ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

The date had been set for the island boxing championships to take place, therefore our regimental team put in extra training. It was hoped the team which was entered would have a contestant in each weight so we were all keen to get through the preliminaries. I fought two bouts and won them fairly easily, a third one was more difficult but I just about scraped through which secured for me a place in the finals. There was then the suspense while waiting to find out who my opponent would be on the big day. The tournament was to be staged at the Wolseley Barracks in Nicosia and was open to every regiment on the island.
In due course the details appeared on the squadron notice board and I read with interest through the list of finalists; I found to my dismay that I had been drawn against a man in my own regiment, a boxer whose reputation was a legend across the Middle East. He had held the Featherweight class championship for years, he had boxed since being a boy soldier under the name “Boy Metters”. I believed that he had retired but it appeared that he was to have at least this one more bout, maybe thinking that he had easy pickings.
I was assured by all those around me also surveying the board that “he’ll slaughter you Dig” or “I should go sick if I were you”. It soon got round with everyone learning who I was up against and they all wrote me off with “no chance”. Up until that time I had suffered very little physical damage from boxing with the exception of bruised thumbs and split lips, but I had to admit that it seemed, as the lads predicted, that I was in for a bashing.
It was due entirely to the Army’s method of weighing-in that he became my opponent because he had boxed in the preliminaries as a lightweight, but it appeared that the organisers had difficulty when pairing off and solved the problem by making the most suitable bout; it was my misfortune that I was forced to box someone above my weight. I didn’t see my opponent before the contest, the lads continued to do their best to scare me. There were others though who sympathised with me and whose advice was something like “just do your best”.
‘Metters’ I thought was about 32 years old and at the weigh-in his stature alone suggested that he was well above the featherweight limit. From the organisers’ point of view a mis-match of that sort helped to make the competition more exciting. A lot of my mates were present at the ringside on the football stadium; I had a good first round, at least my seconds thought so. In fact they advised me to “go for him” in the second round. I did that and no doubt it was my undoing, because he was never there where I put my punches, consequently he countered time after time and caught me some punishing blows.
I lost the contest of course but it must have been an entertaining performance, according to the applause which we received. I felt, and my mates confirmed, that I had put up a good show and although the odds had been against me it was important that I had a good fight. Even those who had previously thought that I would get thrashed went out of their way to tell me that I had done well. As no medals were available we were paid and my fee was thirty shillings, more than half a week’s wages.
We had changed and weighed-in in a large marquee and after the prize-giving ceremony and the speeches were over, I met a professional boxer who I had seen fight in the Northampton Drill Hall before the war, Harry Ainsworth; he was the Northern Area Welterweight champion at the time, and on the occasion when I saw him he fought our local champion from Far Cotton, Norman Snow.
I was pleased too to met with ‘Lofty’ George Jennings who fought in the same contest as myself at Tidworth in 1939, he was also a militiaman. We immediately recognised each other and had many tales to swap.
My mail brought me the sad news of the deaths, within a few weeks of each other, of my great aunt and uncle, Emma and Joe. Two of the most wonderful, loving, old-fashioned, country people that anyone ever knew. Loved by all for the simple kindly beings that they were, they were known generally as ‘Darby and Joan’ and as the ‘salt of the earth’. They had lived in a cottage in Mills Row in Quinton since the day they were married, Joe being just a farm labourer.
The reason why their deaths affected me so much was that they had the responsibility of my early upbringing on the death of my mother. I regretted very much that no longer would I be able to make my usual visits to Quinton, particularly as it had been my intention to tell them in some way or other how much I was in their debt for the care they gave me in my first years.
I had made up my mind that if ever I returned home again to purposely go over and thank them, which I had not been able to do previously because it was only after I had left home that I learned of their devotion, then it was too late. It was another of life’s regrets, it was not to be.
Early Spring came in gently and was most agreeable. We revelled in the lush greenery of the island. The local inhabitants had readily accepted us and we were sometimes invited into their homes. Several houses in the village opened up part of their homes where they could provide food and drink for us and evening meals in those places were most looked-forward to. Our mess rations were by previous standards quite adequate but the food those villagers set before us was very much of a contrast. There was an abundance of fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, and of course wine, the most popular of which was Commanderia.
