One of the worst and most frequent experiences we met was the khamsin, the hot wind that blew at 110 degrees across the Desert, often reaching thirty and forty miles an hour. The khamsin produced the famous desert sand-storms. Much has been written about these sand-storms, and many a battle in the Western Desert was decided by them. But words can hardly describe the experience of being in one.

As the khamsin whisks up the fine sand; it spreads around one like a great, yellow blanket. The storms sometimes endured for days, but normally lasted from one to two days.

We still had to drive through sand-storms, even though our pace was reduced practically to a crawl. Visibility was often only two or three yards. Our predicament in the lorries was made even worse by the fact that we had "sanded" the whole of our windscreens, and cut out a three-inch slit in front of the driver's seat, so that the windscreens would not reflect the sun and reveal the lorries to the enemy aircraft. Through the driver's slit, in the windscreen, the full blast of the moiling sand came on to the driver, and filled the cab generally. Within a few minutes eyes would be red with irritation. Gradually, the sand would filter through the clothes, and, as the heat of the wind produced violent perspiration, the sand would enter the pores of the skin.

The only relief for drivers was to don respirators; or put handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses, and gas goggles over their eyes.

These expedients produced an even closer atmosphere, and the whole journey was one of intense discomfort.

But troubles were not at an end when the sand-storm finished. We had to try to get the sand out of our pores, or else boils or eczema resulted. This was not an easy matter, as we were rationed to one pint of water a day, and none was available for this very necessary job. So we had to towel ourselves down as best we could, and try to get rid of the sand in that way.

The sand-storms produced another complication. That was the matter of cooking the midday tea, which usually ended as half tea and half sand. Every mess-tin had, at the very least, a quarter of an inch of sand in the bottom of it when the remnants were poured away. There was no water to spare to wash out mess-tins and so some consumption of sand was inevitable. Normally, we did not appear to suffer any ill effects from the sand, although one or two men did complain of illness at times.

Erecting the cookhouse for the evening meal, under the full blast of the khamsin, was a work of art in itself. Firstly, we had to shelter the cookhouse area. This was done by running two lorries together so that the full force of the wind was broken, but the sand then curled wickedly round the ends and created small whirlpools to leeward. Next, tarpaulins were slung to further impede the wind, and then the cookhouse was put into this would-be hermetically sealed chamber, and cooking began.

Even with all these precautions it was impossible to keep the meal free from this all-penetrating sand. I watched the cook prepare a rice pudding one day. By the time it had firmed up and was ready for eating there was a layer of sand on the top at least quarter of an inch deep. I saw the cook peep over his shoulder surreptitiously to see if anyone was looking, and then stir the sand swiftly into the pudding

When the men began their pudding you could hear the grinding of teeth for miles. Some of them asked the cook what they were supposed to be eating, and he answered quite frankly, "Rice pudding and sand," and explained that owing to the shortness of supplies it was either rice pudding and sand or nothing. The men decided to have the rice pudding and sand.

Apart from the physical discomforts of sand-storms, they were a menace to a column in movement. The pace was slowed to a dead crawl to avoid accidents, but even then they frequently occurred. It was normal to find oneself driving into the rear of the lorry in front. Usually there was a squealing of brakes, a great cursing, and the vehicles lumbered off into the artificial fog again. Sometimes we lost our way and wandered into minefields. We will never know how many minefields we ran across without casualties and without knowing.

At other times we would run into sand drifts, where the surface had been churned up and would not support a lorry. Then began the real fun, trying to extricate the lorries from the drift. No amount of coaxing would do it. If you tried to drive out, the axles sank into the sand in a jiffy. The only way was the slow but sure method of digging out in front of the wheels and putting down the sand mats. Over these sandmats the vehicle rode to a reasonable surface again. If other lorries were available, they towed out the stranded vehicle and digging was not necessary.

I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than digging in the khamsin. The sand swirled and choked you, filled your clothes and ears, clogged the perspiration, and was altogether unimaginably wearisome.

Then there were accidents through running into boulders that broke springs and axles like sticks of toffee.

I think the khamsin was the worst of all the Desert's moods, even worse than the sudden torrential rains that converted parts of the Desert into a bog. It sounds funny writing this. I can hardly believe that I saw vehicles bogged down in sand and water as surely as if they had been buried in an Irish bog. But those things happened not once but thousands of times. In fact, the campaign under General Cunningham almost stopped after one day because of the freak storm which brought the advancing Eighth Army to a mud-locked standstill. Fortunately, it had the same effect upon the enemy, and so when the rains cleared the position was virtually as before the rains started

The desert face changed as the day advanced. The appearance of an object in the morning was completely different from the same object at evening time. The hour before darkness was the most difficult. Then the Desert would change into a golden-green lake with everything shimmering under the descending sun in curious fashion. Everything took on odd shapes and appearances at that time and deception went for little.

There were times when tanks looked like camel-scrub and camel-scrub looked like tanks. I think we had reported many patches of camel-scrub as tanks before we realised this. And conversely we probably passed many tanks thinking they were camel-scrub!

During our withdrawal at the beginning of 1942, it was known that several enemy agents, dressed as British officers, N.C.Os. and despatch riders, riding British motor cycles, tried hard to convert the withdrawal into a disorderly rout by spreading false information.

Their usual trick was to come rushing along and shout that German columns were just behind and rapidly closing in, and that we had to "up-sticks" and get going back right away.

Sometimes, I have no doubt, they succeeded in creating some panic, but normally we were not outwitted by this trick. Our orders warned us again and again not to fall for this, and we were very careful about the credentials of anyone volunteering this kind of information.

When positions were fairly static, the Germans tried another dodge by sending out a very dirty, dishevelled looking creature in British battledress, who approached the forward posts, and called out in a stream of invective, which was known to the authorities as "soldiers' talk" Several posts were reassured by the voluble stranger who appeared to be so much one of us, but soon after he sheered off a barrage of enemy fire on the position showed the stranger for what he was---an enemy agent.

This trick worked so well at first that our orders told us in no mincing way that because a soldier came along with a choice flow of soldiers' language he was not necessarily one of us.

"Jerry" was quite wily in these ways, but he did slip up badly when he butted in on a tank radio conversation and gave some false orders of movement to a tank brigade, hoping they would follow them and finish in a trap. The only slip made on this occasion was that the operator used perfect English, and was so excessively polite that the tank operators knew in a flash that he was phoney! What they said, and whether he heard it, I do not know.

We were issued with a list of words which were said to be difficult of pronunciation even to educated British-speaking Germans. If we met a suspicious character we would ask them to repeat some of the words. Those that I remember were "North Sea," "throat," "soothe," "rats," "clothes " and "wrong." I never caught a spy all the same.

Other trouble-makers were saboteurs. With such indefinite lines as the enemy and ourselves held, it was never too difficult to get into enemy-held territory. I saw one petrol dump go up in flames through being fired by such an agent. He was later identified as a German who had posed as a British major. Often we had descriptions of these saboteurs in our orders and sometimes they were caught. The Field Security Police did great work in this direction, and, although small in numbers, seemed to be all over the Desert.

Of course, the super-saboteurs were our long-range desert patrols. These were the super "Desert Rats." Stories were legion about their exploits. Many have been told publicly, so I will not repeat them here. No men were braver or fitter than those in these groups. Occasionally we actually saw them move out into "the blue," but mostly they were as legendary as Lawrence of Arabia. They stayed out behind the enemy lines for months at a time, and existed as much on stolen enemy supplies as on provisions taken out by their supplies contingent.

At times, the story goes, they even used German light signals at night to enemy aircraft and had supplies parachuted to them, and as a result went even deeper into enemy territory, destroying and killing as they went.

They were led by men of unrivalled knowledge of the Desert, and did untold material damage to German supplies, but their main contribution was in boosting our morale and lowering the German morale correspondingly. Whenever news came round of their exploits, our tails went up like anything. Probably many of the stories were untrue. I don't think that mattered. No fiction will outshine or out-wonder their deeds, and it was really good for morale.

Doubtless, some of these men will write their own stories of the "Lawrences of the Western Desert." They will be worth reading.

The three months' lull in the spring and early summer of 1942 was really a very hard-worked time of intensive preparation.

Patrols and raids were always taking place, and Germans vied with us as to who could make the most raids.

These months were the worst months of the khamsin winds. The nights were bitterly cold in the Desert, and the warmth of the day changed so suddenly to the intense cold of the night that men caught colds very frequently. The medical officers called it "Gyppy tummy," because it was peculiar to the Western Desert.

The heat seemed to disappear at sunset as though turned off with a switch. Sleeping under the stars was still very pleasant, unless the khamsin was at full blast, when it became really uncomfortable, and we slept in our lorries on top of our supplies.

One trip was especially enlivened by the driver of a lorry, loaded with aircraft petrol, deciding to seek his kit inside the lorry with the aid of a match ! One moment the driver was lit by the glare of the match, and next there was an enormous explosion, followed by a burst of flames.

