Our boat was crowded and there wasn't much to do except to play cards and sunbathe on the upper decks if you could find a place. Nat Gonella, the band leader, was on board as an ordinary soldier, we had all listened to him on the wireless. He used to sit right up high playing his trumpet for hours on end. The last time I heard of him was a few years ago on television. He has a cafe or an hotel in a seaside place in Holland.

we landed in Algiers, dazzling white buildings, shipwrecks in the harbour, a hot sun and a blue sky. The first thing that happened to us was that they took our sun helmets away. "You won't need those." This was the second time a sun helmet had been given to me and then taken away. The first time was in the West Kents when there was a sudden flap and we got on trains and then on a boat, went out to sea and came back again. Afterwards we found out that we had been part of the expedition to Spitzbergen, or the Lofoten Islands, to attack the Germans there, but it had been cancelled. What we would have needed sun helmets for up in the Arctic Circle was beyond imagination, but we put it down to 'Typical Army'.

We found out that our party of Radar Technicians was due to go to Sicily, and while we were waiting about 'getting our knees brown' we were on Ammunition Duty piling up tons and tons ready for the next big push. Eventually we went by train to Cap Bon and Cap Matifou in Tunisia. It was a single track line with an old French train having trucks for eight horses or forty men. There were no seats of course, horses sleep standing up, so we slept on the floor, what was left of it after the brutal British Soldiery had broken off bits and pieces for fires to make tea. Every so often the train would stop for water or coal and hordes of soldiers would disappear out into the desert scrub carrying shovels. (Toilets, hand-dug, soldiers for the use of). The train would hoot and move off, and some chaps would be left behind waiting for the next train to come along, which might be the next day. Some of us would have a swim in the water tanks. There was also a constant stream of chaps up at the engine drawing off boiler water for making tea. It didn't taste so good having been chlorinated in the first instance and then gone through the boiler. At Cap Bon and Cap Matifou I shared a two-man bivouac tent with Jimmy James.

We went by troopship to Catania in Sicily, at the foot of the volcano - Mount Etna. There wasn't much to do for a few days except play cards, sleep and swim in the Bay. Occasionally a German plane would come over and fire a few rounds into the water. The next stop was Messina and while we were on the beach waiting to go into the landing craft for Italy it was announced that Italy had surrendered.