Our lockers in the barrack rooms were crammed with grapefruits, grapes, oranges and eggs. We cooked snacks too on the iron stove there. I was pleased to find that we were served real potatoes rather than the yams; goats milk seemed to be plentiful but I did not much care for it.
When I was in training for boxing or running I used to make a cocktail of raw eggs, goat’s milk and orange juice beaten up. I didn’t like it, it tasted awful but someone suggested that it was a good body builder, which admittedly I was in need of, so therefore took it in spite of the taste.
Food was very cheap as was the wine, so much of it was being drunk that the Medical Officer became alarmed and informed us of the possible damage which excess quantities of it could do to the liver.
Several schemes lasted for three or four days. It was then when we were out that we fully appreciated the beauty of the island, the wooded mountains, the orchards and vineyards of Kyrenia, the gently flowing streams of such clear water which we found to be cool and thirst-quenching when we dipped our mugs in. At night we cooked our rations there using its sparkling water and heard it babbling on its way during the night.
Once when drawing rations I found that there were some joints of meat, whatever it was I had no idea but decided that although optional to take some which was the cause of an amusing incident. My crew didn’t think that it looked very fresh, they thought that it would be unpalatable and they suggested many things, mostly in favour of throwing it away. I had to admit that it had the appearance of being tough and leathery, and I agreed that there was a greenish tinge all over it, but one know-all pointed out that it could be made more supple if it were put on the side of the car and whacked with a piece of wood. This seemed to be a popular solution, so arming myself with a length of broken fence posting proceeded to do that, thinking that in any case it would do no harm; then suddenly it happened, as if often did, the order for crews to “mount, move out, follow me”.
I had been so engrossed in my bashing away that I was caught completely unaware but jumped on board and we were away, it was then that I realised what I had done in my haste; I had thrown the meat away but still had the piece of wood. They gave me a terrible time after asking “how’s the meat?” and I had to tell them that there would be no meat on the menu that night. It was generally agreed though after all the leg-pulling that it was probably for the best, because they had taken a dislike to it from the beginning.
We moved camp across the island to Kati Trimmathia (?) a tented camp this time, and took in further reinforcements from the Gloucester Hussars. One evening when going into the troop’s billet I heard a voice and the accent seem familiar, a Northamptonshire sound, and I thought correctly as it turned out that he must be a ‘townie’ . He introduced himself as Corporal Tommy Scarret, who came from the town centre. That was the beginning of a long friendship. His regiment had suffered a great loss of men, and we received quite a number of the survivors.
Some of us were due for leave which would be taken at Famagusta and Tommy joined myself, Dave and George. It was a rest camp, nothing there really just the bare essentials necessary to make an enjoyable leave possible. It wasn’t expected to compare with any of the leaves we had experienced in Alex. or Cairo, but it suited us fine and we had a lot of fun.
We travelled there by means of the island train service. It appeared to be little more than a miniature railway, rather narrow gauge lines, and moved at a speed even when flat out which any one of us could keep up with. That is a fact because I was one who had to do it a couple of times. When one of the others would say something like “hey Dig, you’re a good runner - catch that”, then grabbing my beret from my head threw it back along the track. Each time that it happened I managed with much puffing and blowing to retrieve it and breathlessly reboard the train, after running to reach it with their shouts of encouragement urging me on and comments like “we thought you could run” and “see you in Famagusta”, the schoolboys’ games of grown men.
In the camp there was a large NAAFI with a wide selection of goods; there were also two restaurants and a dance hall complete with hostesses. Most of our time was spent either in the water or on the beach. Several nights we swam there at midnight after we had been out drinking. It was possible to dive from the edge of the shore where the depth of the water fell away sharply, by stacking up a few sandbags to give more height.
Back at camp I had a acquired a pair of brown shoes which were the cause of much envy because not many of the others owned a pair. But mine were of particular interest while on leave and again when we had returned because they all knew the history concerning them. I had picked them up out of some waste deposited outside the Officers’ Mess; actually they were not much to look at and were a rather heavy type, but it was not important because they were about my size.
