Bill Aldcroft's experiences in North Africa

My Mate George -

The battle for Tunisia was behind us and what a bloody waste of good men it was too, a lot of fine mates who never made it were at that time lying in unmarked graves in the  Atlas mountains. What was left of the  rest of the 2nd Parachute Battalion was now resting in some God forsaken shithole of a place outside of Tunis waiting for reinforcements ready for the Italian and Greek campaigns to start.

Having been wounded I had just returned to my Battalion from Hospital and found my old mate from our teen  years  George James on punishment fatigue in the cook tent.  George, a Cockney like me, was forever in trouble, nothing serious but enough to annoy our CO.  George was the salt of the earth and an inveterate rogue who always had some scheme to make money going all the time.  The moment I walked into the cook tent he pulled me to one side and asked me if I'd like to join him in his latest business deal he had going; naturally I said yes, because if George was in it then it would be making a profit somehow.  He had the job of making the buckets of tea for each meal and after the evening meal he had to 'wash up' the tea buckets amongst other things ready for breakfast.  He also had to report for 'Jankers' at the guard tent this was  keep him occupied until last post was called.  So he was also confined to Camp for 21 days for some minor misdemeanour and so he  wasn't allowed to go into the nearby Arab village  or to Tunis during the  weekends.  As I was still on light duties I could leave camp any time so I became George's helper.  It turns out the he was selling bags of tea to the local Arabs.  The tea arrived in large cotton bags in the Army rations. What he was doing was carefully opening the bags and saving them.  He opened each one with a great deal of care and made the buckets of  tea.  After the meals and the tea had been drunk ,he emptied the tea grouts from the buckets onto a ground sheet to dry in the hot African sun. Once dried he put them back into the original bag and then stitched it up  and sold it to an Arab contact who was none the wiser who thought it was the real deal and kept asking for more .  The problem was that the Arabs had been stopped getting into the Camp to trade because they were so light fingered.  Local money was useless to us and to them at the time and we were happy to  simply to barter one thing for another. So my task was to take the alleged tea bags out of the camp in my small pack, and bring back Watermelons, Arab bread, hard-boiled eggs, dates some fruit and other delicacies we didn't get in our 'C' Rations.  As I wasn't able to bring all the goodies back myself ,  a couple mates from our platoon were used just to collect the ill-gotten gains as well.  They didn't know exactly what was going on as it was less said the better, so I was the only smuggler of what the Arabs thought was real tea.  Nobody asked any questions and we all enjoyed the fruits of Georges labours including the Officers mess who had no idea where the sliced water melon they had as an after dinner desert really come from. George would have been the only person in the history of the Army that was bitterly disappointed when he finished Jankers.  He even thought of deliberately getting into trouble again and doing some more Jankers, but his chances of ending up back in the cook tent were not so hot as he might be put on 'Toilet Bucket' fatigue instead, and that was a task nobody in their right mind wanted. Mind you George did work out that the Arabs would probably buy human waste for their fields, but the mere thought of transporting it even put him off .  On top of which our Battalion CO Lt. Col Frost, who finished up a General,  had already told him any more 'escapades' and he would consider an RTU back to the East Surrey Regiment from whence he came. Little did he know about any other escapades. Or did he?  

German and Italian officers revolvers that went missing from Yanks Armory ,sold back to the Yanks for real USA dollars had come to end when the goods were no longer available. But the Yanks it seemed  were far more upset when a Jeep with a  trailer load of beer and Coca Cola making syrup disappeared from a shed on the well-guarded  nearby Air Strip.  The culprits were never found. Suspicion was somewhat diverted from the Para's Camp, when empty beer bottles and the bulk Coke container where found in the garbage dump at the nearby American Air Force Camp. The jeep and trailer were never located. Despite an intensive investigation by the Red Caps on behalf of the Yanks who were very upset about the missing grog, and suspected it must have been them bloody 'Limey's , it failed implicate anyone in our Battalion. The Red Caps I am sure  were also pissed off at finding a carton of beer in their camp, but they kept very quiet about it.

Oh dear, this was supposed to be the North African War story that I was asked to write. Somehow don't think it was quite what they wanted.

George later became  Lt Col. Frost's trusted  'runner'  at the battle of Arnhem, and was captured with him. As a POW  he was sent to work in the coal mines of 'Silica, that nearly killed him , and me as his cockney mate, was sent to a railway workshop in Poland.  We never saw each other again for 55 years, until we met in Australia.

He did his last 'jump a couple of years ago in New Zealand  where he is buried beside our long time suffering  Platoon Sergeant MacDonald who called us a pair of cockney 'gits . But sadly its a long way from the sound of the Bow Bells in the East End of London where George  and I were born. Or  from the Gorbals in Glasgow where Buster McDonald came from.

Now how  did  Sergeant McDonald get away with this I don't really know.  He only ever wore a red beret on parade. But in action or off duty he adorned  some sort of 'gay hat' adorned with the Regimental  Badge of The Argyle and Southern Highlanders.  When we were gleefully shouting 'Woah Mohammed, he was yelling in Gaelic 'Caber fie', that he claimed was a battle cry of his old mob, it meant he said 'The Horns of the Stag' .

My fondest memories of him were the day he collected me from the dreadfully Maryhill Barracks, a sort of Red Cap Detention Centre for the Glasgow District. Some of my Scottish mates invited me to go home with them to Glasgow on a little R and R.

It so happened one night we unfortunately  got into a little  disagreement with some of the local lads at the ‘Dreamland Dance Hall, when we were  chatting up some of  the “local talent’’.

We  were  doing our best to keep the peace but failed .  When out of the blue came a  Red  Cap Patrol. All appeared to “Glaswegian Coppers”, they couldn't understand my broad Cockney accent and decided I was drunk as well as being disorderly.

As it happened very few of us actually drank, as it was frowned upon in the Paras. Anyway, beer in those days wouldn't blow your hat off. I was the only one they arrested.

Some days later when it became known where I was, my Platoon Sergeant MacDonald with three or four of my mates arrived in a jeep they found  somewhere. They had come to collect me.  from the dreaded Maryhill Barracks, some  sort of Army Detention Centre . As most of my  Para mates who were in Glasgow, at the time, were Scots, and  were also on a short leave pass had  decided not to return  without me.

Sargent  McDonald   who  spoke the language very forcefully to the Red Caps as the four of them would be a making life difficult for the Red Caps if they dd not release me and if  all else failed the rest of  the Parra’s would be  coming to discuss the situation with them

After some forceful discussion  with them they   considered that I might just become a liability, and they handed me over.  My dear Sargent greeted me  fondly  with  “ get into the Jeep you Cockney Git”     we  both had the African Star  ribbon  om our uniform. It added a bit to our Comradeship  I think.

I think I should mention the close comrade ship in Africa   we had  with  our Platoon Officer Lt. Dicky  Spender, who always wore the Irish 'Corvien', it  wis was also a jolly little number, with a Green Feather in it. He wrote poetry and played the Okariena  (some sort of flute) and was as tough and as brave as they come. .Unfortunately,  in one of our more stupid attacks, I was wounded, but he was killed in a brutal 'tit for tat' action  to capture and hold some useless Tunisian Mountain that within less than a month  the African  campaign was over.

With the loss of 1,700 man in six months action fighting as infantry  from the under-strength 1st Parachute Brigade indicated that the now mostly forgotten African Campaign  was the hardest  of any the Parachute Regiment fought.  

Bill Aldcroft