At Longmoor camp in Hampshire I can honestly say I have never been so fed up with one place in all my life. To occupy our minds whilst waiting to go abroad again we were given the unenviable task of moving the stores from position “A” to position “B” one day and back the following day. Thankfully I was soon on a troopship from Liverpool bound for Egypt. Our first port of call was Haifa in Palestine; there we spent two weeks afloat doing duties like boat- drills. We also had entertainment like intercompany boxing contests to while away the hours. We visited Alexandria, Cairo and Ismalia on the Suez Canal where we had a very enjoyable last swim before going into the desert to join my new company, which was No.3 Railway Mobile Workshops, at a place called Mersa Metru which is about 100 miles into the desert. This was to be my home for the next 14 months under canvas. Our job there has to maintain the diesel electric locomotives from Similla to Tobruk. The Egyptians had steam locomotives that came from Alexandria to supply us with troops. We then took over the train on this 100 mile single track to Tobruk and back. There was a big problem here, as we had no water supply for the steam engine and more importantly for the German prisoners and ourselves. The German prisoners were occupied helping us doing the chores; the instructions were given via an interpreter. Their camp was an open canvassed area and they were tradesmen picked from a prison camp in Eldarba. These men were only too pleased to be with us as previous to this they had been interned behind barbed wire with armed guards patrolling. In this environment I soon became very friendly with these captured soldiers; after all, if they did have any thoughts about escaping, where would they go? And also if they did, they knew the future would be worse for them when they were caught. They made me several items that I still have to this day (what are they?).  I gave them my cigarette and my plain chocolate rations as payment, this certainly helped to cheer them up. They were in the same situation as us really, involved in a war that they didn’t have much say about and now miles away from home in a foreign land. We had our good times there though and this included playing cricket on matting and football on the deserts hard stony ground against other units. During one of these football matches whilst jumping for a ball I fell heavily on my right knee, cutting it badly so transport had to be found to get me to hospital. I was given 3 stitches and as there were no pain killing drugs I was given a one-week rest. This was particularly enjoyable as I had the luxury of resting and lying between white sheets for the first time in months.

 We had good meals surprisingly; this was mainly due to our German cook who managed to make meals out of the impossible. There was a slogan over the workshop, which I recall, stated that “The impossible will be done straight away – miracles take a little longer” and indeed it worked.  Life in the desert was okay, but my main memories will always be living with the sandstorms and living with different creatures likes the scorpion and the beetles.  Living in the desert one experiences extreme temperature changes during a 24 hour cycle, i.e. the well documented heat of the day but also the very extreme cold of the night which comes as a bit of a shock to the system.