It was really quite funny to see the driver hurtled out across the sand. He was unhurt and dashed back to the lorry to rescue his kit. He did manage to get some out before the lorry went up with a really big explosion. Lorries standing around were damaged in various degrees, and the driver was duly warned to appear before the C.O.

A court-martial was threatened, but the incident finally closed without any further action being taken.

I could well imagine what a fuss there would have been if this had happened at home---but values are so totally different in the field.

For instance, a lorry would rarely stand up to more than three months' desert work. After that most vehicles had to be overhauled and re-fitted.

Sand played the devil with the working parts, and attempts to repair lorries usually ended in more sand being included in the reassembled parts than was there at the beginning

I met many infantrymen who had been on night patrol work. They all said one thing: "Jerry does not like cold steel. Once we get near enough to use the bayonet the battle is over." Not one man, but dozens, told me this.

In one of the Sidi Rezegh battles our troops made a night attack with bayonets because ammunition was rather scarce. The operation was a complete success and produced very small casualties for our men.

Mail began to arrive more regularly at this time and the unit was becoming desert-hardened. Welfare facilities were very good, in general, considering the difficult conditions under which we lived.

Wireless sets were not very plentiful and my platoon had a set allocated for twenty-four hours every seven days. During that twenty-four hours the set was never switched off! I suppose it spent the other six days in a similar condition, so it had little enough rest.

We had our sports kit with us and there was plenty of football and other games. In Tobruk we encouraged the natives to play. They were pretty good too, and could kick a ball with their bare feet as far as we could in boots

The bombing became fairly intensive at this time, and we smelt that something was in the wind. Stories began to leak back in April that Jerry was bringing up tanks and lorried infantry to the Bir Temrad and Sidi Breghise positions.

One curious feature of the bombing was that the German Stukas were by no means as accurate as we thought they would be. They would scream down in a terrific dive and pull out, having almost touched the ground, yet their bombs were mostly wide of the mark.

Italian planes, which always bombed from a great height---they rarely came within range of our light anti-aircraft guns---were much more successful in their bombing.

The difference in the method of attack showed even more clearly how different, in temperament, were the two nations.

Of the two types of attack, I think we preferred the divebomber because we could always have a smack at him.

As soon as the Stukas had dropped their bombs, we all rushed out from our places of shelter and loosed off everything at them. Revolvers, Bren guns, Lewis guns, rifles, machine carbines and even anti-tank rifles and mortars sent their charges hurtling upwards. Even the natives joined in by throwing stones!

One officer became quite famous because he fired his anti-tank rifle from the hip at these aircraft. His clerk acted as loader.

On one occasion I saw a Stuka dive down, on fire, after this outburst, and we always claimed that we brought him down. The A.A. gunners proper never admitted our claim, though, and it had to remain a "probable" as far as we were concerned.

We picked up a great deal of native "lingo" through our contact with the native workmen in Tobruk. Most of us gathered quite a smattering of the language---and certainly enough to barter.

I have never seen such people for buying and selling---or, what it really amounted to, plain exchange barter. We did quite a traffic over certain items of food. I don't think I ever met a native who could not produce an egg for purposes of barter. Even in the depths of the Desert the egg would appear magically from beneath their shrouds. The age of the egg was another matter, and rarely something which could be proved, anyway. If you did the deal, you took a chance on the age and quality of the egg. In return, we would barter a tin of bully beef or something of that kind.

The native religion was based upon "Resignation to the Will of God." but this resignation certainly never entered their business transactions when it came to the needs of life!

Some of the natives who begged lifts from us in the desert were enemy agents. We received an official warning that certain natives were begging lifts and then offering to buy the lorry from the driver, and producing a roll of English banknotes to pay for it! The money, of course, was English money that the Germans had captured, or perhaps even minted.

Several of these men were caught by drivers and handed over to the military police.

Other natives indulged in petty sabotage, such as ripping tyres, setting fire to lorries and dumps of supplies and stores. They had very short shrift when found.

Writing of food brings home to me the amazing variety of types of food we had to supply to our troops. There must have been fifty or sixty different items. This is probably unbelievable to the old soldiers who fought in the last war, but it is nevertheless true.

Of course, we were then feeding British, African native and Indian native troops.

Some of the more curious foods, I remember, were fish snook, yams (sweet potatoes to us---and we liked them), kola nuts, simsim oil, dhall, coriander, attu and ghyaggery. We even had macaroni for Italian prisoners of war!

I brought some of these home as souvenirs, but I still have my doubts as to which is which.

Souvenirs were always in great demand, and produced endless trouble for the authorities. It is incredible what men tried to send home. Middle East Orders made many sharp references to this problem and once stated that within a month more than five tons of equipment had been extracted from mails destined for home!

Men tried to send machine guns, one piece at a time. Live 25-pounder and 88-mm. shells were found in packages. German tin hats, football jerseys, complete uniforms, bayonets, food, cameras (we were told that every German officer had a camera), binoculars, compasses, live hand grenades and detonators were among the more popular "presents" for home that never left Egypt.

One man actually asked permission to send home a 250 pounder German aerial bomb. Permission was not granted---to put it officially

We became very friendly with the tank troops in our supply runs, and found their lives very different from our own. They had the admiration of every other soldier in the Desert.

In the earlier days they were out-gunned time after time, but nothing could keep down their irrepressible spirits. How they fought in their "cooking boxes" for hours on end I do not know.

They would return from a foray, wearing nothing but shorts, sun-tanned and begrimed, and looking like men from another world.

Their normal day in the forward area began before dawn, when they rose in time to get the tanks out of laager and deployed before daylight. No hot meal could be made, because all lights and fires were forbidden during the hours of darkness, while the tanks were in laager.

The tanks moved out just before dawn, and spent the remainder of the hours of daylight deployed. If things were quiet, they prepared a hot meal at their battle station. But this was unusual rather than normal.

When tank combats took place, our tank crews would watch the German tanks being refuelled and restocked with ammunition, behind a screen of anti-tank guns. Our tanks were impotent to do anything about this, as the anti-tank guns had them outranged.

After the German tanks were ready, battle would be joined. Normally, it was a case of the German tanks trying to plaster our undergunned tanks from beyond the effective range of our tank guns. We, for our part, tried to use our greater powers of maneuvre by darting in and out, firing as we went.

This fencing business might go on for three or four hours, the tanks all closed down, the heat blistering the flesh as it touched the hot metal sides of the tanks.

The tanks, even after disengaging, would stay about the battlefield until seven, eight or even nine o'clock at night. Then they would leave the battlefield, and slink off to their respective hide-outs for the night.

But this was by no means the end of the day for the tank crews.

When they reached harbour they had to refuel, reload with ammunition, and find a meal.

This might not be completed until midnight or the early hours of the morning.

Even then the day's work was not over, because each man took a turn at guarding the laager. This turn of duty lasted an hour. So the tank crews got only two or three hours' sleep.

Few tank formations could weather more than five or six days' fighting without a serious fall in efficiency and morale, yet these men were as fit as any men in the desert.

The Germans had the same difficulties, and tried to solve them by sending a mobile field kitchen well forward with the tanks. It was probably very successful, but our boys---perhaps spitefully always made a dead set against these kitchens when they appeared.

They told me they never slept beside their tanks, because of the danger of bombing, and usually spent the night one or two hundred yards away, in some hole in the ground.

Of course, life was not a continuous series of battles. Often tanks would move out and forage for fifty and sixty miles without seeing a sign of the enemy.

At other times, when the Germans did not feel like battle, the engagement would be over before half the British tanks had had time to fire a single round.

Tank warfare was always confused, and things happened so quickly and disjointedly that it was rarely possible to get a reliable story of what had been taking place.

One of our armoured brigades had a narrow squeak through a clever action by the enemy. The Germans had apparently intercepted a wireless conversation, and then sent out a signal to this particular tank brigade directing it to a certain harbouring area. The message gave certain details of recognition signals which would be put up to identify the harbouring area in the darkness. The tank brigade duly arrived at the "harbour," and suddenly discovered they had run straight into an enemy ambush. The whole message was an enemy trick, and how well it had succeeded! The brigade fought its way out to safety without loss, but it was a very narrow squeak and wireless discipline was tightened up considerably for many months afterwards.

One thing we found about all tank men. They spoke with undisguised admiration of the tank crews in the German Afrika Korps. They said the Germans were very tough fighters, almost fanatical at times, and very clever in the way they handled their tanks.

At that time the Germans had a vast superiority in gun-power and while they had that advantage they were hard men to beat. If we fought on equal terms, Jerry fought well, but we had the beating of him. That opinion was held absolutely universally and was probably the reason why our tank crews never had their tails down when they were taking the most almighty hidings.

We all liked our armoured brigade men. They had a touch of something that was different. They were proud of themselves and prouder still to claim the title of "Queen of Battle," which had been held previously by the cavalry. We liked their buccaneering way of going about. They had confidence and cheekiness sticking out a mile.

