleep on the floor. We were crammed in like sardines and it was impossible to move in the dark without treading on someone.
We had been allowed twenty-four hours’ home leave before embarkation, though I’d spent most of that travelling just to get there and back. My family lived far to the south, in the village of North Weald in Essex. They were successful farmers so we never went short and I had enjoyed a comfortable rural childhood.
My mother cried a lot as she kissed me goodbye. I had posed for photographs with my sister Winifred. I’ve still got that picture, her dark, wavy hair wafting in the breeze. She wore a knitted dress and a string of beads around her neck. I was in uniform, trousers hitched up high, my short tunic pulled in tight at the waist and a forage cap perched on my head at a jaunty angle. It never occurred to me on saying farewell that I might not make it. I felt I could look after myself. Such is youth. Winifred kept her feelings deeply buried. We didn’t know what the war would bring, so why worry?
The one who knew but said nothing was my father George. He had fought in the First World War and he knew what was in store: muck, blood, and hardship. He simply shook my hand and wished me luck. He was a fine, proud man with a head of thick, dark hair – a Christian with high standards and the bulging muscles to back them up. He had never been able to show me much warmth but some of what happened later was due to him because he made sure I grew up with the idea that principles had to be put into practice. He was clerk to the council at a time when that post brought respect and local omnipotence but he was popular in the village because he would help anyone in a jam. I learnt later he paid the rates for some of the poor residents out of his own pocket.
He found it hard to show affection at home and praise was dished out sparingly. When I won a coveted sports prize as a child, all he said was, ‘Well done, lad’, and he never mentioned it again. I only realised how much he thought of me after the war. Shortly after I sailed, he joined up to fight too, lying about his age. I was told later he was always asking after me wherever he was stationed, trying to find out where I might be. I think he fancied he might be able to look after me but of course we never met up. He was captured in Crete and forced to do hard labour in Germany building a mountain railway, despite going down with pneumonia. He spent much of the time hurling nuts and bolts down the hillside to prove he wasn’t beaten. He could be stroppy, all right. That’s probably where I got it from.
Back on deck, I watched the crew preparing for the threats ahead, the submarines and the mines lurking below the waves, waiting to blast a hole in our side and send us to the bottom. The only real protection against mines was a paravane, a torpedo-shaped device with sharp fins. Hanging over the railings I watched it being lowered over the side and into the waves.
The shark-like object came to life on contact with the water and the fins pulled it down and away from the ship. The heavy cable was reeled out until it was a good distance from the vessel and parallel to it. The cable was meant to wrench the mine from its moorings, to be machine-gunned when it bobbed to the surface, or send it sliding down the wire to hit the paravane, blowing up in a tower of white water but sparing the ship. It gave us some comfort.
I was fascinated by contraptions like that. I had always tinkered with cars and motorbikes but I’d had my heart set on a proper engineering education while I was at still at school. I was uncontainable even then; I had to be the one giving the orders. It had always been like that. As a boy I had my own kid’s army and we paraded around shouldering real guns though without ammunition. I was made Head Boy at school and I had the muscle to control the bullying, which I did. Later in life my wife Audrey would tease me that I had become the bully. She was only half joking I suspect. I was certainly fearless.
I went on to Leyton Technical College in East London and did all right. In 1933, as Hitler was becoming the Chancellor of Germany, I walked up on to a stage in Leyton Town Hall and collected a prize for my studies from a man standing behind a desk. I was just fourteen but he should have impressed me more than he did. He was the First World War soldier and poet, Siegfried Sassoon, then in his mid-forties, his hair still dark, swept across a hig
h forehead. He spoke a few words of congratulation and handed me two wine-coloured volumes embossed in gold with a shield and a sword. I had chosen books by Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe.
That seemed a long time ago. On board ship the mainland was slipping into the smoky haze. The civilised world I had known with its rules and customs, its sense of decency, was also slowly sliding away.
Chapter 2
Les Jackson always knew the shortest distance between two points, he was that kind of chap. He walked into our cabin soon after the Otranto had put to sea, stepping over the sleeping bodies on the floor and managing to wake them up anyway. He looked at the row of girls I had stuck to the wall, including his sister Marjorie. I was expecting a sarcastic comment at least but none came. He knew I had a soft spot for Marjorie but he had something else on his mind.
