A Bit of a Break

After leaving the Alamein battle front we spent a long period back in Alex guarding German POWs in the Alex cage. Most of the Jerry POWs were surprised to be in the cage, they had expected to be in Alex soon, but not behind barbed wire. I remember a very senior German general call Von Thoma and his battman were placed in our barracks rather than in the camp with the rest of the POWs. General Ritter Von Thoma was captured on the final day of fighting at El Alamein. After he was captured there was a rumor that Monty had invited him to his headquarters, were the two Generals had re-fought the battle over a good meal. I remember Von Thoma as being a very tall man who insisted that we all saluted him if we entered his quarters. He was soon shipped of the a POW camp in the US. Two months later the carrier platoons and their crews were loaded onto rail trucks and transported to Syria. We arrived in Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.

All the carriers were unloaded from the train and we spent the next two weeks learning how to water proof our vehicles. It looked like we would soon take part in a sea born landing.

While in Haifa we were allowed in town one night. Me and two of my pales Jimmy Jamieson and Skin MacGergor decided to hit the town together. Jimmy was a L/corp in the carrier platoon. He left the Battalion in 43 to start OCT. (Officer Training ) but came back after only 3 weeks as he did not care for it. Skin came from the duty company to join the carrier platoon just after Alamein. He was an ex-sgt who had lost his stripes for being drunk and hitting an officer. We all felt sorry for the officer he hit because Skin was the heavy weight boxing champion of the Battalion. We all got very drunk that night and staggering and singing we made our way back to the barracks at the end of the night when two Red Caps (military police) pulled up in their jeep beside us and demanded to see our pay books. They did not believe we were in transit in Haifa and thought we were deserters.

So at 12 o'clock that night we found ourselves banged up in the cells. 5.00am the next morning our officer Captain Brennan arrived at the police cells to find out why three of his men were under arrest. He soon put things right and we were released

We loaded the carriers back on the train and headed south to Aqatah in Saudi Arabia. Here we started amphibious training on the Red Sea. We practiced loading and landing our carriers from Royal Navy landing craft on the beaches. These large landing craft were called LCT standing for Landing Craft tank. They could take six of our carriers plus all the men and supplies needed. When the LCT hit the beach it's huge front doors would open, a ramp would come down and we would drive off and up the beach. If however the LCT could not make it to the beach we would have to drive the carriers off in up to 4f of water.

At night we slept in the desert near the beach. We only had one blanket each and it was freezing. No matter how much clothing and blankets I rapped my self up in at night I was never warm. Also the food was terrible and all of us were very miserable living in the tents because we had been spoilt with barrack living for so long. After training for four weeks we loaded the carriers back onto the train again and headed back to Haifa. When we arrived there the train went straight to the docks and we boarded a LCT with our carriers. There were hundreds of ships in the harbor all shapes and sizes. Once on board we went up on deck to watch the other ships loading. I had never seen so many tanks, trucks and guns before, where ever we were all being sent the top brass meant business. That night the ship sailed into the Mediterranean Sea, destination un-known.