The officers were the most unmilitary looking men in the whole British Army. They wore little or no military uniform

Invariably they wandered round wearing a golfing jacket and a pair of grey flannel bags ! Sometimes they deigned to wear a forage cap and could thus be distinguished as belonging to the Army. But other than that they looked like so many civilians wandering about. It was quite a common sight to see the same figures going off with shotguns, when the brigade was at rest stations, for a day's shooting in the Desert!

But they were perhaps the grandest officers out there. The men worshipped them. I nearly said would have died for them. They did; and mostly died with them. If ever officers and men showed perfect team work these did. No wonder they finally delivered the coup de grace to Rommel

At the other end of the scale, some of the bravest men I knew were the drivers of the Expeditionary Force Institute mobile canteens, who were not, of course, soldiers. These men turned up in the most unexpected places with their wandering canteens. And mostly, I fear, through no design of their own.

They were not equipped with the facilities for desert navigation and they were constantly being lost. Several of them drifted casually into enemy territory and were taken prisoner ! Still, they went gaily out on their own, until Army Headquarters intervened and said they must travel forward with convoys in future. Even after that the odd van would still meander into German territory.

They were really brave, those Expeditionary Force Institute men. They were not trained soldiers, even though they wore uniform, and they were essentially non-combatants.

Physical fitness was a fetish of desert warfare, and a very necessary fetish too. But it was not the fitness of the physical training instructor so much as developing the ability to rough it for days on end and then get stuck into a good battle at the other end.

I think one of the training notes issued to us put it rather nicely. It said:

"A man must be taught to sleep on the ground in the open without blankets for a week, be fed during this time on one quarter rations, and still be capable of first-class work for a period of twelve hours a day. Towards the end of such a training period the good men will have housed themselves in local drainpipes and other natural cover. Old bits of paper and sacking will keep them warm, and they will understand the value of food and water for perhaps the first time in their lives. The failures will be in a state of collapse, and if they cannot be successfully toughened in the course of such training they will be precious little use when the battle starts."

All that was very true, except that we never had time for the training. We just had to do it. And we had no drainpipes either!

Some other memories of these "peaceful" months remain. There was the now famous Indian order which instructed their night patrols always to attack an enemy post from the rear because---" The Italians can run faster than you."

Another often-repeated story of the Indians was about the brigadier of an Indian brigade who had just come through one of the most gruelling of all the difficult times suffered by the Indians. This brigadier had been resting for a few days when someone asked him how he liked desert warfare. His reply was: "Oh, all right, I suppose. But the trouble was that I had to do the job in a car, and when it was over I had to get in some vigorous exercise like digging to get back into form again." And that from a man who had fought a rearguard action for several days without any sleep at all

I remember one trick of the enemy which nearly caught us napping. During one trip to Msus we saw a couple of apparently derelict British lorries standing some little way off the road. One of my front springs was a bit groggy and I thought this was a good chance to bring in a spare or two. Half a dozen of us accordingly made for the lorries, when suddenly a machine gun opened up from them.

We flattened ourselves into a hollow in the sand and replied with a few rifle shots. Next thing I saw was the two lorries beetling across the Desert as fast as they could go, while the machine gun splattered our position, but without doing any damage.

We were wiser men as we watched the "wrecks" disappear behind a sand dune in a cloud of sand. One more lesson learnt; and we approached derelicts with caution after that. We found it was quite a common and very profitable practice of both sides to use each other's vehicles to trap the unwary. They became known as the Q ships of the Desert.

If the occupants of these two particular vehicles had held their fire until we were closer they would have reaped a good harvest, and I would not have been writing these words.

We had another experience which showed our lack of knowledge and took something of the conceit out of us. This came about through our growing scorn of the Desert. We thought we knew it pretty well and began to get careless about our compass reading. Consequently, once we got on what appeared to be our track we just bowled merrily along until we came to an intersection or branch and we then took our bearing again.

On this day we found our track and went gaily along for about fifteen or twenty miles when we happened on another column standing at the side of the track. The column commander hailed us and asked if we could tell him where he was. We gave him the information and then as we started off again saw that the track ended in virgin desert at this point ! It was then that we discovered we had been following in the tracks of the lost convoy, and had left the real track miles before.

We were rather sheepish when we spoke to the column commander again and told him that we were now as lost as he was! Anyway, we eventually got back on to the right track.

The moral of this story was not to rely on tracks. A single column would make a track as permanent in appearance as any of the accepted desert paths. We used our compasses more often after that.

Stories circulated freely about some of the Italian deception methods. It was said that the dummies which the Italians had put up in their dummy positions were clothed with the clothing from their dead. They did have uniforms, it is true, but I never knew whether the Italians really did this or not.

This was the time when we gradually learnt many of the enemy's more astute tricks, although something new was discovered every day. We neared some minefields just off our route, which had been recently marked by our sappers. There was the remains of an armoured car near the edge. Right across this minefield was the clear imprint of two or three tyre tracks where lorries had apparently driven through. Actually the marks had been carefully made by the Germans to tempt the unwary into taking the same path and finishing in Kingdom Come!

The armoured car had been unlucky, but I don't think we would have fallen for it. We were always taught to make our own tracks as often as possible, especially when travelling over unknown country. This was not because of minefields, but because, if you followed other tracks in drifts, the sand would clog your wheels and the broken surface give way completely and bog your lorry.

Driving by magnetic compass had become quite easy. It was rather complicated at first, but we soon found how to take a bearing on a certain point, head for it and then take another bearing to the next landmark, and so on. We often used clouds to take a bearing and calculated the drift of the clouds when we reached our next stage. The result of travelling like this was anything but a straight line. The route, when drawn on paper, looked like one of those weather charts, especially when the countryside was interspersed with wadis and heavy sand drifts.

Using the magnetic compass had various snags. A tin helmet would put out the reading by a great amount, as the iron in the helmet gave you a false magnetic north reading. Similarly, the steelwork in the bodies of the vehicles had that effect. Sometimes, unseen outcrops of metal would send the compass haywire and give the most fantastic results.

Generally, however, we took sufficient precautions to keep fairly right.

As well as the magnetic compass, we had the sun compass, which was a kind of elaborate sun-dial, and very simple to use. Still, there were the usual tricks to be learnt.

We were now fairly expert at driving by the stars too. Night driving lost much of its tediousness when the compass could be relegated to second place. Driving by the stars was a fascinating business and made very easy in the Desert because of the position of the North Star, which remained about 1-1/2 degrees from true north and made an excellent guide.

Many men have saved their lives by their ability to navigate the Desert by the stars alone, especially when they were cut off by an enemy advance and had to work their way back to our lines, travelling only by night.

Night movement was never popular. One of the great drawbacks was the amount of petrol used. Night travelling used up almost twice the petrol required for the same distance of daylight travel. Columns were normally controlled by light flashes. This was liable to be haphazard. Men failed to see the flashes and consequently were left stranded at some halt.

Another danger of night driving was falling asleep at the wheel. To prevent this we had frequent halts during the night, at which we sprinted a hundred yards and then doubled back to the lorries in a fully awakened condition. If it was raining and this was not practicable, we learnt that rubbing our ears very hard helped to keep us awake.

One night, when we were all in the middle of our sprint I heard the man in front of me shout, "God, we're running in a minefield." We picked our way back very carefully and had no casualties. We certainly were fully awake by the time we reached our lorries on that occasion.

In daylight travel, on the more populated routes, we rarely used a compass. Units were scattered all over this part of the desert and we named places according to the units located there. This held good as long as the positions around Knightsbridge were fairly static. Directions along these routes would probably be: Take Route F and when you see the headquarters of blank Armoured Brigade take left and travel for two miles until you reach the petrol dump, then turn right and carry on for three miles until you see the Field Ambulance, take right again and you will reach Acroma after another five miles. These directions were normally good enough to keep a traveller right, as long as the destination was on one of the so-called main traffic routes.

Perhaps my outstanding memory of the Desert is the few weeks in spring when it loses its drab, dun colour, and grass and flowers have a short but brilliant existence.

During this month, or so, the Desert gave birth to great sweeps of purple stock, tiny marigolds, red and yellow ranunculus and small blue irises. There were other flowers that I did not know. The marigolds formed great belts of golden carpets stretching for miles at times. The irises were like giant fields of bluebells and made us all completely homesick. Coming after the winter, this flowering looked magnificent and visitors to the battlefield at this time of the year could hardly have recognised the Desert by my descriptions of it at other times.

There were, of course, animals too. They were there all the year round, but somehow one didn't notice them until the spring, when they stood out from the landscape more sharply. Hares, jerboas and gazelles were fairly plentiful in the El Adem-Knightsbridge area. The jerboas were amusing creatures, just like miniature kangaroos. When we came across them they hopped away across the desert, with their gigantic ears flopping about in terror with each bound, only to stop every now and then, give a fearful look over their shoulders at the spitting, noisy mechanical monsters upsetting their playground, and then start off after this momentary pause and disappear over the skyline like a row of jumping jacks in silhouette.

