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This story was submitted to the People's war site by Jan Bedford of Kent County Council Maidstone Library on behalf of William Knibbs and has been added with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

ĂŰŃż´«Ă˝ People’s War - Staplehurst Library Monday 7th June 2004

Mr William James Knibbs

A Paymaster captain and I got in an aeroplane at Alexandria for a flight to Cairo, as I had to go there to collect a lorry and all the aircraft stores. When we got to Cairo and wanted to land there was a terrific fog and the pilot couldn’t land, you see. There was no radar in those days so we came back to Alexandria and these planes had what they call a coffman starter and it’s like an enlarged barrel, 6 gunshots and you got 6 cartridges in it. And as they fire a cartridge it turns the engine over of the aeroplane. So of course as we were going there we used one up and when he come to land, if that’s the aerodrome and that’s the sea there, this is a railway bank and the runway is there, he cut back and the engine stalled. There’s a train coming along here and we heard him fire one, two, three, four and the engine didn’t start, on the fifth one it started. And he went and bounced and tipped off in the sand at the other end like that you see. And the captain got out first. He said to me “Hand out the parachutes”. So, I got one off the shelf and handed it out and went to get the next one and it wouldn’t come. You’re already shaken up by riding down; he got down to see if he could get under the fog but it was right down, so then he went up. And first of all you’re being stretched and then you’re being squashed. Anyway, I gave this a terrific yank and there was a bang and a big panel came off the aeroplane at the side. And a whacking black thing came out, that turned out to be the dingy, and there was a hissing, and it all landed on top of the captain and knocked him over. So my knees gave out then and I thought, oh I’ll be in the navy all my life now paying for this. I thought I’d broken the blooming thing in half, but anyway it transpired that there was a cable that they’d released for this thing and it was in a vulnerable position, and a bit of the parachute had got hooked on to it. And they’d lost 3 of these planes, Barracudas I think they were, through the same thing happening in flight. So instead of getting into trouble they said “ooh you’ve found out what the trouble was.” I heard somebody laugh and I put my head over the side and then I found out I’d helped things instead of messing things up. The only people who grumbled were the aeroplane fitters who had to put it all back again.

When I got drafted I ended up in Alexandria. Soon after I was posted to this lorry and I was attached as main stores to 826 squadron which was an Albacore Squadron, which flew low over the enemy gun sights and dropped flares for the RAF to drop bombs on the target. I had to go to a place called Heliopolis which is in a mountain just outside Cairo, which was where the main stores were, where I got the lorry from and all the stores that a squadron doesn’t usually hold. I was my own boss, it was a very good job really because I went up with the squadron. And I was empowered to send signals for anything that was wanted specially. Anyway we had to go to a place called Certey. On the way we were in a convoy and we got a puncture. We had to stop and change the wheel, so we got behind. As you’re going along the desert you get a dune and then you get a valley and a dune and it goes on like that. I had a co-driver, his name was Montgomery, he was an able seaman. He was driving and he said “we’ll catch up”. He tried to pass all the other vehicles but there was a RAF lorry towing a trailer, which was towing a bowser, and this was swaying. He tried to pass it and of course the road was fairly narrow and the sides were soft sand and then you went down about 30 feet. And I said, “now look wait until we’re in a dune, before you pass that”. But no he carried on and each time he went further other and suddenly it did what I told him it would do, the wheels got stuck in the sand and down we went, 30 feet. And we had to get that lorry up to where the road level was with steel plates we put under the wheels and it took ages. So we were further behind still. Anyway when we got to the top we said to the Red Cap that was there, “How far’s Certey?” “Well”, he said “Do you see that column of smoke up there? That’s Certey, it’s just been bombed.” Anyway, we made our way there in the end and got there in the evening. There was supposed to be an area cleared for mines and we had only just occupied the place. There were not many slit trenches and so we just laid down where we were with our boots, never undressed or anything. In the morning 8 Hurricanes came over but they weren’t, they were Italians and we buzzed them but they couldn’t find us in these little slit trenches. I flopped down on top of a RAF chappie and he was shaking, he said, “Bloody cold isn’t it”. But he was nervous you see, and these 8 planes dropped bombs all in that area and they strafed us. And I was laying on top of him and I saw the sand coming straight for me and I never thought I’m going to be killed, I thought oh I wonder how my wife and child are going to carry on without me. That was the thought that was in my mind. But anyway these bullets came; shells came in each side of me and missed me altogether. That was one of the nearest squeaks I’d had.