The soles had long parted from the uppers but I knew that I could rely on the assistance of my friends the fitters, my mate George was one, and armed with some wire and a bradawl-type tool I was convinced that I could ‘mackle’ them up. To begin with I wired the two parts, uppers and soles, together and with a good deal of spit and polish it was agreed that those once-discarded shoes were then fit to be worn on leave, not for me those heavy army boots.
I wore them on the night that we thought we would give the dance-hall a try. None of us were dancers but after a few beers that was not a problem. We began making fools of ourselves, generally messing about when we ventured onto the floor; I suppose that we had made a couple of circuits of the floor when it happened, the uppers of my shoes hung loosely around my ankles and the soles began to flap until they came away completely so that I had to bend down and pick them up from the floor.
There I was standing in my socks holding two separate parts of what were a little earlier in the evening my footwear, my pride and joy. Everyone else was doubled up with laughter at my plight as I stood there. I hobbled off the floor reduced to walking in my socks; among the hilarity which the incident had caused were many comments such as being “soulless” and something about “upper class”.
The lads were still laughing when we decided to leave and as I had no footwear it was thought that we should order a garry to take us to our billet; Tommy was still full of laughter when we were about to board the conveyance, so much so that his teeth fell out and landed under the horse where we all ended up groping in the dark until they were found and restored in their rightful place. That night was part of what turned out to be a most enjoyable leave, different maybe but one to remember.
There had been little in the way of entertainment but we were not short of fun even if of our own making, we knew that apart from the drink that our antics were perhaps stupid and often childish but I believe that it was our way of shrugging off some of the memories that didn’t seem to easily go away; memories of young mates who had fought and played with us but then sadly left behind in cold desert graves.
At the same time we wondered if our turn might soon come so it was that for a short while we felt free and relieved that there was no imminent threat of death. There were others of our comrades in various parts of the world who were still in battle involved in the madness of war.
Back at camp there was quite a lot of interest shown in the story of the shoes, the fitters seemed noticeably concerned; it was then that I realised that it was a prearranged affair: they had deliberately set me up with copper wire which they knew would not stand up very long. George knew about it, they made great fun of it. Anything for a laugh, I suppose.
The whole squadron were out on an exercise so that apart from a few men on duty I had the camp to myself because I had been ordered to take the place of the Orderly Sergeant. Why this was so was quite a mystery to me unless it was more important that sergeants should go on the exercise than us of lesser rank; actually I wished to think that in spite of the episode with the RSM a few weeks earlier that he was testing me out to check in order to see if there was any improvement in my behaviour. I wondered had he had a change of mind and my long-awaited promotion could be a possibility?
I knew nothing of the duties of an Orderly Sergeant therefore before they left I had to seek out one or two of my friends to be briefed. I did the rounds with the Orderly Officer, the Cookhouse, Tent Lines, Mess Room and such like; I had to contact the other squadrons which were some miles apart and this I did on a bike. It was quite an interesting and enjoyable change from the usual daily duties.
On coming into my own tent one evening I found a new sergeant waiting there to see me, it appeared that he had arrived from Base Depot where for years he had been a Drill Instructor; I had to find a tent in the sergeants’ lines for him. When having done so he introduced himself and I stayed and chatted to him for quite a long time, glad to have his company because the camp became a very lonely place during the evening while everyone was still away.
He was Irish and therefore known just as ‘Paddy’ (I forget his surname). He was a Regular soldier of over ten years’ service and I guessed that he would have been about thirty years old. I didn’t learn why he had returned to us from the Base but I could well accept and realise why he had been a Drill Instructor for so many years, mainly because of his bearing.
He was a six-footer, lean, sun-tanned and upright. He had dark curly hair and a sharp pointed moustache, in all a fine specimen of a parade ground soldier. He was no lover of tanks and I found out later that he had never been a crew member and had certainly never commanded one. I imagined that he still retained a feeling for the days of the horse and the cavalry regiments. Over the weeks I got to know him rather well and had many long talks on a variety of subjects, either when we were on duty together or over a beer, so that we formed quite a friendship.
