This is the story about a military operation in Iraq just after World War two that very few people have heard about, but to me, really, it all began in Rotherham where I was born and where before military service I got some experience that would prove invaluable. I started to work in 1940 as an apprentice filter at the highways vehicle depot.  But the job was more than that, it was an apprentice filter, cum everything and that it was called good experience.  At that time they hadn't even got an electrical drill, that's how basic it was.  Hammer, chisel, hand drill, and if you wanted something you went next door to the blacksmith's shop.  We did get an electric drill in the end, and we had it a bit better after but we had no new vehicles so we had to make do with what we had.  If you didn't have any spares, and there weren't any replacements, then you had to repair. 

So they sent me on a vehicle course at Cordon and the place is still there apparently.  The main difference between the vehicles I was working on then and the vehicles I'd known before was that they were much more modern.  At the depot in Rotherham I'd had nothing to do with Befords and vehicles like that.  The most up-to-date vehicles had been new in 1939, apart from some of the cars that came in for conversion.  I got posted to Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead, where we were billeted in St. Chads  Chapel, where the trams used to fall off the rails from time-to-time.  Following that, I was sent on a course at Bovington, which was a holding place for tanks. There were Churchill, Cromwell and Comet tanks, AEC, Daimler, and Humber scout cars, and that was about it. 

If you pulled the left hand stick when it was ticking over in neutral it would turn to the right.  If you pulled the right stick, it would turn to the left.  Now as you can imagine it would be dangerous, especially if you'd adjusted the clutches and wanted to test it, and we were warned about it quite a lot. It was enjoyable as set up in Gateshead and we had a good time.  At one time they had a big push and  wanted some tanks in a hurry, so they fetched us all out, and we had a very busy time repairing them and sending them off to Europe.

One interesting job, from a technical standpoint, was conducting experiments to find out how tank engines performed at altitude.  Our base was several thousand feet above sea level and I had to take a Sherman on a Scammel transporter and take it all the way to Bombay, stopping at regular intervals to check the maximum, RPM and put it on a graph.  It was quite interesting to see how much of a difference that altitude made. Then this posting to Iraq came and I was asked for specially by name, which they didn't normally do.  But they obviously wanted people who knew what they were about But a posting to Poona Station meant I didn't get that job after all.

This organization comprised 10th Army and its bases and geographically  covered the areas described in its title.  It was involved in operations in Iraq in 1941 during an uprising and in the security of the region throughout the war.  It's badge  was a red elephant's head on a blue background although  the red elephant had been beached pink in the sun, hence 'Pink Elephant's on the Basra  Road' and was said to of been chosen by its first commander, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson also known as 'Jumbo'.  Following the war this badge continued to be worn by British forces serving in the region including the 19th Indian Infantry Brigade Group with which I served.

We had no idea where we were going, as it was supposed to be very hush hush operation.  We thought Sarawak or somewhere like that, somewhere where there had been a disturbance.  We were issued with olive greens, bush hats and all the tropical kit.  We got on to these vehicles and went about 100  miles down to Bombay, until we reached the docks.  I had the impression that we had over 3,000 vehicles, most of them four-wheel-drive, the 3-ton Dodge bonnet type.  All of them were Canadian vehicles, with some personnel carriers, Fords and Chevvies, which were great vehicles. 

When we got on the docks all the coolies were saying, "You're off to Iraq."  So much for secrecy.  There were three boats, all coal-fired.  We got on the 400-ton SS Varella, and I thought, "Jesus what's this?".  Being sergeants we were in bunks, and the Indian troops were down below.  We were told it would only take 24 hours to Karachi. It took 36 hours and we were up and down like yo-yos.  We used to tie ourselves into the bunks. We got to Karachi and discovered why we had such a bad time.  There haven't been enough coal on the ships to make them stable so we filled up with coal at Karachi. 

We waited for the vehicles and then we were based at the back of the company's office of the 19th Brigade.  There were people stationed in Iraq right through the war, so there were camps that had been left, and they put us in one of these.  There were two units, a recovery unit and an L.A.D. and we had little shacks to put the vehicles under so we were OK.  We had loads of work to do as the vehicles came in and we had to do a lot of work in the daytime in the heat. 

There was one bloke, Johnny Fossello from Cyprus, who was a CSM with Field Security.  Now we'd never dreamed of doing like this, but he said, "Vic, I'll tell you what we've done.  We've invoiced for 12-dozen bottles of rum" and they came! Anyway we organized ourselves, got a proper schedule of units to bring their vehicles in for maintenance and that sort of thing, and got the system working all right.