The other desert animal was the pariah dog. This was a most repulsive-looking animal, for all the world like a hairless husky, being completely white and apparently smooth-skinned. These pariah dogs constantly awakened us at night with their dismal, weird howlings. They preyed on the squirrel-like desert rats and, despite our best efforts, they had other feeds.

The pariah dog was the only desert animal that had our active hatred. Their dreadful appearance, and unholy wailing, annoyed us so much that we had no compunction about shooting them when we had the opportunity.

After the short springtime, the Desert seemed to swallow up the vegetation overnight, and return to its normal condition, with only desert camel scrub to break the monotony.

Another misconception of the Desert that was rudely shaken out of my mind was about oases. I had always pictured these as clumps of palms and fig trees with a cool, everlasting spring in the centre, and perhaps a few huts or Bedouin tents alongside.

The real thing looked nothing like that. Most of them consisted of a well or spring, and a pretty dirty one at that. Otherwise there was nothing but the usual Desert.

Place names which began with Bir, meaning well, were also deceptive. Usually, there was a well in action at the spot, but by the time both sides had passed and repassed the wells they were no use at all. If they had not been salted, they were blown up with explosive. Sometimes it was a combination of both, the salt being thrown in and a small charge of gelignite exploded to mix up the contents

The water from many wells was normally undrinkable because it was naturally salty, being an outcrop from the sea, seeping under the desert floor.

One last disillusionment. All the names that one sees mentioned in the newspapers, such as Sidi Rezegh, really mean nothing at all. When I first visited Sidi Rezegh I looked everywhere for a village. There was no village, and never had been one. The site of Sidi Rezegh was the same as any other piece of Desert. The maps said, "Tomb of Holy Man, permanent structure," and this was the origin of the name! I never saw the tomb, and often thought that souvenir-hunters had probably tried to send that home too

In fact, there was no permanent structure in the Desert south of El Adem, except for the ruins of some ancient forts which appeared in the most unlikely places. Who used these forts and for what purpose I do not know. They were useful places for a halt, as it did give one the idea that it was a place. Normally, there was a sense of unreality when one stopped in the open Desert. It was like being nowhere, if such a thing is possible.

Along the coast there was a certain amount of fertile land, especially in the region of Derna, which attained quite a civilised aspect. The Italians had built good roads there, and these were under constant repair by native labour. We used to pass hundreds of these grinning African natives. I never saw one working. As we passed they gave us very mouthy, hearty smiles, flashing their teeth as though we were the Prodigal Son in person, arriving home. Yet the roads were repaired, so they must have worked some time.

One of the jobs they were doing was the building of small semicircular by-passes. At these points the main road was mined in places. Some of the sections were not mined, and so the enemy reconnaissance planes never knew whether we were mining sections of the road or not. The diversions were also useful when the road was bombed by the enemy and made unusable.

Other busy men along the main routes were the Royal Corps of Signals. These men deserve special mention for their work in the Desert. I got to know some of them very well when we were attached to the 7th Armoured Division for some time.

The 7th Armoured Divisional Signals included men who had seen service in the Desert from 1936. Originally, these men were part of the force that manned the Libyan-Egyptian frontier at the outbreak of war.

They had wonderful stories to tell us of their work in the first advance under General Wavell. When this push began, the personnel and equipment were hopelessly inadequate for the campaign that suddenly developed from what had been planned originally as a raid.

The wildest improvisations were made and the Italians made vital contributions as they abandoned material in their retreat. Without this material the Signals personnel could not have coped with communications and sooner or later the victorious advance would have been forced to halt for lack of information.

As it was, General Headquarters had to be kept in touch by wireless only. There was no line communication. Imagine controlling an army by wireless ! Yet it was done and well done.

The story of these signallers is a story of unending struggle against conditions that threatened to become impossible at any time. No more cruel circumstances could be imagined. The heat of the day and the cold of the night contributed their own problems. Sandstorms were complete nightmares. Rainstorms provided their own peculiar worries. In fact, everything seemed to be working against the supply of good communications. There was just no natural factor which could be called a helpmeet.

Operators worked in tents or dug-outs burrowed in the sand and flint of the Desert. In either case, they lived in a world of sand dust that clogged the instruments and even the Morse keys, almost as soon as the apparatus had been overhauled.

The linemen who erected all the telephone lines had an even worse job. Often, when an advance was planned, they were sent out ahead of the fighting troops and even behind the enemy lines to lay their vital communications system. At times they worked their way along side and through the middle of areas in which battles were at that time taking place.

Whenever we had a sandstorm the signallers used to shrug their shoulders and begin the collection of their kits. They knew without being told that there would be no sleep for the next few nights, as each sandstorm produced endless claims for their assistance as apparatus ceased to function.

The maids of all work---despatch riders---were a race apart. They lived odd lives. They appeared to be lonely individuals outside our army. Unescorted, and poorly armed, they ploughed their way through sandstorms, mud-bogs of sand and water, over boulders and through pot-holes which broke forks and human necks with equal indistinction.

Yet, everyone admitted, these despatch riders were the cheeriest men in the Desert.

At first they rode motor cycles, but later they were supplied with American jeeps. They did not take kindly to these jeeps at first. They considered it a bit "pansy" to ride on four wheels, and begged for their beloved motor cycles to be returned.

I remember coming on one despatch rider whose jeep was well and truly bogged. There was a blinding rainstorm and the despatch rider's language was equivalent to the addition of thunder and lightning. While we helped to get him back on to the track he cursed the inventor of the jeep, the people who manufactured it, the shipping agents and the British Army authorities that had inflicted this horror upon him.

He kept repeating in the most agonised tones: "Give me back my motor bike and this sort of b----- thing would never happen. It must be some agreement in this Lease-Lend business to complicate the war effort."

Eventually, though, the despatch riders fell in love with the jeeps, when they discovered their marvellous cross-country performance. Yet they missed the "glamour" of their motor cycles. No more weaving madly in and out of cursing convoys. They now had to pass in more stately fashion-"Like bleeding generals," as one remarked.

Yes, grand chaps they were. Always buzzing about like the proverbial busy bee. Always tinkering around to find some new perfection in their machines. No cavalryman ever loved or tended his horse more devotedly than these despatch riders their "mounts."

After a hundred or two hundred miles' run, finishing late at night, they would settle down to spend half the night repairing this part and adjusting that part until the final inspection revealed the acme of efficiency.

A friend remarked to me, with unconcealed envy in his voice, as we watched one despatch rider who had dropped in on us for the night pottering around his motor cycle: "These despatch riders are not b----- well human. They sniff round their machines like dogs licking their master." That maybe a little crudely put, but it somehow just fits the relationship between the despatch rider and his machine.

Many despatch riders lost their lives in the Desert. They lie buried in nameless graves alongside the roads which they knew so well. Many were maimed and crippled by dreadful accidents when urgency mattered more than the risk of the man's life, in an appalling sandstorm or pitch black, moonless night.

Sufficient tribute can never be paid to these men who, while they remained so individualistic, maintained a standard of discipline and devotion to duty that was unequalled by any other troops.

Altogether, the Royal Corps of Signals worked miracles, and then, when their desert taskmistress became extra troublesome, had to out-miracle their former miracles. Those are high-sounding words, but let me tell you just one example.

When Tobruk was besieged and completely cut off from the rest of our Army in Egypt, for seven months the Signals maintained line communication---that means, telephone wires were kept intact--=-throughout the whole period, despite the enemy's greatest effort to discover the lines and interrupt communications. That is an official fact, not just hearsay. What this meant in signallers' lives and how they did is best left to more competent persons to tell. It is sufficient here to say that they did perform this vital task.

Of course, we never referred to Signals personnel as signallers. There just had to be some nickname for them. And it was "Jimmy." The reference was to the figure of Mercury in the Signals badge. And "Jimmy" will always be their name as long as I know them.

Another arm of the Service that performed redoubtable feats in the Desert and added new lustre to their already glorious history were the Royal Artillery. Their badge and inscription "Ubique" (" Everywhere ") never became more true than under desert conditions.

It is probably hard to understand what a phenomenal change has come over the method of using artillery in this war. In the last war the gunners were placed solemnly in some site well to rearward of the infantry lines, and from their comparative safety they shelled the enemy when so instructed, usually without ever seeing the positions they fired at!

Out in the Desert conditions were different. The advent of large armoured formations completely changed the picture. So did the absence of any firm front line and the ease of manoeuvre in the Desert.

Here was a new position which meant that the artillery, as chief enemy of the tank, had to assume positions often in front of the infantry, but at any rate with the infantry. They had no secure gun positions well in rear.

This was the setting that brought about the many recorded acts of heroism by gunners which would have been undreamt of a few years ago. This was war tactics in reverse with a vengeance.

Few gunners could have imagined that they would be called upon to fight to the last man and the last round, just as infantry were instructed to do. And fewer still would have believed that this sort of stand was to become normal and not exceptional.

Yet, this is what actually happened in the desert time and again. On countless occasions gunners fought it out with enemy tanks and mobile artillery, without any other supporting arms. Their exploits are legion and need no repetition here.

