'Stretcher-bearers': (11) Algiers and Refitting

Following our rescue from the sinking Windsor Castle, we were landed at Algiers and sat on the dockside for several hours. Another roll call was taken and all but two answered their names. We learnt that one of them had fallen into the hold of the troopship and had been taken to hospital in Gibraltar. The other turned up later.
Lorries were commandeered to take the men without boots and trousers to a camp some five miles distant. The rest of us started to march there and soon sympathetic civilians were handing us tangerines and cigarettes..
After about half an hour's march lorries drew up beside us and we clambered in, very relieved to be spared a longer march.
Algiers rises sheer from the sea to well over 1,000 feet, so its roads are built in tiers, doubling back on each other as they climb, offering precipitous drops and hairpin bends.
Most of the houses are painted in white stucco. Here and there in contrast are dome-shaped mosques.
The trees are a much starker green than those of England, but unhealthy damp heat rises from them and we expect to be troubled by mosquitoes.
As we climbed slowly we passed orchards laden with lemons and tangerines. By the wayside were unfamiliar flowers.
Suddenly it became dark and we came to a stop literally on a hill-top Here, at 8.30 p.m., we had our first meal of the day, borrowing mess tins from a party already there. Then we were allocated bivouacs and bedded down for the night fully clothed. I was worn out, but slept badly, waking at 2.45 a.m. in a sweat. Was very relieved to have kept my watch, now my sole possession apart from clothes. My silver pencil and all books were on the sea bed.

24.3.43.
The next few days it rained with scarcely a pause. We had no groundsheets and little means of keeping dry because rain trickled through the bivouacs and, in spite of deep side trenches, overflowed into the bivouacs at both sides and front.
Large tents were erected for the officers. We found the best shelter under the corrugated iron roof of our latrines.
During respites from the rain we marched up and down to dry out. We ate our meals with our hands - the original lenders of mess tins having taken theirs back. Some of us found empty stew or jam tins and the cooks dolloped food into them. No wonder diarrhoea resulted.
The very next day they issued us with mugs, knife, fork and spoon. The day after that came blankets, groundsheets, mess tins and kit bags.
The Red Cross then chipped in with the present of a sponge bag each, containing soap and a tooth brush, great morale boosters.
A fine day followed and with it came more kit, including a razor. We began to think that North Africa was not too bad.
That evening , March 27th, (23rd birthday), it rained again. When it cleared a little Dick Wheatley and I went for a short walk to dry off. It was rapidly growing dark. We had just decided to return to the camp when an angry drone, growing in volume, came from the sea, deafening as an air raid gathered momentum over Algiers harbour.
Orange flashes shot up and tracer fire was the heaviest I had witnessed.
We ran back to camp to find most of the unit sheltering under the corrugated latrine roof. Our hill commanded a view over the harbour. We heard warships and merchant vessels opening fire and saw a barrage balloon shot down in flames A piece of shrapnel struck our roof.
Searchlights now sprang out of the ground and picked up a white object that appeared to be twisting as it fell. We could not tell whether it was part of a plane or a parachute. Some gallants ordered the ack-ack to shoot the bastard out of the sky, if indeed it was a parachutist, as the object hung helplessly in mid-air.. After following it down for some time, the searchlights deliberately abandoned it.
Another piece of shrapnel struck the corrugated roof and we regretted that our steel helmets had gone down with the liner.
We stayed for nearly an hour before the raid died down. One man was wounded in the arm by a piece of shrapnel.
The following day it rained again . Our hill was now a mud bath and morale fell with the barometer. We slouched through it to form a long breakfast queue, waited in the rain at a store tent for new kit, embarked upon cookhouse fatigues wet through and decided that matters had come to a pretty poor pitch.
A rum ration was promised that evening. We queued for it in the mud, but it did not materialise.
Next night the cooks ladled a spoonful of rum into each of our mugs of tea, very acceptable. Rumour had it that the cooks drank the bulk of the rum neat. Certainly a few men, not just cooks, were becoming drunk, probably not being used to the potency of Algerian wine which found its way into the camp.
Arab children came round the camp, taking away discarded tins and the Army biscuits which we gave them. I became friendly with a man called Dadou Ali who loitered around selling and buying odds and ends, including chickens' eggs. We conversed in French and he claimed to have been a prisoner in German hands.
Our kit was still incomplete when an advance party was sent down to the docks to unload our hospital tents that had arrived safely in a merchant ship We worked all that day until. 9 p.m., unloading the ship and reloading the tents on to a train. We went on strike then, having had no meal since breakfast. We arrived back at camp at 11.30 p.m. for a hot meal. Next day Section 4, in which I found myself, moved up as advance party. We marched to the station, complete with kit and arrived there at 8.45 a.m., but were left waiting around for several hours. Fortunately there was a Red Cross canteen where we could buy tea.
I tried to converse in French with some Senegalese guards while the rest of our party divided into two main sections, about half a dozen, incapacitated with diarrhoea, making for the latrines, the rest to search for a pub.
At 8 p.m. we boarded a train, destination unknown, eight to a carriage. Then four more, hopelessly drunk, were pushed on to the train. To our compartment was thrust a lance corporal who was nominally to take charge of us. He lay back for some time moaning before we assisted him to the window to be sick.
At 10 p.m. we were still stuck in the motionless train and were told that another train had been derailed farther up the line.
Eventually we moved off. Dawn found us a tangled mass of arms and legs, shivering with cold high up in a mountainous, snow-peaked district.
We had a breakfast of bully beef and tea. Our train was stopping regularly at each small station where crowds of Arab children came alongside crying "Biscuit, Johnny," "Cigarettes pour papa".
After the first few stations we had run out of both, in this the so-called "well run" colony.
Morning turned to afternoon, then to first dusk.
Towards 9 p.m. we puffed into Setif, where we bought some cheap dry wine and watched a drunken Canadian Commando being hustled on to another train.
By 10 a.m. next day we were uncoupled from the main part of the train and told that we had reached our destination Chateau -Dun. There was no chateau and not much of a station.
After disembarking we began to clear some 20 wagons of medical equipment. The work had to be completed quickly to allow petrol wagons to reach a nearby aerodrome, so we laboured throughout the day, pausing only for meals - the usual, bully beef and biscuits.
For five days we unloaded railway trucks, loaded lorries, unloaded the lorries to make dumps of equipment, sorted out equipment, erected tents, furnished them with hospital stores and generally prepared to receive 1,200 patients, including wounded from Medjez-El-Bab.
Meantime the REs (Royal Engineers) were still busy laying down roads, boring wells and digging trenches for drainage on the site.
The Nursing Sisters then arrived. They had crossed the sea in a hospital ship and then stayed at a hotel in Algiers.

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