We went on schemes and we had a few problems basically with the people who were sympathetic to the Russians. We didn't have any great problem, but one or two of the infantry units did. These schemes took us forty or fifty miles into the desert. We were based at Shaiba, about thirty miles inland from Basra. They always told us that we were in twenty-four hour contact with Whitehall, because of this problem. We realized there was a problem when we were out on one of these schemes. We'd set up and were in one of these wagons having a beer when one of the officers dashed up, "Come Smith Out! Hurry up we're in trouble!"

We had about twenty thousand troops in Iraq. There were two other units like that modding up in India, although how the hell they would have got them there quickly if they'd had to I don't know. We'd all got these brand new vehicles, all people who'd had experience during the war, all brand new equipment, a ten-thousand ton cruiser HMS Glasgow in the harbor, with a frigate by the side of it, and at least one squadron of rocket-firing Tempests based in Egypt at a moment's notice. They used to go out with us on the schemes and pretend to attack us. Were they pretending to anybody else as well?

We didn't know of course. We had at least one squadron of Dakotas, and we had a mock Dakota body at RAF Sharba. We used to train to put Jeeps up the ramp and into the body. One of these officers said he'd show us how to do it. He went up the ramp and straight through the fuselage to the other side. We had airborne training, jumping off a moving Jeep and that sort of thing. So when you think about all this, you're talking about a very big force. There was artillery, but no armour, and no tanks at all. 

The only thing I can put it down to is that they wouldn't have been very good at going into towns in the oil fields. Also the show of tanks with us might have been too much of a show of force, but we didn't know. We were never told  officially that there was a Russian force facing us.

The Russians were short of oil and we reckon that they backed off because we were there, plus the threat that the Americans would have got involved if anything had happened. I suppose really it was a cold war, although we did have problems. I remember one night they'd had a go at coming into company headquarters compound. Our SP guards were Ghurkhas, and one of them, with no hesitation, just shot one of those intruders.

But the worst fright I had was one night when a bunch of us went into Basra.  What we used to do was get a taxi at the YMCA, which was in bounds, and lie down in the bottom of the taxi to go into areas of the town that were out of bounds.  This particular night the driver dropped us off at the wrong place.  "This isn't right," I said.  The town had its own sort of police, who carried these long muzzle-loading muskets.  We tried to find out where we were, when suddenly one of them appeared.  We got in a corner and tried to cover the white stripes on our arms.  This bloke came straight up to us, pointed his musket and we heard the double click as he pulled the hammer back.  We dropped our arms, showing a sergeant's stripes, and he went away.

But back to the vehicles.  The conditions were bad, but funnily enough the vehicles stood it.  The big problem was the federal, which had a Cummins engine with a rotary  diesel pump, and they were a problem, but apart from that we never had any serious sand problems.  The vehicles must of been kitted out for the conditions in Burma where they were intended for heat and humidity, but they didn't seem to have any special equipment for dealing with the desert.  There were good filters and things like that of course but we had to be careful with spares, because once you used them, then that's all you had . 

Servicing was always done at a certain time, as the vehicles all had their log sheets and were serviced at the proper time.  We very rarely had a problem, and I'm talking about sandstorms where you could scarcely see at all. The military situation calmed down, and we had a great big party down at the camp.  Everyone was there. The major general got up and thanked us all for what we had done and that was it.  All the main units started going back to India. 

There was a REME Captain, and I who were getting ready to go back to India, and I got the job of convoying all those vehicles.  We started sorting it out and I picked seven Indian troops to stay behind with me, with four vehicles.  We had the Dodge 4x4 weapon carrier, a Canadian Ford with the Holmes Wrecker on, a Scammel 6x4, and the Dodge Bonnet heatstroke vehicle.  What we used to do was take the Dodge Bonnet to the ice house in the morning before we set off and stack it with ice on either side and in the middle, and put stretchers inside.

The idea was that if anybody got heat stroke, we would put them inside to bring their temperature down.  I think we only ever had one bloke in , but it was there when we needed it.  We were short of drivers, so we had people who'd be in an office for months-and-months going out and driving in the desert.  We had to teach some of them how to drive.  In actual fact it worked quite well, as I taught them to drive and set up the convoy system.  Each one would be up 250 vehicles long.  There would be a convoy commander up front who knew his way, and I'd let them go, and then set off with my little unit 4 hours later.  I picked up any stray vehicles and towed them into Baghdad, where any that could not be repaired were be sold to an Iraqi agent.