But behind the public drama of the big battles there was the interesting way in which the gunners lived. They had conditions which differed from everybody else. By the nature of their task, they had to be spread about in penny packets along a position, and sometimes were isolated for days from the remainder of the troops.

The British 25-pounder field gun was very highly respected by the enemy, and who should know better than they what were the capabilities of the gun? They also respected the men who used the 25-pounders.

The Germans called the 25-pounder the "Zigeuner-gun," which means "Gipsy" or "Roving" gun. It earned this title because the Germans never knew where the pest would turn up next. It was always appearing in the most unpredictable places, sometimes places which the Germans had reconnoitred and written off as too difficult of access to be used by guns.

There is one outstanding example of gunners' bravery which is perhaps worth mentioning again. That was the bravery and ability with which the late Brigadier J. C. Campbell, V.C., handled his guns. He controlled his batteries from right in among them.

During one tank attack he controlled the guns from the gun positions and, as his men fell dead or wounded beside him, he finished by loading and firing a gun himself until that position was finally overrun.

Remember the movie films about him? That was the same "Jock" Campbell, who did more for morale of our troops at that time than twenty victories would have done.

Anyway, to descend from those dizzy heights to the life of the ordinary gunner. Putting the guns in position was not just a matter of driving up to the chosen site, unhitching the gun from the tractor, and that being that. The guns had to be dug in so that they were hard to see. Accommodation had to be dug from the desert floor.

An alternative site had to be selected and worked upon if possible. And simultaneously other men were probably building a dummy site to fox the enemy even more. Many units actually carried a dummy site already made up, and this was often in position before the actual gun site to be used was ready.

Once the guns were dug in and camouflaged the crews sat down to a period of boredom, which might last for weeks, or end in a fierce series of moves stretching for days and nights without any real rest.

While the sites were stationary a normal day would be: Rise at about 6 a.m.; wash up; breakfast at 7.30 a.m.; clean the guns and tidy up the ammunition; meet the water cart during the morning, and the ration truck in the afternoon and the remainder of the day was just waiting.

The gun crews had to be continually ready for action, and movement had to be kept to a minimum so as not to give away the gun positions. The enemy were up to all sorts of tricks to make us give away our gun sites. And woe betide the crews that did fire off a random round at some tank that came so innocently over a rise, like a lost sheep.

Frequent was the temptation to loose off at apparently sitting targets, which were, of course, decoys sent out by the enemy just to get us to reveal our positions and strength.

Occasionally the gunners were allowed small shoots, a few rounds of harassing fire, just to let the enemy know we were still alive.

Other than that, life was pretty dull for them. Most units arranged for daily reliefs. A man went from the gun lines to the forward positions for twenty-four hours and then came back to the gun lines for twenty-four hours' rest. In this way, men were kept keen and they got some sleep every alternate night.

There was one point about which we all pulled the gunners' legs. That was their universal habit of shaving even under the worst conditions. I very rarely saw an unshaven gunner. And their water ration in the forward posts was one gallon a day for all purposes for each man.

Most of this water went on making tea. There was a continual brew at any gun site almost all day long. Tea proved much more cooling in summer and warming in winter than beer, they used to say. But as beer was 1s. 8d. a pint, and not easy to get, I think they might have been a little prejudiced

An interesting sidelight on gunner activities was the report that artillery casualties at certain periods of our campaigns in the Western Desert were higher than those of any other arm. At other times the Royal Army Service Corps had casualties higher than all other arms put together. Both arms were heavy losers, I am sorry to say.

When we first arrived in the Nile Delta and received our lorries we were given strict instructions that we must put no unauthorised signs on them.

Nevertheless, we did scrawl on the names of our wives and girl friends, and lorries were known as "Eva" or "Betty" rather than by their official numbers.

Curiously, the higher authorities, after frowning on this practice at first, came round to the point of view that a man who put his sweetheart's name on a lorry would be unlikely to neglect her appearance

This proved sound enough psychology, and an order was eventually published allowing us to name our vehicles officially!

An amusing story was told me by one infantryman who had been on a patrol along the beaches outside Tobruk. Their patrol had crept to within a few feet of an Italo-German outpost and could hear conversation from inside the post. The leader of the patrol decided a course of action and started forward, when he found himself staring into the face of an Italian soldier. The patrol leader stuck the muzzle of his Tommy gun into the Italian's side and adjured him to keep silent. The Italian had been caught with his trousers down---literally---for when the patrol moved off with the prisoner, what with his efforts to keep up his trousers and keep his hands above his head at the same time, he eventually tripped over and gave away the position of the patrol.

The patrol fought its way back and the luckless Italian went with them---trousers and all!

Some of the coolest and bravest men in the Western Desert were the pilots of the artillery observation planes. These men used to go up in their tiny aeroplanes, and virtually hover over the enemy lines reporting observations on our gunfire.

Many were shot down by enemy Messerschmitts and were really a sitting target.

It was said that these machines had such a slow speed that they flew backwards in a strong wind

Life was one continual round of improvisation. There was always something missing; either lost or destroyed. War always demanded more than we had. Some of the uses made of things could, by no stretch of imagination, have been dreamt of by their manufacturers.

In Tobruk part of a consignment of 2,000 gallons of Yorkshire Relish which was unfit for human consumption was used to thin out camouflage paint! Several tons of useless Italian flour was used to make a paste to stick sand on dugouts and pillboxes, to make them harmonise with the local surroundings.

Much captured material was used by both sides. General Wavell launched his campaign with only five days' water, food and ammunition for all his troops, and any further advance depended upon whether we could capture the enemy's supplies. This we did.

The story of this first great campaign, which routed an Italian Army of 300,000 with a force of a few battalions, three field regiments, four tank regiments and one armoured car regiment, is a saga in itself.

Our patrols penetrated hundreds of miles in countless trips into enemy territory. Vehicles broke down again and again. Yet it is officially recorded that in the 500,000 miles covered by our patrols not a single vehicle was lost by mechanical breakdown

The water situation was met by using two R.A.S.C. companies as water carriers. Each vehicle carried five hundred gallons of water, which was rationed on a basis of one gallon per man per day for all purposes.

Our tank forces-small as they were-required twenty-five thousand gallons of petrol daily.

Therefore, when our campaign opened in the early morning of 9 November, 1940, with the Indian Motorised Division attacking the camp of Nibeiwa, it was planned only as a large-scale raid.

It was only through the ease with which we captured Sidi Barrani next day and the collection of great piles of booty that the raid developed into a campaign.

Some of the men who took part in this campaign told us how the defenders of Sidi Barrani were often found in their concrete shelters, lying with blankets over their heads as extra protection from our tanks

The work of the Royal Air Force was a little unusual too. Not only did they bomb the defences---they dropped loads of tin cans filled with stones to cover the noise of the approaching tanks!

But what kept the advance moving was the hundreds of Italian lorries which were abandoned by the enemy in perfect condition.

Our troops grabbed these, and not only did fighting units supplement their own transport with Italian lorries, but complete transport units were supplied with them!

The advance would not have been possible without these vehicles, and, in fact, was just possible with them.

Maintenance difficulties were immense and, theoretically, every third day was maintenance day, when the vehicle was overhauled by the driver. That was the theory, but in practice a large part of the force had to do maintenance at any time of the day or night, when the vehicle came to rest.

In later campaigns both sides used each other's material, and great confusion resulted.

One soon got to know the different guns by their peculiar noises, but that was not much good as a rule, because we never knew which side was firing the guns

Leave---ah! that magic word---was granted to me out of the blue on Good Friday, 1942. I was given fourteen days' leave-----but as nine days were normally spent in travelling to Cairo, the actual period of leave was five days.

I was warned on the previous day; and all that night I dreamt of hot baths, showers, cinemas, drink, bacon and eggs, clean clothes and a thousand other things. How nice to have a cup of tea with fresh milk and fresh water! How refreshing to bathe in cool water!

But I dismissed those thoughts. Perhaps it would be cancelled! Perhaps I would be wounded on the way to Cairo ! Supposing the train got stuck and I couldn't make it!

Good Friday morning came, and I was still alive, anyway!

Firstly, another driver and I made for the Transit Camp at Acroma. We did not stay there long, although I could have sworn it was ten years.

From there we moved off by road to Fort Capuzzo. Six hours it took us, going along the "Via Balba," I fancy. Every hour was sixty minutes less before reaching civilisation!

Would women have changed much, I wondered? Perhaps there were new dress fashions ! Did people still drink coffee in the mornings?

The "Cook's Tour" sped on. I had already spent half my leave, in imagination, by the time we reached Capuzzo.

There was a Transit Camp there, but all space was full when we arrived. The railway had been extended as far as the Italian fort by this time, and we were booked to move to Alexandria by train next morning.

The Germans were showing a lively interest in our supply lines at this time, and my friend and I decided to take a chance by road.

