John Cox

“ We got in to Beirut without any further incident but I guess his drums and linings were in a bit of a state.
Until this time right from the beginning of the war we had never been allowed to wear civilian clothes or go about untidily dressed, there had never been any respite from the feeling of being controlled, but now within the camp we were allowed to spend the day in swimming trunks even when going into the mess tent for meals though of course we dressed to go into the city. What a feeling of relief, we were human again. ”

“ The army hated to see soldiers with too much spare time; whitewashing border stones or blacking the soles of boots really served no useful purpose except as make-work projects designed to keep us out of mischief. In keeping with this idea various little schemes were thought out to keep us occupied and sometimes bribes were offered such as being excused duties or being eligible for late night passes. So it was that late night passes were offered to the members of the hut that provided the best turned out soldier for guard duty. ”

“ We had no plotting table but instead a map of south-east England hung on one wall, we of course were south-west but I suppose that south-east was better than nothing. Coloured pins were used to mark the position of planes. Information on aircraft activity was given to us over a permanently manned phone line connected to No.11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge and the lucky man who was given the job of listening sat in the middle of the room on an office type swivel chair wearing a telephonist’s head-and-breast-set doing nothing but waiting. ”

“ The name Shaiba covered an area in southern Iraq to the west of Basra, of indeterminate boundaries as far as I could tell; in fact although I’ve tried hard to locate it on several maps it doesn’t seem to warrant a mention but it was the address for our tented transit camp, for an RAF station and for No.1 Base Workshops. Again the army establishment was in the middle of nowhere, flat empty barren desert all around; we knew where the RAF station was located because we could see the planes just as they appeared or disappeared below the horizon but we could not see any of the buildings. ”

“ With the cinema in full swing the Italians naturally wanted to share in the entertainment and to the army this presented a slight problem for although they were regarded as co-operators complete integration was not yet an official policy, memories of hostilities were still fresh. As a compromise someone thought up a great idea, the cinema would be divided into two parts separated by a rope cordon, the front one third would be for the Italians and the rear two thirds would be for the British. ”

“ It was obvious that a war was coming but Britain had allowed her forces and armaments to run down and was in no position to engage in one. At that time I was 20 years old and was working as a draughtsman in an engineering firm; I believe conscription had started though I'm not certain exactly when and there was always a possibility that my job would be classified as a reserved occupation. To this day I don’t know whether or not I would have been called up because together with my school friend I joined the Territorial Army. ”

“ As Churchill remarked, “Truth is the first casualty of war.”
Drinking water supplied to the cooks was brought in daily in the evening in a two wheeled trailer that was then parked adjacent to the cookhouse ready for their early morning chores. Breakfast and evening meals were taken in the mess room in the camp but the mid-day hot meals were delivered to the various workshops by lorry; they were kept hot by being stored in ‘hay boxes’ forerunners of the present day coolers and these too were kept adjacent to the cookhouse. ”

“ In the early part of 1942 in bitterly cold weather I was on daytime guard duty at the gate (what else is new?) ; I was bundled up in my greatcoat and a leather jerkin, one of the more acceptable pieces of equipment supplied by the army, when the duty sergeant approached “You’re to go up to the GOR and take a teleprinter test this afternoon,” he said, “teleprinter operators are required for an overseas draft and so far four from different units have been found to be inefficient, it’s your turn to try.” ”

“ I think it was about August 28th that the Territorial Army was embodied (that was their term for mobilisation) . At 4-30 am father was awakened from his slumber with a knock at the door and Corporal Reg Pinnel stood outside with the engine of his motor-bike combination still running to tell me to get up to HQ right away; then off he sped to awaken others. I dressed hurriedly, had a cup of tea and a bite and then walked up to Worral Road, walked because it was too early for the bus service to start its daily routine. ”

“ Quite a few Arab civilians were employed by the army in various capacities, some clerical and some labouring depending upon their abilities. In general we got on well together though early on I learned not to offer cigarettes from an open packet as ten would be accepted in one grasp with profuse thanks, rather I found it more economical to hand them out one at a time in which case I would have some left for myself. There were Iraqis who showed an aptitude for our type of work, some indeed who were smarter than we were and where possible they were trained as tradesmen. ”

“ The war with Japan was now officially over but mopping-up would still take some time and troopships of pink Brits were constantly passing; we used to cheer them up by yelling, “Get yer knees brown, Pinky.” or, “Yer going the wrong way.” Many of the old stagers among us were fried to a deep brown and could easily pass for natives and some used to swim out to the troopships and emulating the natives dive for pennies thrown by the unsuspecting pink Brits.
The army had spent a lot of time over the years teaching us to do the most uncivil things and now they attempted to re-humanise us ”

“ It was decreed that the mobile cinema showing old films would be replaced by a permanent theatre that would also show old films. It would not be an Odeon but would be a more posh theatre and the design job was given to the DO as we had some architectural experience at hand. It was to have a sloping earth floor bounded by brick walls with a little enclosure for the projectionist. When the design was completed the actual building task was given, using standard army intelligence, to a pre-war cinema projectionist. ”