After we pushed the Germans out of North Africa, I had to come back, but in the course of getting there I’d taken over the squadron’s supply. The assistant was sent home and they wanted a new supply assistant for the squadron. I was main stores when I had the lorry, so I said well the squadron knows me, what about me taking over the squadron over. And he said good idea. So he said here’s the ledger of all the things you should have, you sign that and you’re in. So I signed it and there was no supply assistant to check to see what was there and there were thousands upon thousands of pounds worth missing, including aeroplane engines and 2 cases. And so I thought this is no good. I saw the CO and he said leave it with me. And he did nothing you see. So in the end I started a bit of detective work and I found out where a lot of it had gone. We’d had to withdraw suddenly from Mersa Matruh. And a lot of stuff was lost there and then I found the RAF had claimed 2 aeroplane engines because where we only had 1 in an albacore they had 4 on a Lancaster. So they took those. I gave him a list of all these things that were missing and where I thought they had gone and what I’d done to put some of it right and he said leave it with me. And nothing happened. About 2 o’clock one night I was sat up in bed in a tent, I had a torch and I wrote a letter explaining all this. I took it to the CO and he said, oh that’s good I’ll send it that to the CNC (CinC?) at Gibraltar. That the brought the CNC over to Benghazi. I was interviewed and I explained what had happened and how some of the things were missing. And he said I can see that. He said you’ve put a lot of it right. All sorts of things had gone wrong. Anyway he said I can write this off as war damage. And I got the books straight you see. 2 or 3 days went on and nothing happened. I said nobody has even said that’s good, thank you or anything like that. And then one day I was told the CO wanted me and I thought now what’s happened. So I go in caps off and everything and he looked at me and said, oh sit down, which is unusual. He said, well the CNC has told me to recommend you for a commission. All my time had been in the desert, I hadn’t been to sea and you can’t be an officer until you’ve been at sea. So I had to go. After coming back and paying off the squadron at Yeovilton. I was drafted to the Victorious and promoted to Petty Officer and that’s how I came to be on that.

And we were up in Murmansk and doing the northern convoys and then suddenly we sunk the Tirpitz in Kaa Fjord. Within 3 weeks of that we were flat out into the Indian Ocean. My action station on that ship was the operating theatre, which was 2 floors below the sea level. And my job was to remove the blood soaked blankets from beneath the patients and put new ones in. I wasn’t a medical man, it was just my action station. As soon as we’d sunk the Tirpitz within 3 weeks of being where it was so cold you couldn’t touch steel with your bare hands otherwise you froze to it; we were in the Tropics. A lot of the chaps got dehydrated which they shouldn’t have done, they got into trouble for that, because they should have had salt tablets.

Anyway we were out there and ended up with our planes attacking the Japanese in Burma and Sumatra and then we went through to the Pacific where we were faced with these Kamikaze bombers. American aircraft carriers were about 3 times as big as ours but they’d got wooden decks, so these Kamikazes used to go straight through and explode in the hanger below. But our Victorious had armour plate on the deck, so when they landed on us one slid straight over the side, but another one landed on the gun turret on the port side and killed the gunner.

I didn’t get my commission because by the time I’d spent 3 years on that the war ended. I’d married my wife before the war and if I’d got my commission I’d have had to be RN and I thought that wouldn’t be fair to my wife as she married me as a civilian. So I thought I must get out of this somehow. I had an interview, and I thought it was such an honour to be recommended, I can’t just say I don’t want it, and I thought how am I going to get out of this. So when they asked me which newspapers I read, I said I like the Telegraph, but I said I like to look at the Mirror as well to see the other side of it. That did it, “Mirror?” So I got out of it. Oh they didn’t like the Mirror.

When I first went out to Alexandria we used to go swimming because the sea was just over from our block. This ring was loose so I thought I better not go swimming with this. So I put it in the end of a sock because there might have been somebody with sticky fingers, and I put it into the locker and hid it, went in for a swim, and then I forgot that I’d done that, and said ooh I’ve lost my ring. So the whole lot were diving to see if they could find it. This went on for quite a while and we couldn’t find it. Then a couple of days afterwards I went to put the sock on and there was the ring. I thought, oh dear I better not tell them this. The next time I went swimming I had the ring in my hand, dived down, and presently I came up, I’ve got it, I’ve got.

Two of the aircraft crew on the Victorious got caught in a propeller — one lost his head completely and the other one burst his shoulder open. He came down to the operating theatre and the surgeon and this is when I had to change the blood soaked blankets. The temperature then was 120 degrees in the operating theatre and the anaesthetic they were using was ether which spoils at 98 degrees so we were getting as much ether as the patient and we had to keep nipping outside otherwise we would have gone down. Anyway the surgeon was giving a running commentary on what he was doing, and he said well this piece of meat is dead and he cut that off and threw it in the wastebasket. And later on he said that’s the so and so nerve, I can’t remember the name, and that’s the another nerve, he said if I connect that nerve to that one and he thinks he’s going to put his hand forward his hand will go backwards. So, he said I’ve got to connect it to that nerve. After about 10 hours his shoulder was all fixed, the bones put back in place and he was taken to the sick bay of the hospital on the ship. And when he got better he couldn’t raise his arm more than above his shoulder and he grumbled. We said you’re lucky to have an arm at all, if only you knew what that surgeon had done.

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