The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise's)

THE DESERT © Tom Barker

"cold, hot hollows hidden in lonely sand, served for more than tears."
H Marshall

When we got into the desert from Palestine via Cairo and Alexandria there were no camps yet established as such. We moved into the desert and dug holes to live in like prairie dogs. And if Italian spotter planes came over, we, like the prairie dogs, would jump into these holes and stay put till they had gone. But they were sneaky buggers, they would climb, cut their engine, and just when you thought they had gone, they would glide over and drop stuff on us from a great height.

One day I heard engines, and on looking into the distance, I could not believe it, a Vicker's Vimy.

Someone told me "Yea, it's the mail plane y'know."

My first reaction was, "How stupid could anybody be, using this slow machine and risking the blokes flying it!" I learned two days later it had been overtaken by an Italian fighter and shot down.

Our standard food was bully and hard tack biccies. We were trying to contact the Italians without their knowing we were there, the only snag was in a large desert with a small amount of men it took a lot of time and patience and since there were quick sands one had to be careful where one walked.

Between WW1 and WW2, the Brits were on their toes, in that, very discreetly, they mapped out the desert, so when WW2 came along, they were more or less one up on anyone else. Having heard two Officers discussing the situation, I thought that was gospel. Later I would learn they were just too prone at guessing as we were. They knew where water was, and they knew about the sea of quicksand next to El Alamein. It was known to all and sundry as the Quattara Depression

These people in charge knew who were friendly to the Brits and who were not (tribes that is) They also had a unique way of dealing with truck problems in sand, because there were no roads, as such. We had to make our own roads and some bright lads came up with some good ideas, because digging out a bogged-down truck is no joke, with the sun beating down on your back.

40 gallon oil drums would collect all the old oil from anywhere it could be scrounged, then it would be tipped and pushed over the sand and when it soaked-in, it hardened into a toffee like carpet. Trucks ran on it and bedded it in and any patches that looked 'suss' were given a bit more oil and it was not long before we had a hard road.

To make a temporary car park, we would not waste oil, because we needed as much as we could get and slowly we got a road going across the desert. We put down wire mesh like one would find round a lawn bowls club or tennis lawn and it would be stapled onto the sand to stop it curling up, so that heavy trucks that would have bogged down, had no trouble parking on it.

Not being in contact with other units for months on end and being out in the desert looking up at the stars every night, was a unique experience. If one looks at the film, 'Sea of Sand', that was how we operated, except that we had no transport. We walked and carried, and got heartily sick of it. The only transport we had was used for fetching supplies from Alex.

Since we had one truck and a Bren gun carrier, we had to go out looking for the Italian positions at night and to go out in a truck would have been like ringing a bell anyway in the quiet desert at night. The Italians had built little forts in the desert and they had everything more or less organised. They too had holes in the sand in some positions, called 'Listening Posts'.

They also had plenty of drinks, and I do mean drinks. One dug out we looked into, when we took their position after the battle of Sidi Barrani, was stacked with vino and some exotic wines in bottles, with lots of flags on the label. Sweet Vermouth was one bottle I looked at, but I did not pick it up.

The Italians also had a dugout set aside for ladies of the night, and they did not need to have a red light to guide the randy and home sick to it. If the wind was right, one could home in on it from the outskirts of Alexandria. When we captured them along with thousands of Italian soldiers, someone suggested that was the best time to look at some of them, when it was dark, one of our blokes said, "If I had a dog that ugly, I'd shave it's ass and make it walk backwards."