ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

These edited extracts from the transcript of an audio recording made by Sid Read of his memories of service in the Royal Engineers, are submitted to the People’s War site by a member of Market Harborough Branch, Royal British Legion on behalf of the author and are added to the site with his permission. Mr Read fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

“When I think about it, there were 95 Bofors around the harbour in Benghazi, and 3.7’s behind and at night when there was any aircraft above all these guns opened up. I can’t begin to describe the noise.”

The Germans had fallen back to Tripoli, so Sid moved there from Benghazi. The guns were defending the harbour and Sid had another funny experience.

“We were billeted in a school and again the German aircraft came over at night and, though they missed most times, there were times when they didn’t. This particular night they must have hit a boat full of TNT and high explosives. We’d been working all day and we got into bed, double bunkers, when there was an almighty explosion that blew out all the windows and “dropped” us on the floor. We were crawling about on the floor wondering what was going to happen next but we had got away with it again.

“There were 400 men in our company, all dockers, working day and night shifts. One night, we were on the night shift, we were going out on an A Lighter to go alongside a boat to discharge shells and high explosives, everything the forward troops needed. We got halfway across the harbour when the air-raid siren sounded. We didn’t know, but they had dropped anchor. We were in army boots, topcoat, tin hat and a respirator round our necks. I thought ‘It’s a long way to the shore if we get hit and I have to swim with all this kit on’. On the back of the craft was a six pounder under the galley where we had all run for a bit of cover. The A Lighter wasn’t supposed to fire unless attacked. I stood facing my mate Fred Palmer, an older guy than me, and all of a sudden with all the ack ack firing, they fired the six pounder. Well, we were “high and dry” with nothing under our feet clinging together. We eventually got our feet back on the deck and recovered and I can laugh about it now but it was serious at the time!”

Sid was working in the docks for quite a while and being bombed every night.

“They were awful experiences. I can’t explain to you how I felt because I knew that if the boat was hit that I was on we had to swim to get away, if we ever got that chance. Anyway, I escaped all that.
“Then from Tripoli, when the Germans had to get out of Africa, we got up as far as Sfax, where we were unloading ammunition for the infantry. We had to load all this stuff back onto boats to go back to Alexandria - and then they decided to send us back as well. We went back to Tripoli harbour to get on the boat. The boat was called the Newrailia. It was an Indian mail and cargo boat and I was sent back with the advance party to Alex with the Sergeant and Sergeant Major to find a billet for the company.

“When we got back to Alex we learned that the main company was on a boat called the Omah, the same sort as the Newrailia. We don’t know what happened, whether it struck a mine or if it was torpedoed, because German U-Boats were in the Mediterranean, but it went down in about 10 minutes. I lost all the mates that I had been with through the desert. I don’t know how many we lost but there were so many more not in our company, but other companies, infantry and artillery. They all went down with the boat.”

After all this a company was formed called 11055 Stevedore Battalion. In the harbour at Alex boats were loaded with Bren carriers, tanks, ammunition, etc. When the boats had all been loaded, Sid boarded a Canadian cargo boat called the Ocean Vision.

“It had a 70 tonne LCI lighter on the main deck, as well as lorries and other things on it. We went out of the harbour at Alexandria and dropped anchor about five miles out to wait to see what was going to happen. From what I can gather now, we were waiting for the assault troops to come through and we were going to follow them.

“This happened in the night when we moved off. I can remember when we sailed that the officer in charge of our company was Captain Powell. I can see him as well as if it were yesterday. He called us all onto the main deck to stand around where he could talk to us and said, ‘Now I don’t doubt that you don’t know what is going to happen to you, or what it is all about, but I have received a telegram to tell me what is going to happen, so I’ll tell you now. We are going to invade Sicily and we are expecting on this invasion 90% casualties’.

“I can assure you that when he said that we didn’t think we would survive. We were all looking at one another and wondering what it was going to be like when we got there. And then he said, ‘If you look to the starboard side of the boat you will see the assault troops coming in. They are going in front of us and there’s a boat there coming through the convoy flying the good luck flags to all of you’.

“On this boat was Montgomery, Eisenhower and Lord Louis Mountbatten. That is something that I shall never forget.

“The sea got rough before we got there, the boat was rocking about and it “put the wind up” us all because we were so loaded and we were low down in the water with all we had on the boat. Anyway the squall went by and in early morning the assault troops went in at a quarter past three and we were there at five o’clock behind them. They were shelling us from the shore and hitting the boats but, luck again, we didn’t get hit. There were boats round about that got hit and the carnage that we saw you can’t believe. I can’t explain to you what it was like.

“At mid-day a monitor came alongside with two 15” guns firing at the shore batteries to try and stop them firing at us. Eventually they did, but at mid-day there were at least 24 German planes overhead and they dropped their bombs all around us. I can remember looking up and seeing these bombs coming down. I don’t know why, or how, they didn’t hit the boat that we were on, but they didn’t, they dropped all around us.

“And I escaped again!”

Š Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.