Having decided our plan of campaign, we snuggled down for the night under a wall of the ruined fort. I remember the full moon that night. The Desert never looked lovelier---to get away from!

We wakened at 5.30 a.m. and started on a two miles' walk to the Italian monument on the Alexandria-Capuzzo road. We were in full marching order, pack, haversack, respirator, rifle, etc. We passed the German cemetery, wished it had been more full; and then began the wait for a lorry, Alexandria bound.

We had waited only an hour when a lorry trundled eastwards. We hailed the driver, and he said he was going straight through to Alexandria.

For fourteen hours we crawled along. The lorry seemed to go more slowly every minute. At Halfaya Pass we wound our way down to the Egyptian plains, and had breakfast outside Sollum. We could see the smooth blue waters of the Mediterranean, but our minds were in Cairo

We saw little activity on the coast road. Airfields seemed to be everywhere. Many aircraft came over at lorry height, but they were all our own. We saw a flight of torpedo bombers heading out for some of Rommel's supply ships.

It was evening when we reached Alexandria. We reported to Mustapha Barracks, and five minutes later we were heading for Alexandria proper. We were still in our desert outfits; we itched a bit, and we were probably two very unsavoury specimens, but we ate eggs and chips until we thought we would "bust."

Then we went to a film show and saw a newsreel of activity in the Western Desert ! We nearly ran out again!

In barracks again for the night we began a cleaning-up programme, and by morning, when we climbed on board the train to Cairo, we were fairly presentable.

On arrival in Cairo we deposited our rifles in the armoury, reported to the R.T.O., and then found ourselves a billet with a Greek family. Bed and breakfast cost 4s. per day.

The sensation of getting into a bath was almost too much. This was the first hot bath since leaving home ! I stayed there for two hours, and not all the sights of Egypt could have dragged me out.

The next five days were spent hilariously touring Cairo. We ate almost all day long. The tea made with fresh water proved to be unpalatable without a touch of salt! So we had to add salt for the first two or three days before we could get back to normal fresh water.

The round of pleasures soon ended, but I was not to return to the Desert yet awhile. I had had a fairly painful foot for some time, and this was now seen to be what we called "Desert Rot."

I was sent off to hospital and bed. The hospital was at Heliopolis, and the next twenty-one days were a life apart. The Western Desert disappeared as though it had never existed.

A plague of bugs invaded us for a time, and we were rather uncomfortable during this attack. The wards reeked with paraffin, and then the plague subsided almost as quickly as it began.

My foot was finally pronounced O.K. once more, and after an unforgettable interlude, I gathered up my kit, and once more headed for the Desert.

Things were warming up all along the forward areas, and I had a premonition of hectic days ahead.

How right I was!

There was great tension in the forward areas when I returned to my unit in May. The German air force was more active than ever, and continual strafing of our supply lines was a daily feature of operations. Raiding columns, strongly reinforced with tanks, became more audacious, and our own patrolling reached a new intensity.

A new tempo of movement replaced the steady drill of the past few months. Everything was quickened, but jerky. Reconnaissances of Tobruk became more frequent, and enemy aerial attacks flared up, as the enemy well knew that Tobruk had become our main source of supply for the desert forces.

Rumours of large-scale movement behind the enemy lines became widespread. Tanks and armoured cars, heavily supported by mobile guns, were seen taking up positions in the Bir Temrad area.

By the middle of May there was fairly general expectation of an attack, or at least a sortie in force. Steady reinforcements had flown into Rommel's army. We had received reinforcements too, but the main reinforcements were still on the high seas, making the long and laborious journey via the Cape.

It was to be some time after that I met these reinforcements, two fine divisions---the 51st and 44th---as they made their way forward to our hard-pressed Alamein positions. For the present we had to remain content with the forces at our disposal.

The position, then, was that we were fairly equidistant from our supply bases. Each side had a long desert haul, the Germans from Tripoli and ourselves from Egypt. These bases were, however, supported by nearer ports in the immediate rear. We had Tobruk; and the enemy had Benghasi. The enemy's advantage lay in their short supply line across the Mediterranean, compared with our gigantic trip round the Cape. To counter-balance this superiority, the Navy submarines, destroyers and torpedo planes were taking a heavy toll of the enemy's shipping.

Nevertheless, it appeared that the enemy were better served than we were, and it was not surprising if he tried to take advantage of this temporary superiority.

This was the background of the Western Desert when Rommel launched his attack on May 26. It was preceded by the heaviest air attack we had yet received on our forward positions. Everything was switched momentarily from strategic bombing of supply lines to an all-out blitz on our fighting troops.

From the beginning of the attack the relation of my own movements to the actual course of the battle by times and dates became blurred. There was no neat time sequence whereby I can say that we did this or that on such and such a day, while other troops were doing something else.

All that emerges are the immediate happenings in which I was concerned, supported by first-hand accounts of other actions in other parts of the battle area. Many stories have since been confirmed by eye-witnesses or participants. These accounts I have recorded. Others I have cast aside, as I have no confirmation of their truth.

Some of our companies were working in the southerly portion of the line, in the area of Bir Hakeim. Our men who eventually survived told me how the tension grew as the German armoured formations advanced from Rotunda Segnali, and then swung southwards. It was obvious that the German columns were going to attempt to work their way round our southern flank.

On the 27th our own end of the front---at Gazala---became active. It looked like the real thing. Simultaneously the Germans launched their attack between Bir Hakeim and El Gobi.

Our own tank forces went into action on this front and drove off the enemy, but a breach was made in our minefield in the centre of the front, north of Bir Hakeim.

Then began nightmare days. We rushed backwards and forwards with ammunition and petrol as fast as we could go. The reports became more and more confused. Rommel was attacking! Rommel was withdrawing through the minefield again ! Rommel had broken through afresh ! Bir Hakeim had fallen---no, it hadn't!

All I knew was that the Gazala end was still intact, but that German troops were in the middle of our defensive positions near Knightsbridge. These forces were continuously being reported as annihilated, yet as each day dawned they were still there.

Our artillery was doing grand work around Gazala. They broke up repeated formations of tanks. I saw one formation head forward, then virtually disappear in geysers of sands as our artillery got their range. For a few minutes the formation held its course, but then turned about and dispersed in all directions.

Brushes with enemy columns were becoming more frequent as the enemy fanned out in the centre, around Knightsbridge. Rommel appeared to be in a difficult position. Chains of our aircraft went over, daily, to drive off his supply columns and leave his tank forces isolated behind our lines. I saw British and Indian troops move up to close the gap, and tackle the southern arm of Rommel's forces assaulting Bir Hakeim.

It was about this time that a violent sandstorm shut down operations almost completely. Movement was reduced to a crawl and both sides were hopelessly lost, at times, when in the forward areas. This day is recorded as 2 June. In the evening a tank battle took place near Acroma. As we moved forward we could see the flashes of tank guns and anti-tank artillery, but saw nothing of the actual fight.

Reports of further attacks on Bir Hakeim came in. We had the wireless that day and heard very optimistic reports from the B.B.C. We, too, were fairly optimistic at that point.

A column returned to our location, having been right behind the enemy lines miles beyond Sidra. They had damaged a great deal of Rommel's supply transport. But counterbalancing this came news that a British column attempting to supply Bir Hakeim had been wiped out.

We were supplying the 7th Armoured Division at this stage, and heard with great depression how General Messervy, Commander of the Division, had been captured. Next day, to our surprise, he was back in command; and was said to have escaped from captivity dressed as a British private.

The next few days were very confused. Our supplies were being switched all over the front, it seemed. Gradually activity concentrated in the Knightsbridge area. Our tanks went forward in strength, and joined battle with Rommel's armour.

My outstanding memory of this is the work of recovery units, working night and day, in all sorts of places, trying to get our battered tanks back into battle.

As soon as the battle subsided, and even during the heat of battle, recovery crews would creep into no-man's-land and pull out the tanks from under the noses of the enemy. Not only our own tanks, but enemy tanks, too, were recovered in this fashion. Sometimes, a crew would move out to collect a tank, only to find the enemy recovery men were already busy trying to steal it away. Then the R.E.M.E. men had to fight for the tank. Usually they were successful and the crippled armourclads were brought back behind our lines.

There is one magnificent story of one R.E.M.E. recovery section who were ordered, "under pain of death," to get right up with the forward troops during the night, and be ready to recover casualties when hell broke out next morning.

The section did as ordered, and when dawn broke both the enemy troops and our own troops looked from their positions to see the R.E.M.E. section plumb in the centre of no-man's-land

It got back safely, too.

It was a standing joke for months afterwards, but it showed how our recovery organisation got right on top of their job.

Our attack was obviously not successful, and Rommel launched his whole armoured forces, it seemed, against us during the weekend. Two platoons of our company were ordered to stand by for the relief of Bir Hakeim.

We moved that part of the company towards Bir Hakeim, but the terrific strafing of the area by dive-bombers brought the column to a halt. For four days they were pinned to the ground. The men dug themselves holes in the ground and lived on bully beef and biscuits during daylight. If the strafing eased, in the evening, it was possible to get a hot meal.

