““The feel of mother earth again, I almost kissed it. I paused a while before entering the train, and then again when I got inside – “Egyptian State Railway – my God!”

The carriages were of the same size as ours but built like large boxes, all wooden frames, with window spaces but no glass. Seats were in pairs on each side of a central gangway, rather like the old trams. There were doors fitted on a few carriages, the majority you simply climbed up three steps, with a big interval between each, turned right and sat down. Wooden seats, wooden backs, really unpleasant on a long journey.

We all dumped our kit and made a dash for the tea and buns, which some thoughtful person had laid on. We had forgotten in our excitement how hungry we really were. So we made quite an attack on the cakes. We were rounded up like lost sheep, herded to our compartments, took our seats and were off. We didn’t see much of Suez, it being behind us, the city part anyway, but after a few minutes run we pulled up in Port Tewfik. The stench was terrible. The platform crowded with natives all trying to sell us “souvenirs”.

We spent most of our remaining piastres on ice cream, which had a peculiar flavour but was very pleasant. Donkeys were everywhere; it was here that I first noticed the eastern custom of the women doing all the work. They carried huge loads on their heads and were always surrounded by crowds of kids. It was here too that we first encountered flies in any number. There were thousands and they settled on everyone and everything, the little Arab kids were covered with them and at first it made me quite ill to see three or four round a baby’s mouth and more round its eyes with the mother making no attempt to shift them. The heat and the flies made life quite a burden. It was impossible to sit quietly in an endeavour to keep cool; one was always wafting the flies away or changing position on the hard seats.

After almost an hour had passed, we were on our way again, the railway ran down Tewfik’s main street, passed Minarets, past the spacious dwellings of the Greeks, past the hovels of the Arabs and then into the desert, running parallel with the Suez. We were soon tired of the sand and sunshine and tried to doze. I was successful and awoke to find it quite dark and the train halted.

We were told to get out – we did. Amongst lots of mumbled curses, seizing wrong kits and so on and made our stumbling way over sand dunes and shale to where a number of trucks stood silently waiting for us.

It took us quite a while to form up into our various troops, imagine a thousand men milling around in the blackness, all looking for their own troop commanders or section officers. However, we eventually did and were packed onto the lorries.

That night drive was the pleasantest thing since Durban. We drove for, I should think, ten miles. A cool breeze blowing in our faces and a starlit sky above.

Eventually, we pulled up, found ourselves amongst all the other trucks again in the midst of nowhere. We formed up, partly so, into batteries and walked two or three hundred yards, clear of the transport, then by the flickering light of matches, formed a square and just dropped to sleep where we fell. Large guards were detailed off to keep the thieving Arabs away. Fortunately, I missed this, so enjoyed a sound night’s sleep. The sand made an excellently soft bed.

We awoke, or were awakened, at seven next day, spared ourselves a drop of water from our bottles to shave with, then we took stock of our surroundings – large expanses of sand – a palm tree or two and the blue Suez in the distance. We had breakfast. At around nine o’clock we loaded ourselves once more, it was scorching by this time and with bent head trudged for some three or four miles. Toward the latter end of our march, we saw a very large camp, tented. We passed between tents, outside which sat brown, half-naked men who smiled at our white knees and grinned sympathetically. Eventually, on reaching an area of empty marquees we halted, fell out and drained our water bottles. Lt. Gifford, Joe, came along after a while and showed us the area allotted to Battalion H.Q. Ted, Jim and I promptly grabbed our kits and seized the furthermost marquee, together with Jock, we shared this with three or four batmen during our two weeks stay.

The camp was just outside the Arab village of Genefa, which in reality was merely a railway station. A very small one, surrounded by tents and huts, actually it was about six miles from us. Our stay here was merely to accustom ourselves to the heat, marching at midday, lots of Physical Training, learning to manage on a couple of pints of liquid per day. It was pretty grim but we had our humorous moments. The Medical Officer had a habit of washing whilst we were in the queue for meals and the blokes at the head of the queue used to dip their mugs into his bowl leaving him just about half a pint, instead of the gallon or so his batman provided. We were never caught but after the first four days he began to wash elsewhere.”

Diary entry from September 1942 from Sgt Observer Frederick Sidney Williams, 212 Bty, 111 Fd Regt in his family’s memoirs “Our Fred’s War”.