‘Avey, I’ve got a job for you. You’re on lavatory-cleaning duty.’
‘What? You can’t be serious, old boy.’
‘It will be worth it.’
He roped in Eddie Richardson as well. Now Eddie was a public school type who could hardly bear to utter the word lavatory never mind clean one. When he found out the weapon of choice was to be the toilet brush he wasn’t best pleased but Les was right. Half an hour of toilet cleaning every day and we were rewarded with a feast fit for a king. Egg and bacon sandwiches – as much as we could eat. Splendid. More to the point we were excused all other work for the entire voyage. Les was an operator all right. He was always sailing close to the wind.
Seventeen ships had sailed that day, 5 August 1940. One turned back with engine trouble. The rest of us steamed out into the Irish Sea with our naval escort. We still had no idea where we were going; that information was restricted, even to us. We were barely out of sight of land when the jarring sound of a warning siren, a U-boat alarm, pierced the air above the steady throb of the engines. The ship erupted into action, men running in every direction. I fought my way through the stream of bodies heading for my lifeboat muster station. Men with ashen faces combed the waves with their eyes looking for a periscope or, worse still, a torpedo. I could see signals flashing from Otranto’s bridge to faint grey shapes on the horizon. As time passed so too did the sense of alarm as nothing was sighted. They still left us standing around for hours. Life on board ship soon settled down into a monotonous routine.
I was woken from a deep sleep by a violent yank on my arm. The cabin was full of noisy squaddies and I was being pulled from my bunk. ‘Wake up, Avey, we’ve got one for you. It’s time to earn your money,’ someone said.
Before I could properly focus I was being carried along in the throng of uniforms. Men were chanting and shouting in high spirits all around me. ‘This should be one to see,’ someone said. ‘Wait till he gets a look at this feller. ‘
I knew I was being delivered somewhere and probably for sacrifice. We went along narrow corridors past countless cabin doors and up steep stairs onto the deck. The sea breeze caught my cheeks and I woke up properly. I was taken along the boat deck past lifeboats hanging in their slings and rows of giant, white tubular air vents like mouthpieces of old telephones. We dropped down towards the stern. To my right a spotty-faced lad was making animated punching gestures with his fists. I was beginning to get the picture.
I saw an open-air boxing ring on the rear deck, complete with ropes. An enormous mast towered over it. Word had got around that I was a boxer and in those days I would have fought anyone at the drop of a hat in or out of the ring. I’d usually come out on top but normally I knew who I was fighting.
My gloves were on before I spotted him and I guessed instantly I’d been set up. He strode into the ring. He wasn’t all that tall, maybe five feet nine, but he was well built and definitely strong. He was a Jock from the Black Watch, a hard Highland regiment, and it was clear I was expected to get a pasting.
He was obviously a street fighter, possibly even a professional boxer, but as I limbered up, I got a closer look at him and my nerves settled. His eyebrows were scarred, he had cauliflower ears and a flattened nose. Anyone who had been clobbered like that was either not very good or not very fast. Someone had misjudged but it wasn’t me.
I’d been in boxing clubs since I was a boy and I was fast. Where I was agile, he was lumbering around. He almost landed a few punches but I was strong on the left with a quick jab followed by a sharp left hook. I never went for his face but halfway through the second round I struck him hard in the solar plexus and he went down, gasping for breath. It was over.
After that I stayed on deck to watch the action but it wasn’t pretty. A Black Watch officer was soon inveigled into taking on one of his own men. He was clearly an unpopular chap and he was pretty hesitant – with good reason. When he finally stepped into the ring he got hammered to blazes, poor man.
Apart from that, most boxing on board ship was fair and pretty good-natured. I’d often do a few rounds with Charles Calistan, dear old Charles. He had trained with me and we had hit it off straight away. He was a handsome chap with a full head of wavy black hair, an Anglo-Indian who spoke Urdu and proved to be a true hero later. He should have got the Victoria Cross. He was also a talented boxer and I used to spar with him regularly on board.
After eleven days we dropped anchor off Freetown, Sierra Leone, the first land we had sighted since leaving the British Isles. It was clear we were going right round the Cape then heading north for Egypt. Two days later, and without setting foot on land, we steamed south again to Cape Town where I looked up at the flat-topped Table Mountain, so familiar from school geography lessons, and dared to believe briefly that paradise was possible.