At last the order came to move forward, and with an armoured escort the column slipped into the Bir Hakeim position. A rendezvous had been made with the French and a large number of the Garrison were ferried to safety.

Then the column was ordered back again to bring out more men. This time it was too late. The Germans, realising they had been outwitted, had sent strong raiding columns round their rear and trapped the lorries as they came out. There were only a few survivors from nearly two hundred men.

Some of the survivors, who joined us at Matruh, told how they saw our boys killed and captured, and were unable to do anything about it. Several men escaped on foot after their lorries had been smashed.

While this was taking place, the rest of the company was preparing to evacuate Tobruk. Stores, personnel, petrol and everything that was movable was shipped into lorries.

Survivors of the Knightsbridge Cauldron battle began to limp back. They told us the story of that immortal day. How our tanks had charged like a cavalry brigade right into the enemy's concealed anti-tank guns, and how the remnants fought throughout the day, their numbers depleted hourly.

The rest of that story is too well known to bear repetition, but the sight of those stunned and lifeless men will always live with me. The thing that lingered was the almost terrifying regularity with which each one repeated again and again: "Oh, God, if only I could get at those b----s again!"

There was never a whimper. No one bemoaned his fate. As the cluster of vehicles grew into a disorderly mass along the road of retreat, I watched those men sit silent with their agonising memories.

They had seen friends killed and maimed and had been helpless to assist them. They had haunted the battlefield after nightfall to extricate our men from the tangled wreckage of the carnage of the Knightsbridge Cauldron.

I shall never forget that cargo of silent men. When I was on a ship, bound for home, and heard of the great advance of the Eighth Army once more, I saw those men again, and prayed to God they were in the van of that attack.

Near El Adem a general was directing traffic and urging men to get back as fast as they could It was said to be General Ritchie. I did not know him and cannot vouch for that, but it was most certainly a general.

As the columns slowed down, more and more men limbered themselves on to the already overcrowded lorries. They hung like flies from the superstructures and backboards. Some sat on the wings and bonnet.

Nothing could be more terrifying than an army in retreat. When we received the order, "Every man for himself," in Belgium in 1940, we were filled with a dreadful fear. It was like pitting one's own puny resources against the whole German Army. But the close nature of that country prevented one from seeing the exact implication of those words. There was always the feeling that this might only apply to a few of you.

But here in the desert it seemed the whole British war machine had assembled. Column after column of irregularly spaced vehicles stretched to the horizon. The Desert appeared to be crammed full of our retiring troops. As we passed infantrymen trudging wearily eastwards, faces set and continually looking back over the shoulders, the whole frightful panorama could not fail to give us a nasty feeling inside.

And all this time the German Air Force was battering at us. The giant sandstorm that we ourselves were creating would be rent suddenly by a fountain of sand leaping skywards, topped by flying fragments of lorries, stores and men, to subside again, leaving the debris spread-eagled over the Western Desert's voracious sands. Hundreds of bombs left their mark in this fashion.

Sometimes a sand cloud ahead would diminish ever so gradually and a vehicle would chug to a halt, for lack of petrol or because of some mechanical difficulty. The men would pile out and seek lifts from other vehicles, if the trouble was serious. Petrol would be begged from other lorries, if that was the cause of the stoppage, and perhaps the stranded vehicle would join the cavalcade again. Perhaps not, and then the drivers systematically smashed the working parts and began the journey on foot until they, too, could get a lift.

Tobruk was at "stand-to" when we left. Every post was manned and a strong garrison was being formed. Our retiring army was passed by strong formations moving forward into Tobruk.

A last-minute order was given to one Tank Transporter Company, when under shellfire at El Adem, to take tanks forwards. This was done and the tank transporters returned to Tobruk area. Another sticky job awaited them there. Tanks and gun tractors with guns had been abandoned by their crews through lack of petrol. The Tank Transporter Company refuelled the tanks and tractors and brought them out to safety, later restoring them to gunners and tank crews.

No one had any idea we would retire beyond the Egyptian frontier in this see-saw struggle. We all talked of how Tobruk would hold out---as it had done before. We had seen the men going in to its defence. No one dreamed that Tobruk would surrender within forty-eight hours.

We stopped at Mersa Matruh and prepared to resume our supply duties, but were suddenly ordered to withdraw to Fuka. Even then we did not realise the withdrawal was general.

Then came the news of Tobruk's capitulation. I think we knew then it was the end. Some began to talk about Dunkirk again. We began to fear a complete withdrawal from Egypt.

Always, our thoughts were interrupted by the high whine of bombs and the consequent disruption of the traffic.

The route was marked with great dumps of blazing stores. Everything that could not be removed was systematically destroyed. The night was lit by these beacons, until parts of the road were like a red daylight, with thin ghostly streams of men and towering shadows of lorries sidling past like the phantoms of an inferno.

If ever men trudged through Hell in the literal sense, those men did. The work of three years lay tumbled down about their feet. The thousands of lives had been in vain. The little crosses by the roadside seemed to be thrusting out their hands in mute agony, as though blaming us for letting them down.

Yet there was never a man who was not proud to be British. Never once did I hear a man want to give in. It was like a host of weary farmers whose crops have been blown to the four winds, trudging home full of hate for Nature, but determined in a resigned way to do battle in the coming months. Even this almost uncontrolled retreat was filled with some sort of determination that overrode our temporary fears about evacuation.

We had reached Fuka and halted for a sleep during the night when I heard the menacing noise of a falling bomb. It had a strangely reminiscent note, like the other bomb that wounded me at Dunkirk. I flung myself to the ground beside my lorry, as the bomb exploded. I remembered nothing more.

It was just that. No fuss, no heroism, no blind fear. It was all over and I knew nothing. From correspondence since that night, I have been told that my lorry was wrecked. Nine men were killed. I appear to have been nearer to the bomb than most, but by a freak of Fate I was unharmed by the splinters, but severely shell-shocked.

In the midst of this retreat I was taken back to the hospital at Kantara. How, I do not know. As I recovered consciousness my mind completed a strange metamorphosis. I lived again the evacuation of Dunkirk. Each detail returned as clearly as though it had just happened. I had no memory of Fuka. Only Dunkirk.... Dunkirk.... Dunkirk! I sweated in the terrible agony of that experience.

I lived it time and again, each memory etching itself more clearly than on the previous occasion.

There was the beach and the lorries nearby. The sharp whine ---the different whine, that one which comes to a few men to remember, the whine that means death.

The mind plays queer tricks at times like these, yet the subconscious may reveal a greater truth than the forced memory of normal consciousness. Always I felt the high whine dying into a thin rush of air that immediately preceded the cataclysm. There was no memory of noise as the bomb exploded, only the faint sudden swish of air like the last expiring breath of a dying man.

As I lay beneath that lorry at Dunkirk I was frankly terrified, even in the midst of diving for safety. I somehow felt this was my turn, and the earth met me with a rush as I fell prone beneath the lorry.

Then that noise, and I remembered no more, until I felt the comforting hands of friends lifting me across the heavy sands of Dunkirk beaches.

As I was helped on board the destroyer I heard someone say, "H.M.S. Greyhound." This thought became inexorably mixed up with long columns of greyhound vehicles bounding across the Desert, and jerboas and hares running and jumping frantically in the distance. Then the cool, grey outline of the destroyer H.M.S. Greyhound returned.

I was sent below and lay there while the bombs fell around the destroyer. A sickening thump brought me to the deck again. The gunlayer, I think, was being carried away. The deck was a shambles. The threatening zoom of another plane sounded nearer and I flung myself against the gun turret as bullets flicked splinters from the deck.

Hardly had this ended when a further bomb struck the ship and her speed slackened. The Dunkirk coastline was only a few miles away. Then another, and another, bomb struck the destroyer.

Four times she was hit. I then lay in the well against the side of the ship. I had stopped thinking. I only waited.

Help came from another destroyer, which took us in tow, but the effort was too much. The hawser snapped and we prepared to abandon ship. Gradually we were transferred to the other destroyer. I could not remember whether we were machinegunned or not.

At last we sighted the English coast. We entered Dover Harbour, and, dazed and bewildered, I went to the Transit Camp at Blackwater. I felt fully recovered by this time and was sent on forty-eight hours' leave, but reaction set in and I was sent to hospital for seven weeks. I lost the sight of my left eye as a result.

This was the incident I lived again, and again, until my mind clicked and this newest visit to hospital crystallised into its right sequence.

I still had little idea what had happened at Fuka. I did not realise I had reached there until the report was read to me at the hospital. Even now, that last few minutes before the bomb fell are blurred and indistinct.

The care and kindness with which I was tended at Kentara Hospital was even more remarkable when one realised the plight of our forces at Alamein. Then, I had no idea where they were. When I asked what was happening, I was told to "Be quiet and rest."