It took us into Baghdad, and then along the Seven Sisters Road, which went from 5,000 feet down to about sea level, and then we arrived at Mafraq in Trans Jordan where there was a camp. After that there was a reasonable run from there to Haifa.  From Haifa we made two stops going through Palestine, and on to Cassasin, the other side of the Suez canal.  Then I came back again on my own.  This was 1947 of course and then the people who are now in charge in Israel were the terrorists.  I took a picture at Haifa Railway Station of the Daimler scout car that was put on the tracks.  It used to drive in front of the trains so if there was any trouble the scout car would get blown up but not the train and these cars were driven by British troops. A lot of troops got  killed in Palestine at that time.

That included moving hundreds of German POWs.  They were all ex-Afrika Korps, great big blokes about 6 feet tall.  Looking at them we kept on saying to each other how the bloody hell did we win?  We decided we'd have to have one convoy for the POWs, because we didn't want them spread about it.  There were still a fair number of MPs about, so they covered the convoy of the POWs but we still had a shortage of drivers, so a lot of the trucks were driven by the Germans. 

I was following behind, as usual, when I noticed a bonneted  Dodge three-tonner on the horizon, stopped beside the road.  It must of broken down, but as we got closer this proved not to be the case.  It shot off at high speed into the desert, and that was the last we saw it. It must of gone into Baghdad with a nearly  new truck loaded with brand new ties, worth a lot of money at the time.  Rumor was that  a thriving business existed in Baghdad for recently demilitarized trucks, but the emergency was over, and we all wanted to go home so no one worried too much about the loss.

Back at camp we still had huge amounts of spares, and they were a problem.  We couldn't take them with us, as there were simply too many.  So the commanding officer said, "Just dump them." I was horrified.  "This is all brand new gear" I said." "I can't do anything about it" he said, "We'll have to dump them" so we did. We went to one of the ordnance depots in Iraq, which was being run by the Iraqis now the British troops had left and we literally  shoveled the spares out.  For all I know they're still there today.

On one particular convoy and I set off as usual four hours behind.  We found one broken down vehicle, and hooked it on behind, then another, another and another.  I'd even got one towing behind the Dodge, which I didn't like.  I said to another sergeant with me, "Denise, if there's another one on the horizon, we've had it."  Sure enough, we found another vehicle, which was the welfare vehicle, and it was full of beer. So of course we stopped for the night and got quite reasonably pissed.  We got up in the morning, repaired a few of the vehicles, and were able to get off again.

Orders came one day for someone to go up country to recover a vehicle.  It didn't seem a good idea to take a truck up with me, so the CO sent me on the Nairn Bother's bus.  This was quite a vehicle, a Mach 1 I think.  It used to drive everywhere flat out at about 60 miles an hour, and was always disappearing in a cloud of smoke.  I suppose before the war it would have been quite a plush, but when I traveled on it conditions were pretty spartan, just wooden slatted seats, but at least it got there quickly.

As we  got used to the convoy work we became very skilled at keeping ourselves well fed.  We had what was called a 40-man set, which was basically a huge blowlamp on its side, with a chappati plate and Dixie oval at the end.  So while we were driving along the cook was in the back of the truck making the chappati mix, pairing the rice and that sort of thing. As soon as we stopped for the night and formed vehicles up, somebody would be out of the back of the vehicle, dig a trench for this 40-man set, and before the last vehicle had stopped moving, it was lit and the food was on.  So inside 20 minutes we had a meal and a cup of tea, which was great.  We slept under the stars.

There was a night when we were running out of food.  All we had were tins of peaches, tins of potatoes, etc.  So we opened the a lot chucked them all in the Dixie and ate it. We might have run short of food, but I made sure we never ran short of water and on the front of my Dodge were two water chuggles. A chuggle is a canvas bag, about 10 inches wide at the bottom, which comes to a neck.  It's about 18 inches high, and ties at the top.  You get them brand new, and soak them in  water for 48 hours.  Then you fill them with water and tie them to the front of the wagon.  The bag is porous so the water seeps out very slowly, and because of the  evaporation, the water inside is kept cool.  I always had two of them on the front of the wagon.

I think the last convoy I was involved with would have been September or October 1947.  Then of course I had no vehicle and no job so they sent me to Port Said transit camp, which consisted of troops coming in from England, and troops waiting to go home to be demobbed.  There were thousands there.  It was my first taste of proper military life for months and I had to do a guard duty and get used to spit and polish again.  I had a piece of luck there because I found a couple of my mates in the company's office, and they wangled it so I could go home in time for Christmas.  I asked to be demobbed in York, so of course they sent me to Aldershot.  The troopship SS Staffordshire took me to Liverpool, so I had to go all the way from Liverpool to Aldershot to get demobbed, and then back up to Rotherham and back to civilian life.