The Libyan Desert: By Fred Heald

 Its very difficult to explain unless you have been there. I was a gunfitter, responsible for four 3.7 Anti-Aircraft guns. I remember on one occasion one of our fitters changed a gun barrel in the daytime, unfortunately leaving the new one along side. It expanded in the sun and it was hours later before it cooled off sufficiently to allow it to be fitted.

The winds were a problem, blowing red hot sand just like rough sandpaper, tearing at any exposed skin on our bodies, sometimes coming at you in a spiral thirty feet high, taking everything before it. Metal parts could burn our hands, the skin behind our knees would crack and sand would get in causing nasty desert sores.

A shortage of water left lips and throat dry and coated with fine sand. There was no water to spare to wash our clothes, instead we used petrol, (more plentiful than water) which cleaned them and they dried quickly, but you had to be careful with matches.

We had a shower unit call one day. They pitched a tent and inside were pipes with about six or eight shower heads. Water was heated by a generator. A few  drops of water came out of the shower heads which was welcome. However, the tent, with flaps at each end, had been pitched the wrong way round. One flap let the wind in, then out by the end flap. Consequently we ended up with wet sand and goose pimples on our naked bodies. Still it was worth it and welcome - the water not the sand.

I was in Haifa during a heat wave when some of the natives died of sunstroke as the temperature climbed to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and we were working at the docks waterproofing our guns for the invasion of Kos. We slept in the open at Nathan Camp and had to drink a pint of salt water every morning. An officer watched us drink it down yet only a few minutes later I sweated it out. Water ran off my face like a tap which had been left on. I was lucky for I only suffered a bout of sandfly fever and a touch of foot rot causing lots of blisters.

The shortage of water was the most serious and a drop of tea left in a mug was used for shaving. Many of the wells had been salted and destroyed by the Germans. We were issued with one bottle of beer a week - if we were lucky.

Flies, flies and more flies, scorpions, mosquitoes, sand crabs were everywhere. Flies on our food, in our eyes, sand on our food, red hot days and bitter cold nights. The only thing to look forward to was leave in Alex or Cairo with hot baths, clean sheets, ice-cold beer, open-air cinemas, hangovers and naughty ladies, the Top Hat in Bier Street, even Sister Street.

 A few days of heaven, then back to Hell.