Lost in the past: June 2018

When I was a child in the 1950s, my father used to tell me stories about his time in the Royal Engineers during the second world war. Initially he was sent for training in the north of England where he was allocated a bunk in a cold hut with a pillow full of straw and 3 army blankets and given 2 battle-dress uniforms, 2 pairs of boots, an overcoat, a rifle and a bayonet. He also received a knife, a fork and a spoon to use and to keep clean. They rose at 6 am and spent the day doing drill, PT, marching and learning to use the rifle and a bren gun, till lights out at 10 pm.

A humble sapper, a few months later, he set sail with his comrades shortly after his 21st birthday for Operation Husky the invasion of Sicily as part of Field Marshall Montgomery's 8th Army. It was the first joint operation by the British, American and Canadian soldiers and the men were pleased to discover that the people of Sicily welcomed them.

Jim's soldier's service paybook gives me the dates and locations, and the collection of postcards he brought back, though pre-war photos, tell me something of what he saw.

A month later he was en route for North Africa. The main African campaign had been successful but Rommel was still attempting to break through the British Army.

Within three weeks, the men returned to mainland Italy, landing as part of Operation Avalanche. This time invasion was much harder. The engineers' tasks were to clear minefields and rebuild the bridges which had been destroyed by the Allies and by the Axis forces. Moving north from Reggio, the British troops reached Salerno in late October 1943