Most of us junior NCOs regarded him as a soldierly example and one which we should attempt to emulate especially in his physical bearing, his dress and drill. Unfortunately though not many of us had been created with the sort of attributes necessary and had to make the best of what we had been given.
On guard with him one night I noticed that he was reading the Koran, the Muslims’ sacred book, and by him he had a copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I still have read neither, but even then with my limited knowledge of them I realised what he was reading was certainly a little above the ordinary soldier’s literary material.
When I told him of my surprise and how I thought it unusual reading for him to prefer he told me that he had only an Army education but that gave him enough to urge him to learn more. He said that he thought that it was so very easy to accept the norm but that he wished to strive and rise above that which most of us felt was acceptable. Most who knew him looked up to him and listened to his philosophical advice, we listened but sadly did little about it. I remember him as I am sure many others would have done for the fine example to us which he was, I don’t know what eventually happened to him after we left the island.
It was strange that when we did leave at the end of May, 1943, that there was the absence of ‘going home’ rumours. I believe that the men were beginning to feel that it was never going to happen especially as our destination then was a return to the desert which we thought we had already seen for the last time. The long journey to Tripoli was carried out in several hops, stopping at Port Said and Cairo on the way.
It was Paddy who first introduced me to the writings of Rudyard Kipling and although I couldn’t now recite the words I remember two of his poems; one is ‘If’ and the other ‘Tommy’ ; I have a great fondness for both of them and have recently been able to obtain a copy of each; I will write just a couple of verses of each here:
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look good, nor talk too wise:
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

TOMMY
I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, ‘We serve no Red-coats here’.
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself says I:
O it’s ‘Tommy this’, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy go away’;
But it’s ‘Thank you, Mr Atkins,’ when the band begins to play.
For it’s ‘Tommy this’, an’ ‘Tommy that’, an’ ‘Chuck him out the brute!’,
But it’s ‘Saviour of his country’ when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s ‘Tommy this’, and ‘Tommy that’, and anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
While in Cairo our mail caught up with us and one of my letters carried the information that one of my old trike-riding workmates had arrived in Egypt, Gilbert Gibson. On making enquiries I found that he was at Almaza at the camp which we had arrived at in 1940. I and two others made our way there and were informed that we were too late as their detachment left at first light all ‘blacked-up’. From that we assumed that they were taking part in the invasion of Sicily.
When back in the desert our duty in the Tripoli area was the guarding of airfields, we were issued with one-man bivouacs. The weather had hotted-up and the sand there was a reddish-brown and as there were some fairly strong winds it stuck to our sweaty bodies giving the effect of having been sprayed with cocoa powder, or as chocolate soldiers perhaps.
We had not been there for many weeks when I was ordered to go on a gunnery course at the Cairo Base Depot so that I travelled again those dusty desert tracks back to Abbasia. Taking into account the amount of time which I would be travelling there and back again it was estimated that I would be away for at least two months.
The Depot was little changed from how I remembered it from my previous course in 1941; I knew what to expect in the way of ‘bull’ that is the way of all such places. I wouldn’t want to be at Base for any length of time certainly not as a ‘Base wallah’.
I was to study the guns on the American Sherman tank and hoped to return to the unit as an instructor. If I passed I would receive an extra sixpence per day, unfortunately though I would lose out because I would then become liable for Tax.
Reveille at the Base was at 0600, when the ‘char-wallah’ brought his bucket of tea, then after parade and roll call we marched off to our lessons returning at 0800 for breakfast; morning lessons lasted until 1230 hrs when it was ‘tiffin’, mainly a salad meal with white bread and usually melon. Our schoolday ended at 1600 hours and then dinner followed by evenings of study.
My barrack-room was near to the gymnasium so I made a point of going there, making myself known because I had heard that the Garrison Annual Boxing Championships were due and I intended that if I were still there to enter and wanted to do some training in preparation.
I had a message over the grapevine carried to me by one of my classmates that someone called ‘Jock’ hearing that I was at the Base would like to see me; he was at the other end of the Base. I wondered who Jock might be, there were so many of them and finding that this particular Jock was in the Staffordshire Yeomanry I was further confused and hadn’t a clue as to who he might be.