It was good to be on dry land again and it was the first time I had set foot on foreign soil, unless you count a cricket trip to Sheffield. Cape Town was quite cool at that time of year but it was a tremendous place. On the quayside we were split into groups. Eddie, myself and two others were handed over to a well-to-do middle-aged white South African chap with a light suit and a dark car. He had volunteered to show the lads around the city.
It was all new to me. I had only ever seen one black man before that and he was a chap selling something on Epping market. He certainly gave it some verbiage. He claimed he could stare at the sun without damaging his eyes.
As a first taste of abroad, Cape Town did the trick and we were in clover after being cooped-up four to a cabin designed for two. The man in the cool suit took us back to a colonial-style house with huge grounds and suggested we use the outdoor showers connected to the swimming pool. It made Eddie wonder how bad we smelt. After weeks of occasionally hosing ourselves down in seawater on board ship, I stood beneath a cascade of clean fresh water and felt the weeks of salt and sweat drain away. I could hardly bring myself to get out from under the shower.
Later the same day we stepped, courtesy of our guide, into one of the finest restaurants I had ever seen, right in the heart of the city. There, projected on the ceiling above us, was a pseudo-sky complete with moving clouds. We were awestruck, and there was decent grub to complete the day.
After four days we bade Cape Town farewell. Table Mountain slipped into silhouette and the convoy split once more leaving the Otranto as one of ten heading round the cape and up the east coast of Africa. We reached the volcanic island of Perim at the entrance to the Red Sea on 14 September. From there, we set out on the last leg under cover of darkness still guarded by four warships. We would soon be within range of Italian planes and naval forces operating out of Massawa in Eritrea. All lights on the Otranto were extinguished, leaving the crew fumbling their way around the ship. The blackout was complete but the night sky was alive with stars and in the phosphorescent waters of the Gulf of Aden I picked out the menacing outline of a giant manta ray.
We were much-needed reinforcements. Anchoring off Port Taufiq at the entrance to the Suez Canal, surrounded by naval vessels, cargo ships, rusty tugs belching black smoke alongside tiny Arab dhows and fishing boats, we were taken to Genefa, a sprawling, tented ca
mp near the Great Bitter Lakes. The battle with thirst had begun but there were huge earthenware jars placed all around the camp, large enough to drown a sergeant and brimming with cool water. That was the good news. The bad news was we were ordered off on a route march the day after we arrived, twenty-five miles out into the desert and round a barren rocky outcrop, nicknamed ‘The Flea’. Someone felt we needed entertainment.
While I was still in England, attacking straw dummies with a sword, 2RB, as we called the 2nd Battalion, had been sent into the desert.
The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini hadn’t yet declared war but it was coming. For six weeks Mussolini made bombastic speeches and the battalion kicked its heels. I remember seeing a magazine photograph showing some of his elite soldiers leaping over a row of razor-sharp bayonets and thinking to myself, many a slip between cup and lip.
The day after war was declared, 7th Armoured Division, which included 2RB, went right up to the Libyan frontier. It wasn’t the most modern force in the world. Some of the armoured cars were still the old Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts that Lawrence of Arabia had been using back in the First World War but they quickly captured frontier posts along the border.
Mussolini made his first real move as our convoy was preparing for the dash though the Red Sea. Il Duce, as they called him, could see what Germany had achieved in Europe and he wanted a bit of the action for himself. He had his eye on the Nile, the Suez Canal and British supply routes to India and beyond. He ordered Marshal Graziani, named ‘The Butcher of the Desert’ for his savagery in slaughtering an Arab rebellion, to attack Egypt and the British. On 13 September 1940, 85,000 Italian soldiers poured into Egypt from Libya and the much smaller British force was obliged to withdraw. His troops didn’t stop until they got to Sidi Barrani, a settlement on the coast, sixty-five miles into Egypt. Il Duce soon claimed in Italian propaganda broadcasts that they had got trams running again in the town. Trams? They didn’t know how to spell the word. It was just a handful of buildings and a collection of mud shacks. There had barely been a proper road, let alone a tramway.
