by Denis Avey
‘How much for the whole place?’ I asked with a smile, gesturing around. He looked blankly back at me. I tried again a little more slowly, exaggerating the hand gestures.
‘We want to buy the bar – all of it: tables, chairs, the lot. We have lira, how much?’ Still no understanding.
I pulled out my sword, which made him flinch. Prising open the top of the crate, I gestured with the point to the contents. ‘Look, money, your money. Lira, lira, lots of lira.’
His eyes widened, he was certainly interested. It was just wads of paper to us but the man with the moustache was beginning to see the possibilities.
We stayed for half an hour and that was long enough for word to spread. We had no idea if the area was safe and it was time to make our excuses and leave. The owner and his family scarpered before we did and he took the crate of lira with him. I’m sure it was more than a fair price and I still like to say I own property in Libya.
We returned to the ordered chaos of the battalion. The lads felt we should have pushed on to Tripoli whilst we had the momentum, but the big noises thought otherwise. They were starting to plan our withdrawal. They had a point because most of our vehicles were long overdue for some proper care. The whole of 7th Armoured Division was mechanically clapped-out.
We were still basking in the glow of overwhelming victory when an omen appeared in the sky. At 0630 hours on 12 February a bomber was spotted by the patrol flying at just fifty feet along the road. It dropped several heavy bombs and disappeared into the distant haze. It wasn’t a clumsy three-engined Savoia. It was a Junkers Ju 88 with black crosses on the wings. The Luftwaffe had arrived. That same day, Rommel flew to Tripoli to take over the desert war and the Germans began to put together a new fighting force, the Afrika Korps. We would not have it so easy again.
Early in the morning of 21 February, and with less than twenty-four hours’ notice, we set off back to Cairo via Tobruk. I was with Charles Calistan. It seemed like an eternity since we had explored Cairo together. We had all been bloodied since then. Progress was slow. We were supposed to drive in formation with a hundred yards between vehicles and crawling at fifteen miles an hour even when the going was good and no more than eight on the worst sections of desert. Tom ‘Dicky’ Bird was the trusty battalion navigator. We had rations and water on board for two days but it was a long, dry haul. No crocked vehicles were to be left behind. Nothing could be spared. If possible we had to tow everything home.
On the second day there was an almighty blast. One of the carriers had hit something. Approaching the wreckage, it looked like one chap was already dead. We spotted another fellow writhing in agony on the ground and screaming loudly. It was George Sherlock, an older soldier and another keen battalion boxer. The natural reaction was to run to help but that could be deadly if they had strayed into a minefield. Gathering in one spot also offered a better target if you came under attack so after a blast you needed to work out what had happened before you did anything stupid. We approached carefully, shouting out for him to hold on, but his calls grew more frantic. It might have been a mine or a booby trap but it turned out to be a thermos bomb dropped a fortnight earlier. George was bleeding badly but he had energy enough to shout, which was a good sign. His leg looked badly mangled and his arm wasn’t much better. He wouldn’t be landing any punches for a while and he became still more agitated as I approached him.
‘No! No! Don’t let Avey near me,’ he screamed, stopping me in my tracks. I was stunned. He needed help quickly.
‘Don’t let him near me, he’ll shoot, I know he will, he’ll shoot!’
Now I knew he had heard about the Italian tank commander.
He was panicking and losing a lot of blood but I was taken aback by his fear of me. I didn’t want to make it worse, so I let the others patch him up.
His words preyed on my mind. We got him to hospital in Tobruk where we handed over our captured Italian lorries. We swapped our other vehicles for ten trucks for the final leg back to Cairo. That evening, Tobruk was heavily bombed; the Germans were making their presence felt all right. They were kind enough to include us in the itinerary too and lobbed some bombs our way on their way home.
As a man who liked speed, I was pleased to find the trucks could hit a headlong twenty miles an hour but I was beginning to feel rough. With the months of stress, toil and combat behind me, my defences were down. I started to feel very ill indeed.