“ Initially I was sent to a fitting bench where my main unofficial job was to convert an English penny into a spitfire brooch for my sister. Later I was transferred to the Drawing Office. I don’t recall exactly what I worked on, nothing earth-shattering but this was to be the pattern of things for the next couple of months.
This was a peacetime undertaking employing mainly civilians both in the offices and workshops and supplemented during the war by army tradesmen. There were relics of a bygone age when time was not of the essence ”

“ Riding a bike in Iraq presented some difficulties, the terrain was a mixture of hard ground and loose sand, not always easy to tell apart, and loose sand would quickly bring you to a halt. One day before the hot weather began I was wearing battledress but not gaiters; I rode off across the desert; almost simultaneously my trouser leg got caught between the chain and the sprocket, the bike found some loose sand and I fell off. Lying on the ground attached to the bike I tried to disentangle myself but with the coaster brake I couldn’t reverse the direction. ”

“ It was generally accepted that in the army a batman, an officer’s servant, was a volunteer who wanted a softer life and a little more cash. Not always true. We had an officer who was so unpopular that nobody wanted the job and since it was infra-dig for a commissioned man to look after himself one soldier was ordered so to serve. ”

“ British forces in No.2 BW included quite a number of Jews who had every reason to want Germany defeated; initially they were integrated with us, they said they didn’t want to be isolated in ghettos but as time went on and as they absorbed more and more of military training and organisation they felt large enough and competent enough to warrant separate status. When I arrived at Tel-el Kebir ‘S’ camp, the Jewish camp, was an accomplished fact. ”

“ The workshops were some 40 miles south of Baghdad and a mile or so from the Arab town; the town was out of bounds to us but a metalled road from there passed between our camp and the workshops; we only ever saw military traffic on it. Both camp and workshop compound were separately surrounded with barbed wire, three coil dannert and apron was the official name for it. Individual shops were scattered within the compound, seemingly haphazardly and they contained equipment for which any contemporary British engineering firm would kill for. ”

“ With the fall of France Germany had access to her assets though Britain forestalled their use by attacking French naval units in Toulon and Dakar but Germany still had the use of the bases and three of her ships were in French ports. These were the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen. The first two were nicknamed by NAALO’s petty officers as Salmon and Gluckstein after a local store in Plymouth. Germany wanted to get them back to the relative safety of a German port and Britain was equally determined that they should stay where they were, where they could be attacked. ”

“ Between the two world wars Britain had been awarded by the League of Nations the mandate to govern Iraq and had military forces in the country, notably the RAF in its permanent station at Habbaniyah; naturally some Iraqis objected to this arrangement and caused a bit of trouble but their big chance came when Britain declared war on Germany. Under their leader Rashid Ali they tried to drive the British forces out. A major engagement occurred at Habbaniyah but the RAF personnel successfully resisted them. ”

“ In the army I came across quite a cross section of humanity, running the whole gamut of characters. I am reminded of a sergeant-major, a peace time regular, who discovered one day that things were missing from the Company Office; he decided to do something about it. In the office there was a large wicker basket used for laundry and into this he contorted himself pulling down the lid nearly shut so he could peep out and identify the thieves. ”

“ Some of our convoy separated from us and docked there. After a short stop in the bay we moved on to Durban and as we came into the dock area we saw a little group on the quayside waiting to greet us. The central figure was ‘The Lady in White’ as she came to be known. She was a trained singer and made it her duty to meet all the troopships; armed with a megaphone (this was 1943) she sang patriotic and nostalgic songs to cheer up the lads who were bound for unknown parts. It was a nice warm welcome to South Africa.
For our last night on board I was picked for guard duty. ”

“ There’s always one in every crowd and this lad set the mortar as near vertical as he could and dropped in a high explosive bomb. The rest of us didn’t wait around but radiated outwards faster than we ever thought possible. Fortunately near vertical was not really vertical and no injuries ensued.
My rifle which in Britain had been extremely accurate was no longer so when I retrieved it in Iraq, perhaps it had had a bad sea trip, got banged around or otherwise warped but it was so much off that I checked the serial number to be sure ”

“ After dark the only source of light came from a hurricane lamp, this was not always effective in which case it was swapped for a useable one from another tent when nobody was looking, standard army practice.
I forget how long we stayed there, maybe a week but then the draft was split up and dispersed and I was posted to Al Musayyib, some 40 miles south of Baghdad. However before I started the army wanted to get some useful work out of me and so with three others I acted as escort to an ammunition train going up as far as Mosul near the biblical city of Nineveh. ”

“ The army would not be the army if we did not have visitations at times by the top brass. I don’t remember and I don’t think I ever knew who the officer was who came to inspect our installations; I wasn’t much interested. However the Machine Shop was set up to display our talents and virtually every machine was to be working, operators were called in from other jobs where necessary and Johnny Lockett was one such lucky one. ”

“ New words came into our vocabularies the origins of which sometimes go back to the many countries that British forces have garrisoned over the last three centuries. Some military personnel must obviously have become proficient in the local languages but for the most part the British soldier was and still is linguistically lazy, content to adopt and sometimes anglicise foreign words and phrases to suit the occasion. ”