My participation as a member of H.M. Armed services in World War Two lasted exactly five years, I was called up on January 8th 1941 and de-mobilised on January 7th 1946. On my entry into the Army I was initially posted to a camp at Prestatyn in North Wales were I received four weeks of basic training or “square bashing” as we used to call it. This consisted of learning to march in step, obey basic commands and to fire a rifle. The standard British Army rifle at this time was the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield .303 calibre an excellent if slightly dated weapon which kicked like a mule when fired and could break your shoulder if you didn't hold it correctly.
After basic training I was posted to Hendon, North London for six months training with the Royal Signals and from there went to Number 62 Line Section at a little Village called Houghton-Regis near Dunstable. The unit was largely composed of ex Post office Engineers and drivers, the purpose of the unit was to follow after the fighting troops and lay down the telephone/ signals lines of communication. My particular job was as a driver of one of the 10 ton Austin Six Wheeler trucks which carried the drums of cable used for this purpose.
In September 1942 we proceeded to the port of Greenock near Glasgow, there we embarked on a transport ship, the S.S.Narcunda, this ship formed part of a large convoy which was part of the invasion force for North Africa. This was Operation Torch when British and American forces were going to land at several points on the French North African coast in Morocco and Algeria.
We landed at a port called Bougie on the 13th of November and were immediately sent up into the hills South of the port, this was fortunate as the Germans began to bomb Bougie heavily. It took us about a week to transport all our equipment from Bougie up to our base camp in the hills and we made several trips to complete this task. On one of the trips we recognised some of the crew from the ship we had travelled in – the S.S. Narcunda – and learned that she had been bombed and sunk by German aircraft 24 hours after we had disembarked'
The liner SS Narkunda, Capt. L. Parfitt, D.S.C., was serving as an auxiliary transport during the Allied landings in French North Africa in November, 1942. She disembarked her troops at Bougie and had turned about for home when, toward evening on the 14th, she was bombed and sunk some distance off Bougie Thirty-one of her crew were killed.
From Bougie we went to a town inland called Constantine and this really stands out in my memory, it was well out of range of enemy bombers and so had no blackout. Even without this though Constantine was a memorable place, built on either side of a steep ravine it was a most picturesque sight, to see it lit up at night was unbelievable especially as since the start of the War in 1939 Britain had been under severe blackout restrictions.
So far we had not seen any action, however as we advanced into Tunisia we began to experience the delights of being shot at by the enemy. For some time we were based at a town called La Marsa which was also home to an American unit, the Americans had come prepared for a shooting war and had machine guns mounted on everything- Trucks, Jeeps, Motor-Cycles. Every day at about 4.00 PM four Messerschmitt 109's would appear and thoroughly beat up the town, strafing anything that moved, the Americans would open up with everything they had and I can well recall several occasions lying in a slit trench with German bullets hitting the road about 12 feet from my head, not a happy memory at all.
In May 1943 the Axis forces surrendered and we moved into the city of Tunis, there were lots of enemy Prisoners of War there, the Germans appeared as smart professional soldiers but the Italians looked and behaved like a rabble.
In July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily and of course we followed, we landed at Syracuse and followed the now familiar pattern, transporting the cables and equipment. Sicily was a foul place, it was hot, dry and barren. Most of us came down with malaria for the first time while we were there. I came to hate Sicily with its stony ground and shrivelled olive groves, hot days and cold nights.
While we were in Sicily we were reorganised into Number 1 U.G.Cable Company and also got a new Commanding Officer, a Major who had been the Chief Engineer at G.E.C.Ltd the famous British Electrical Engineering company, we also received a lot of fresh reinforcements so it was pretty obvious that our job was still not over.
In September we embarked at Palermo and crossed over to Reggio on the Italian mainland in the wake of Montgomery’s famous Eighth Army. The main invasion of Italy had taken place at Salerno near Naples and this had seen some very heavy fighting before the German resistance was overcome. We eventually found ourselves at Salerno where we had a tremendous amount of work to do due to the extensive damage caused during the battle there. Naples was the main supply base at this time and although it had been bombed it was not too badly damaged. The people there though seemed very poor and quite a few appeared to actually live in caves.
It was at this time that I became very ill again with Malaria, dysentery and pneumonia and was hospitalised, the hospital I found myself in was Number 58 General Hospital, it was located in a splendid position that allowed a superb view overlooking the bay of Naples with the mighty volcano Vesuvius just across the bay. At this time Vesuvius was getting ready to erupt again and we were entertained every day to a great firework display. In January 1944 I was discharged from the hospital and re-joined my unit and it was while I was on my first trip away that Vesuvius erupted, by the time I returned to Naples it was all over but the signs left behind were impressive, volcanic ash to a depth of six feet by the roadsides gave us some idea of what had happened when the volcano blew.
At this time the Allies were held up at Cassino, a mountain village with a Monastery crowning the main hill defying all attempts to take it and seeing some of the heaviest fighting of the Italian campaign In January 1944 the Allies tried to outflank Cassino by landing a force higher up the coast at Anzio, but after some initial success got bogged down there too due to fierce German resistance, meanwhile we carried on with our trips between the front at Cassino and the ports of Southern Italy. At last in March 1944 Cassino fell after being blasted from both Air and Land bombardments, we passed through a couple of days after it had fallen and it was completely flattened except for the remnants of the corner of a building – there must have been only about half a dozen bricks left together, there were still bodies lying around and
The smell of death was everywhere.
In June 1944 the Allies captured Rome, but we British had to wait until the Americans made a triumphant entry into the Eternal City for propaganda purposes before we were allowed to enter. Rome was virtually untouched by the War , it had been declared an open City so accordingly had not been subjected to any bombardment. We were billeted in what had been the Chilean Embassy just outside the City proper, and while here we received new trucks to replace our worn out Austins, these were brand new American Whites and Macks. As the battle-Front moved North our usual runs now took us past one of Italy's most famous landmarks – The Leaning Tower of Pisa, a sight which never failed to amaze us.
In February 1945 we were detailed to undertake a special trip, from Bologna via Rome and on down to Reggio at the Southern tip of Italy. What made this trip special was that before we started we were issued with personal side-arms, revolvers, in addition to our usual rifles. This was because thee South of Italy had become “bandit country” with large groups of deserters – American, British, Italian, German, French and French Colonial- terrorizing the country. During the previous months several supply trucks had been ambushed and their loads stolen and crews murdered. My co-driver, Jimmy Stewart and I decided that we were not going to suffer this fate and took special care to lay up securely each night with one of us on guard while the other slept. In southern Italy many of the villages tended to be on hill tops and I can well recall one morning on this run when we awoke to find everything shrouded in mist, after a quick breakfast we started off and climbed out of the mist, what a sight, for miles around all we could see was white mist with hill tops like islands, each crowned with a little village. On reaching Reggio safely we should have crossed over to Sicily to collect our load but due to civil unrest and rioting we had to wait until the stores we had come to collect were ferried across to us. Then using the same careful system that had seen us safely down to Reggio we returned back to our base, it was this trip that earned me a Mention in Dispatches.
On the whole I liked Italy, it was a lovely Country with some great monuments to the past. For the most part though my war was just driving a truck on what seemed endless journeys back and forth carrying equipment needed to keep the communication lines open. As the war in Europe came to an end we were slowly wound down and in June 1945 we drove all across Europe to the English Channel and the over to England and back home.
 Stott & Jimmy Stewart.jpg)