By the afternoon of 28 February we were safely back at Mena on the edge of Cairo where our advance party had got the camp well under construction. The tents and wooden huts were luxury to behold but I was already in hospital with a mystery illness. The refit began but the desert didn’t want to leave us alone. As I lay sweating and confused, the others were having their new uniforms christened by a violent sandstorm.
German aircraft were dropping mines in the Suez Canal nearby. 2RB had to line the banks and spot where the mines fell. At night they decided to spread a net over the water, so that in the morning you could see the holes where the mines had gone through. To demonstrate the principle in daylight, two aircraft turned up to drop dummies. They were only expecting one. It took a while to realise the second aircraft was German and the mine was real.
I didn’t see any of that. The luxurious camp proved to be a double-edged sword. Unknown to us, the mud-brick walls put up to protect the tents from bomb blast were a perfect breeding ground for sandflies. They came out at night to bite us. My resistance was low. I got sandfly fever: a soaring temperature, headache, aching limbs, burning eyes, the works. The doctor said my liver and spleen had swollen up. It would be a while before I’d be back in working order. There was an epidemic that summer and it didn’t end until they learnt to spray with DDT.
I was ill for a long time. The battalion stayed around Cairo until the end of April but the desert war began to take a different turn. The Australians and the New Zealanders were taken off to fight in Greece and so the remaining forces with their battered equipment had to pull back. Soon Rommel’s Afrika Korps was all over the desert and we were back where we started. In April, Rommel laid siege to Tobruk. Then he crossed the Egyptian border at Halfaya Pass and 2RB was sent out into the desert again to take on the Panzers.
It started badly. Rommel pushed them back to Buq Buq. That’s where I caught up with them to learn that Montagu Douglas Scott, an officer I had respected, had been killed at Halfaya, the very place where I had driven him just months before. Once again a khamsin had lifted leaving him far too close to the enemy and this time he didn’t make it. He was the first officer of my battalion to die in the desert.
Buq Buq was by the sea and when four or five of us were given permission to get cleaned up, we didn’t need to be told twice. It was a beautiful beach: shell-white sand, bleached and fine, as far as you could see around the bay. The sea was a deep azure blue and there were prodigious waves, curling and foaming with brutal power.
We were drying off and larking about a bit when we heard a shout for help. It took a while to identify the source then we saw a man, obviously in trouble and thrashing about helplessly, at least a hundred yards out to sea. There must have been an undertow.
I had started to get dressed after my welcome but salty wash. I ripped off my clothes again and I sprinted down the beach to get a better look. I screwed up my eyes looking into the glare of surf and sky. The violent noise of the breaking waves blocked out any other sound.
He wasn’t the only one out there. A more distant shape was appearing and disappearing in the peaks and troughs, at least thirty yards beyond him, seemingly going under. I ran in to the water, leaping the remnants of waves in the shallows, then forcing my legs forward. When I could wade no further I began to swim against the waves.
I reached him and managed to tow him through the water. By the time we reached wading depth again, some of the lads had caught up and they helped me drag him ashore.
I wasn’t sure he was even alive, he was just a body flopped on the beach. I wanted to
collapse but I quickly realised no one else knew what to do. It just so happened I had gone to life-saving classes to fill the time on the long voyage out from Liverpool. I picked myself up and started to do artificial respiration, lungs straining with the exertion. Liquid was soon erupting from his mouth.
I turned my attention to the second man out at sea but he was gone. The man I’d saved was a Royal Artillery officer. He was now conscious and breathing. It was Eddie Richardson who reported it. I think he just wanted the old man to know what I’d done. He was like that, Eddie.
The NCO found me as a khamsin hit the battalion. The billowing wall of hot sand whipped through the unit, penetrating everything. You could hardly see a hand before your face and many of us had blankets over our heads for protection. Mine was supplemented by a bandage that I wrapped across my nose and mouth to filter the hot air. I was so well hidden that someone had to point me out to him when he arrived, shielded by a scarf across his own face. With all that it was a muffled conversation.
