The Air War from Algiers

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Pennie Hedge, a volunteer from BBC London, on behalf of Charles John Bossley and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Bossley fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

When I left the MAEE, I was sent to a place called Wilmslow, just outside Crewe. I walked into the camp, and they said “Ah welcome, you’re now allocated to 500 Squadron, County of Kent Volunteer Reserve Squadron, Coastal Command.” Oh am I? You don’t ask, you get told. So we do a lot of courses and goodness knows what else and we start getting equipped. “Hand in your RAF uniforms. Hand it all in.” “Hand it all in?” “Yes, you’re going to have army battledress, but you’re allowed to put the RAF flashes on the shoulder.” So what’s going on here? We’re all going abroad, this is all overseas equipment. And you’re not allowed to go any further than Manchester, 30 miles, after that you’re a deserter. So we had to spend what time we had in Stockport. What a place. Pah! We spent a few weeks there, lectures, gun practice, all sorts of nonsense.

Then we all got on a train and they lock you in. Don’t know where we’re going, and its in the pouring rain. We end up at Greenock, in Scotland. I thought, this is lovely, pouring with rain, pipe band to meet us. “Out with all your kit.” You’re humping two kit bags by now because you have your home service kit and you’ve got another kitbag with the overseas kit in it. You lump it all down and put it onto the tender. And there were these great big, what had been civilian passenger liners laying there. I can’t tell you the name of the boat I went on, but it was a great big P&O boat, massive.

So we all go aboard. We filled it right up. The first thing you get is boat stations, sounds a bit daft, RAF and you’re allocated a boat station. But it’s a lifeboat with a member of the liner’s crew: coxswain or whatever you call them, and there’s about 89 in a boat. Well we’re there: boat station, gas mask, water bottle, water purifying tablets, tin helmet, that’s what you had to have. And the army blokes are all down there — “what’s the matter with that lot down there?” “Oh if anything happens they’ve got to go over the side on rafts.” And of course we’re taking the mickey. “We are tradesmen up here, you know, we’re not gun fodder”, and all this nonsense banter.

Where are we going? We don’t know. At night they lock you down, you can’t get up on deck, we don’t know where we’re going. Of course some of the boys on guard go on deck, and there are some lights in the distance, and we think that it’s the Spanish coast…We end up in Algiers, we’re on the invasion force in Algiers. Oh, thank you very much. Lovely.

They get us ashore, eventually, pouring rain, I’ll never forget it. It was about November time, never forget it, it was the wet season out there, and where they marched us along this beach road, I don’t know. Right opposite there were Arabs on horseback in their dress, their barracks were there. But we ended up on a beach, pouring rain, no shelter, made the best of it, laid down in the wet. The next day they marched us, I don’t even know where they took us, except that we ended up in a railway siding and it was either 28 men or 3 horses in these old carriages. It was ridiculous. And we’re shut in and locked in and we don’t know where we’re going. Eventually after what seemed to me a fortnight, but it was probably only a few hours, but you don’t know, we get out, its still raining, at a place called Blida. (This is where all the trouble is in North Africa at the moment.)

And we get out of this place, and they march us down for about 20 mins and we come to an airfield. Not runways, it was just a field, and it was just a sea of water. “This is the airfield.” Airfield? There’s nothing here. There were a few old derelict buildings and there was a couple of old Free French aircraft, biplanes. And this is where we’re going to be stationed. So we find a hangar with half a roof hanging off and we get into there. We’ve got no aircraft, its just us. And there was another squadron, I think they were the County of Glamorgan, but I can’t tell you the number, it could have been 600 something. So I says “What are we doing here?” We’re just messing about, messing about. You can’t do anything.

After about a fortnight they said “Right, everybody out. We’re going to try to find some firm patches on the ground.” Now if you can imagine a waterlogged field, trying to find firm patches on the ground is ridiculous. “We’ve got some aircraft coming in.” Oh, have we? We get our aircraft in from Gibralter, and they were Hudsons, known by us as flying pigs. Useless aircraft, 3 ½ hours in the air. Nobody liked them. Oh well, have to do the best we can with them. So I was allocated to B Squadron. My mate, I’d been with him for two years, he went to A Squadron. (I can still remember his name and address funnily enough.) After a while they decided that because it was unnecessary, they didn’t want us on the squadron as such. “Oh you’ve had the training, you’re in the control tower.”

Now on every airfield there’s a tower that controls the movement of all aircraft, in and out, on the ground and in the air. I’d already been trained on landing procedures and everything else, so fair enough. I goes into this place and the control panel’s all in French, just to help things along. So I had this job, me, my mate and another bloke, we were on shift work all the time. I suppose I did that for quite a long while, lots of incidents of course, crashed aircraft and things.

After a little while we had two squadrons of Wellington Bombers come in. And they used to bomb Italy from there, and half the time when they used to come back in the morning, they never had enough fuel left to fill a lighter. It was a great big distance for them. And then they decided we were going to move from there, down to a place called Tafarui, which was just outside Oran.

Oh, right, another airfield. Field - no runways - field. And all they had there was salt water. If you had a shower you came out looking like a white fellow. The water was down to one water bottle, which is about one pint and three quarters, every 24 hours. You wanted a cup of tea, you handed a cup of water in. You wanted a shave: “take it out of the radiator of one of the lorries, mate.” Things like that. And we really roughed it there for quite a while. Then they decided they were going to move. They were going to hand it over to the Free French, and I was left in the clearing up stage. Clearing up radio masts and all sorts of things. And we nicked a lorry one night, went to Sidi Belabes, out of curiosity. It was a French Foreign Legion town with lots going on! We stayed at the French Foreign Legion Headquarters. All right, quite an experience.

Then, I thought, what happens to me now - they’re not going to sent me down to the Oran Airfield? Transit camp, just outside Algiers. Sandy beach, under canvas, tents. What am I doing here? “You are on loan to the Americans. They’ve got a mobile radar station, but we want you, and you take three fellows with you, to go up to that station. You’ve got to instruct the Americans in the use of the English equipment, radio equipment.” The radio equipment had to be well above the aerials of the radar, otherwise they’d interfere with them.

So away we go. Walks in to see the Officer in Charge, American, usual salute. “We don’t do nothing like that here” he said. There’s the tent, you’re under canvas. The food was marvellous. “Oh, you’re entitled to wear American uniform, three stripes.” Well we had to work about a mile and a half up a hill, up the side of a cliff really, to where we had a hut. And I moaned because it was a long walk up. We were on shift work, and they give us a push bike, an American pushbike. If you’ve never seen an American pushbike, they’re funny. Got no brakes, but to stop the damm thing, you pedal backwards. So I said, “This is not good enough.” “Oh, do you want some transport? Can you drive?” “Yeh.” “No bother” he said, “here you are, ¾ ton Dodge. That’s yours.” That’s how they were. They were marvellous to us.

So I spent about 4 or 5 months with them. So then, the Americans were going to Sicily, I wanted to go with them. He said “I can’t take you because we’ve been together since Stateside, and if I take you I’ll have to leave 3 of my own men.” So we couldn’t go.

So I went to a transit camp and then I come back to England. Another troop ship. This time a Kaiser built ‘Liberty’ ship. These were boats made from prefabricated concrete and stuff parts. No lifeboats — just rafts. Below our deck where we were, there was approximately 1,500 Italian prisoners of war. It was a very rough crossing, through the Bay of Biscay. When we landed we were transported to Morecambe, Lancashire. We were billeted with landladies and our assembly point was either an empty garage or showroom. I was eventually given travel documents and handed in my army battledress stuff, and then sent on leave. No idea where next.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.