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My name is Sidney Patterson of Oulton Broad, Lowestoft, Suffolk and in 1941 I received a letter from the Air Ministry Records Department requesting me to report to the R.A.F. at Cardington in Bedfordshire. After a few weeks training I was posted to Northern Ireland then not long after that came my posting to Singapore.

The boat left Northern Scotland in March 1942 via Canada, to avoid the German U-boats, part of the largest convoy of the war, 42 ships in all. A number of ships did not survive the U-boat attacks. The convoy travelled south and eventually went to Freetown in West Africa. The crew men mutinied on our ship and were duly flown home from Aden to the UK and soon another crew from the UK joined us. On our way to South Africa we were attacked by yet more U-boats and the convoy were reduced once again. Next we were told Singapore had fallen and was occupied by the Japanese and we were going to the Middle East to Egypt and the Red Sea. Our next stop after South Africa was Mombassa in Kenya, East Africa.

We, at last, finished our boat trip on 22 June 1942, a rather long journey to say the least. A period of some 3½years was spent in the Middle East mostly in the Egyptian desert. The Battle of El Alamein was being fought against the Germans under the command of Rommel in the blazing sun.

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