But the news soon spread. Fresh arrivals from the front brought their own stories of conditions there. Everywhere was an acute anxiety about our future in Egypt. The hospital was standing by for emergency evacuation. Men were being dealt with as quickly as willing hands and hearts could repair their tortured minds and bodies and send them onwards to peace and safety, or back to the maw of the Western Desert.

I was regraded medical category C by the hospital psychiatrist and eventually arrived at a camp on the side of the Suez Canal to await a ship home. It was here that the first cheering sight, for weeks, greeted us. Freshly arrived from England were the 51st and 44th Divisions. Never were men keener to get into the fight. Night after night we told them the little we knew about the Desert. We gave them gladly our second-hand experiences, and tried to make them desert-wise by our chatter.

Their keenness was wonderful. Men were offering to revert to the ranks right, left and centre, so that they could get into the fighting. The divisions were still there when I left for Taufiq and began the first stage of my voyage home.

More depression settled around us at Taufiq. Not only were soldiers being evacuated, but large numbers of civilian women and children were being taken on board a big ship.

We soldiers were a motley collection. There were the wounded, men on compassionate posting and men who had completed their time with the colours. All had stories to tell, but we spoke little during the early part of the trip, as the intense heat in the Red Sea proved intolerable. After one day, as many of us as could move unaided slept on the decks. It took us nine days to reach Durban. Conditions were indeed different from the reverse trip, which had taken me into the Western Desert.

We were buoyed up, too, with the thought of getting home again. At this stage, none of us would have admitted that we thought of anything but reaching home safely. There was no hankering after a return to the Desert. Even while we did not like leaving the grand fellows we had come to know as brothers, in our respective units, the primal sense was one of great expectancy at the idea of seeing home again.

The only incident that marred our happiness was a plague of bugs that went from end to end of the ship. They were not conducive to comfort, but even their presence was accepted with reasonable fortitude.

At Durban, civilians and soldiers went separate ways. These civilians had been kindness itself to us. Even though they were agitated about husbands and sons left in the Nile Delta, they were always ready to help us in every way.

We were sent inland to Clarewood Camp, where we stayed for a day or two. I was able to take a train into Durban. It cost 6d. return. I looked up the friends I had made on my outward trip. They gave me a wonderful time and introduced me to many other South Africans who were equally kind.

They were proud of their South African troops, and right well they might have been. I told them some of the adventures of the South Africans and we sat up late at night talking of the war in the Desert.

Then we were taken to a cargo-cum-passenger boat. As well as the British troops, 1,800 Italian prisoners were brought on board.

The voyage of two days to Capetown was a nightmare. The weather worsened into a gale off the Cape and everyone was violently seasick. At Capetown we joined company with other ships and together we moved up the West African coast.

We were surprised, and delighted, to find ourselves escorted by two battleships and two destroyers, and they accompanied us to West Africa. There were no incidents.

For some days we stayed in this West African port, while the ship bunkered. No shore leave was granted and the natives repeated their performance of trying to sell us fruit. This time we were sternly forbidden by the ship's authorities to buy any, as malaria and dysentery had been traced on other ships to this source. My mind flew back to the outward trip, when dysentery attacked us so badly after leaving this port. Perhaps it had been the fruit and not the water, which we had blamed at the time. The remainder of the trip was uneventful.

The sight of England as Liverpool emerged from the horizon one day was unforgettable. I can't describe my feelings at the sight of our homeland again.

I felt like crying. I wanted to laugh and cheer. I looked at my neighbours. They, too, were overfull with emotion. Actually no one spoke for a considerable time. We merely feasted our eyes on the outline of the coast as it grew larger and larger.

That night we stepped ashore, and rubbed our feet into the solid ground of the dockside as though we did not believe it. Suddenly someone laughed. Others followed and then we let out one mad cheer after another.

The tense feeling left us and we relaxed into normality. It was only then that my thoughts really returned to the Western Desert. It was as though a valve had been loosened. It was probably the security of touching land again.

Anyway, the train journey to the holding battalion and then home was full of thoughts about "the blue." I hardly brought my mind to home until I was within sight of the house.

Then, I remembered I had a baby daughter whom I had not seen... and the Western Desert faded into an unreal shadow for ever lurking in the recesses of my brain.

The war is finished there now. The wreckage strewn over miles of desert will disappear beneath the shifting sands, if the natives have not cleaned it up, as, in part at least, they will.

Perhaps my lorry, with the chalk-marked name of my wife on the radiator, will be touring the desert in a thousand parts, carried by some souvenir-hunting travellers in the years to come. Perhaps it is already buried and will sink voiceless into the sands of time.

The white crosses that we placed at the foot of Halfaya. Perhaps they too will be blown over and hidden by the all-encompassing sand.

Those men are dead. Their individual deaths will be remembered by so few of us, and soon by none. But their immortal glory will remain as history unfolds the unforgettable career of the Eighth Army: that army of shopkeepers, labourers, bank clerks and the hundred-and-one other vocations in this land. Yes, the dead will live on.

Not far away, over the waters of the blue Mediterranean, lies another soldier of another war---a great poet, Rupert Brooke. Surely his eyes must turn southwards and his lips murmur again, for this new generation:

"Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away: poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those that would have been
Their sons, they gave, their immortality. . .

No, we shall not forget.

Well, that is the end of my story. Many other experiences remain unwritten; some because of military necessity and others because they flooded back when most of this book was already written.

There is one aspect of these experiences which I have not written about-and that is the result on the man himself.

What happens to the make-up of the man when he spends one, two, three or even four years in the inhospitable Desert under conditions of war?

It seemed to affect each nationality in a different way.

The Italians quite plainly were frightened of the Desert. They showed this in every way, and were very disinclined to leave the long straight vias (roads) they had built in the coastal areas. They also loved good living too much to get far away from civilisation. They had many camp followers; some of whom were often left behind in their frequent retreats ! The Desert destroyed Italian morale.

How little they loved the war was evident from their official Army song book, many of which fell into our hands,. We spent many nights singing their songs, most of which were laments.

One typical extract---which sounded more like mutiny to us ---was this:

"Captain, captain of the guard,
Summon the buglers all,
Make them stand in the barrack square
And sound the demob call.

Driver, driver of the truck,
Start your engine off.
We're in a hurry to get home;
Of war we've had enough.

Oh, driver, driver of the bus,
Run through the streets of Rome;
Make her go like a racing car.
We're hurrying to get home."

No, the Italians' hearts were not in the fight. The individual soldiers fought well at times, and were intelligent and resourceful, but they definitely lacked the spirit to fight.

The Germans disliked the Desert intensely and were never quite sure of themselves. Only those who had come from the Russian front could have imagined anything worse. They were kept going by their arrogance and conceit at belonging to the Afrika Korps. But they were never comfortable, and expressed in many little ways that German overlordship of Europe should not have necessitated this particular campaign.

The Indians were most at home I think, although one could rarely find any expression on their dark, immobile faces. Whether they enjoyed it or not I cannot say; but they existed apparently more comfortably than anyone else. They fought magnificently on every occasion they were put into battle, and their audacity at times---such as when they evacuated Benghasi by going straight through the Italian Ariete Division !---showed their supreme confidence in their ability to beat the Desert.

The South Africans and Australians were almost as completely at home.

We British arrived rather timorous and a little worried about the Desert. We were very much "Hollywood" in our ideas. We pictured harems, swaying-robed Arabs on sleek Arabian horses, long lines of British soldiers tramping endlessly through the waterless sand, dropping by the wayside as thirst weakened and finally halted their faltering steps! It was all very Beau Geste and Foreign Legion !

But once we had seen the Desert we settled down to it with a sense of humour. With that great British spirit of ability to compromise, we made the best of every bad situation. While we never mastered the unconquerable Desert, at least we gave it a good hiding on occasions, because there were times when victims appeared to be certain, only for some miracle to intervene and save men from certain death.

It was only by meeting the Desert as another enemy, and a living enemy, in all its moods, that we were able to get it in the right perspective.

The life was appalling at times. The loneliness and discomfort broke up the weaker natures. The absence of women of any kind drove men's minds back to thoughts of home. This was not always pleasant, but it made us realise the great civilisation we were fighting for.

Always men asked themselves, "What are we fighting for?" There was nothing of the dumb acceptance of war, as is so easily the lot when at home and all modern comforts are at hand. It is easy to think around the war when one lives in an English town or village.

But there, in the Desert, men asked "Why?" again and again. There had to be some good and justifiable reason for fighting in such inhospitable climes. No men fought merely for the sake of fighting.

Admittedly we knew of German plans for the conquest of Europe. We knew this was a bad thing. We would probably have fought, merely to prevent that happening.

Yet, it was a stronger spirit that inspired us. It was a love of home, and a desire to get home again as quickly as possible.

We knew, then, that Britain and its homes was something worth fighting for. It was odd that we had to sail sixteen thousand miles, and live like wild animals, before we could appreciate the beauty and stateliness of our own land; yes, even the unlovely slums of London and Birmingham took on a new light out there.

As we hardened up under our work; as bodies became fitter and our minds became clearer, we developed an intense pride in being British.