‘I understand you have been making yourself useful on the beach, Avey. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I said pulling the bandage away from my face to speak.
‘Saving an officer, no less.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You understand, of course,’ he went on almost shouting now, ‘I can’t give you anything for it.’
‘Yes.’
‘What I’ll do is this. We need someone extra to escort prisoners to South Africa, so pick up your parrots and monkeys, you’re off.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now. Keep your nose clean and you could make it until the end of the war. Is that clear?’
I can’t remember what I said to him but he was soon gone, another covered shadow in the sandstorm. I had fond memories of South Africa but fate was cruel. I was beginning to feel ill all over again. My head was throbbing, my muscles were starting to ache.
I left for Cairo on the next convoy of supply trucks with the khamsin still blowing, my head pounding and my face covered to keep the flying grit out of my nose and eyes. There were a couple of chaps with me, and I was soon lying on the truck floor being thrown around with a tempest raging outside and another raging in my head. I was becoming delirious; this time it was malaria.
Thank God it weakened me. I don’t know why I did it but one of the chaps told me about it afterwards. The fighting had already taken me to many terrible places. I don’t know which one it was that I revisited on the hard floor of that truck but in my delirium I suffered a sudden paroxysm of panic and fear. They told me I lunged forward trying to wrestle a revolver off one of the lads, convinced that the survival of us all depended upon it. Luckily I was overpowered.
They whipped me into a hospital tent. I lost track of the days but I was there at least a fortnight though it could have been much longer. The nursing staff were splendid; the quinine treatment was bitter and ghastly. That’s about all I remember, and the heavy bombing, of course. There was plenty of that during my recovery and when you’re under canvas, it’s alarming.
I pulled through and was soon with the boys again. Not long after I was back on my feet again I was sitting in the breakfast tent when an orderly officer spotted me. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Avey? You’re supposed to be in South Africa.’
I had assumed the malaria episode had ended that little escapade. He disappeared before hearing an explanation. A couple of hours later he turned up again. ‘Right, that’s sorted. I have got a ship for you, so pick up your kit and get off to the harbour on the double. They need two men. You can pick someone to go with you, but make it quick.’
I scanned the wooden tables and settled on Bill Chipperfield. Bill had been in my cabin on the Otranto. He was as honest as the day is long and it just felt right.
They dropped us down to the harbour in a pick-up. I needed a shave, my uniform was filthy and oil-stained and when I saw the ship we were sailing in, I felt very unsuitably dressed. She was the famous Île de France, a crack French liner, requisitioned by the British Admiralty when Paris fell. She had three tall funnels surrounded by broad promenade decks but the black and white livery which had accented her sleek lines was lost beneath a coat of battleship grey.
She had been noted for her art deco interior with its paintings and sculptures plus a Parisian street café, swimming pools, and gyms. Now she was a troop carrier but you could still detect the elegance and grandeur.
‘You have been given one of the state rooms,’ the guide leading the way announced. It wasn’t a mistake; this was a floating luxury apartment.
You could almost smell the perfume of elegant Parisian women; imagine them dressing for dinner in one of the luxury dining rooms on board before stepping out, immaculately presented, for a promenade around the deck.
Instead, I felt the scratch of the desert sand in my stiff and dirty uniform more then ever. Once in my cabin I ran my calloused hands across the soft bed sheets and dreamt. The desert sores on my arms now seemed more of a social embarrassment than a badge of service.
There was a cough. I looked up and now standing before me were not one but two Indian stewards.
‘Is everything to your liking, sir?’
‘Eh, first class,’ I mumbled hesitantly. For months now I had had many orders, few choices and no comforts. Now the choices and comforts were making up for lost time.
‘Do you have everything you need?
‘Everything I need? Yes, everything.‘
‘Jolly good.’ He was still not satisfied. ‘What temperature do you like your bath, sir?’