I was given a time and place where he could be found and set off in anticipation or at least to satisfy my curiosity; when there someone called out to me, I knew when I set out that I was in for a surprise and it couldn’t have been a greater one than seeing that the caller was the Jock who when I last saw him was bleeding badly and was being taken away in a French ambulance.
He was not much changed so that I recognised him instantly. It was wonderful to have met up again, he had such a story to tell of what had happened to him after his spell in a French hospital and of his eventual escape to England. Apparently he had suffered little effect from his wound, he wished to know anything which I was able to convey with regard to any of our comrades who we had trained with and it was a sad recital of events which involved the maiming and death of quite a few of them. Apart from all that we enjoyed our evening in each other’s company.
He was a very special friend and on parting we renewed our promise to one another first made in 1940 that if we both came through the war safe and sound, then we would meet at his home in Edinburgh. It was quite extraordinary how meetings such as that came about for in spite of censorship and other restrictions on the passing of information everyone seemed to know at least which theatre of war a man was serving in; various hints were made in letters to home and they to us and a lot of information was gained by cap badges. How Jock, for instance, would have known that I was at the Base and yet my regiment was in the desert I have not the faintest idea or how it came about that it happened to be one of my class-mates who passed the message on. It never crossed my mind when with him to ask him how it was possible for him to find me. After we had met we exchanged letters so that we knew that each of us had taken part in the invasion of Europe.
The last time he wrote he was in Germany and that was his last letter. I had seen him for the last time because I learned again via the grapevine that a few days prior to Germany’s surrender he was killed. Having seen someone from his regiment by noting the cap badge I made enquiries of Jock and I was most shocked to hear of his death. It appears that he was talking to the padre when shells began to fall and he received a splinter in his head; what rotten luck after all that he had been through.
I know that this was happening all the time but that news was particularly upsetting; I grieved for the young wife who he had married before the war. I still have their wedding photo with me. There would be no meeting for us in Scotland after all. What a mad world which allows young lives to be taken in that manner.
There was another chance meeting about the time that I had met Jock but of an entirely different nature and not at all a pleasant one. It occurred one afternoon as I was on my way to the Mess Room for dinner when a prisoner passed by being escorted by two Military Policemen, and as they marched abreast, the prisoner shouted something to me which I didn’t understand but on looking I found it to be none other than my old adversary, the school bully. I was told that he was very rarely with his regiment but continually absent without leave so that he spent a great deal of time in the ‘glasshouse’ rather than take his place in the field.
The course was going along fine and I had the feeling that I would pass easily enough when suddenly I was struck down with sand fly fever and that is not an exaggeration, it did strike me down. For a day or so I did feel a little unwell but not ill enough to report sick, in any case I wanted to complete the course. Finally I had to submit and was taken off sick parade and immediately admitted to a hospital in Cairo.
I must have been in some sort of hypnotic state throughout because I have very little recollection of what happened during the ten days which I spent there. The condition is similar to Malaria but without the recurrences; when I left hospital I had lost quite a lot of weight and it left me very weak.
When I resumed the course I thought that any chance which I might have had to obtain a pass had gone as I had missed a substantial part and couldn’t see that I would be able to catch up. However, as events turned out it was not possible to complete it anyway because a week or so later the news reached me in its usual roundabout way that the regiment was at last going home.
I didn’t readily believe it and before accepting it as fact I needed confirmation that it was not just another rumour created by someone’s wishful thinking. There had been too many disappointments in the past so that until then I treated it with scepticism.
I had quite recently seen members of my regiment about the Base but none of them from my squadron and thought them to be perhaps like myself on a course or probably on leave; it didn’t then occur to me that they might be there for any other reason. I was soon to find out after being told that there was a caller in my room wishing to see me, I was most surprised therefore on meeting him to find the visitor to be none other than my old protagonist of the Cyprus Boxing Championships ‘Boy Metters’.
He informed me that he and several other long-serving men were being repatriated and that the advance party of the regiment were already at the Base with the whole of the regiment due to arrive in a week or so.

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