I felt a wry smile spread across my lips.
There were hundreds of Italian prisoners on board ship. Our job was to guard the gangways leading to their quarters and prevent them breaking out or, worse still, taking over the vessel. I was appalled to be handed an Italian rifle to do the job. They must be able to do better than that, I thought, our Lee-Enfield was the best rifle in service. But most of the Italians were relieved to be out of the war so the risk wasn’t that great.
After the desert it was all a breeze. I sometimes ate at the captain’s table. It was the first time I had seen white bread in an age. There hadn’t been any bread at all in the desert.
On arrival in Durban, we left the prisoners to someone else to unload and reported to Clarewood Camp nearby. The first part of the job was done.
There was an air of unreality about South Africa this time around. But I was determined to explore and I was pointed to the Navy League Club, a fine colonial-style place with a long, cool bar. There was music and human beings as I used to know them, people whose daily concerns weren’t just about staying alive. A stream of folk wanted to hear about the desert. We were minor celebrities. That became a bit too much for me but at least you could drink tea and they had decent bread too.
I met a lovely girl there by the name of Joyce, a manageress with the Stinkwood Furniture Company which made tables and chairs out of an expensive hardwood and got its name from the odour the timber gave off when it was worked. I was soon invited back to meet her parents and after a couple of social visits they suggested I should stay with them rather than at the barracks. That was not unusual, other lads at the camp had managed to move in with South African families and most, Bill included, had a wonderful time. The Merrit family lived in a comfortable apartment on a broad road with palm trees that led down towards the Esplanade.
Life was good and the war was a million miles away. I was fond of Joyce and I guess now you’d say she was a girlfriend, we certainly spent a lot of time together. She was a good yachtswoman who would take me sailing off the coast and a strong swimmer who would not so much as flinch when the klaxons sounded, warning of sharks. She was quite a girl.
My job took all of half an hour per day. I was handed a list of prisoner numbers at Clarewood Camp and had to pass them to HQ in Durban. I enjoyed life with Joyce’s family. There were the chauffeur-driven trips to the bioscope, where we’d watch a movie with a drink
in hand, sitting in Lloyd Loom-style armchairs with waitresses serving us hand and foot.
Joyce was able to get some time off work and she suggested we made a tour together, knowing I was unhappy with always being asked questions about the war. The battalion had obviously sent me for a break and, to my surprise, my request for time off was approved, so we set off to travel the length and breadth of South Africa. In the north we crossed into Rhodesia, as it was then. The landscape was heaven-sent and there were servants running after us constantly. You hardly dared do anything for yourself. It was the summer of 1941, the middle of the war, and I was enjoying Africa.
Perhaps I had cracked it. Perhaps this could be somewhere to settle in the future, but back in Durban something was stirring inside me. I was constantly seeing the men coming in on the ships and preparing to go up onto the blue. It began to prick my conscience. And then I came across George Sherlock in the street and I think that did it. I was with Joyce when I met him. He shouted and was hobbling across the road on crutches before I realised where the voice had come from. It was wonderful to see a man I had last encountered writhing in agony and crying out in panic, looking so well despite losing his foot to a thermos bomb. We were delighted to see each other.
That made up my mind; I needed to get back to the battalion. I found out that the Mauretania was leaving for Suez and got on board in a crowd of other lads. I planned to report myself as soon as we set sail.
I told Joyce’s family vaguely that I would be going away for a while. I didn’t make a big song and dance about it. To be honest I never really spelt out to Joyce what I was doing; that I was going on the blue and that I might not be coming back. You never really allowed anyone to get close to you in wartime; maybe I had crossed a line. I was about to exchange one world for another. It had to be like flipping a switch. It was the only way I could do it. I wrote to her once afterwards from Egypt and tried to explain but what was done was done. Joyce visited England five years after the war and wrote to see how I was. How I was, was married. I never saw her again.
