““One fine day we were ordered to pack up. We guessed what for, so we loaded our respective vehicles. I was at that time travelling on Y truck, a three tonner, and after everything was packed there was very little room left for the seven or eight of us who had to ride on it. Early next morning we sailed off, glad to be on the move again – glad to be away from base. We went right through Cairo nose to tail. Through Gezirah over the Mena Bridge and on to the Alex Road, passing two pyramids just beyond Mena, the only two I’ve ever seen.

We saw lots of camps swarming with troops, Egyptian and British, then just the desert on either side of the road. We turned off the road after some twenty odd miles – left – and deployed ourselves into desert formation and travelled for a couple of hours.

It seemed strange when we halted, large expanses of nothing. So, as there was nothing to see, we pitched the bivvies we had been issued with, made ourselves comfortable, fed on meat and veg. And went to bed. Next day we went on again but when we halted that night we could hear a distant rumbling and could see some way off the flashes of guns. We dug our trucks and selves in – it was exciting.

I went off early next day with Mr. Gifford, who had come to meet us, armed with spades and the necessaries to dig ourselves in. We wended our way through narrow gaps in minefields bearing names, all of them, “New Zealand Gate”, “Cannon Gate”, “Hurricane Gap”.  All guarded by infantries with fixed bayonets. We drove along sandy stretches, hard and firm, stretching as far as the eye could see. It  was a peaceful day and apart from the occasional crack of a 25-pdr, there wasn’t a sound. We passed huge dumps of petrol and ammo; sweating, swearing groups of men going “up”. But generally little activity.

We reached our allotted area at last. It was in a wadi, minefields on two sides, front and left and sandy ridges on the other two. The ridge behind us was “in view” (visible to the enemy). I took good care to keep off it. Breave, when I got there, was busy with a director. Gifford had chosen pivot gun positions, he gave me the griff and then left me with the job of siting and building the command post. I picked a spot between the troops and about two hundred yards in rear, in a small culvert, up against the rear ridge.

Marked it off and three of us began to dig. Shirts off, scorching hot, sweating profusely, digging in fine swirling sand. It came back in as fast as we shovelled it out, so that after two hours solid work, we were exactly nowhere. Heartbreaking. To cap it all the wind began to blow, kicking the sand into our noses, eyes, ears and throats, impossible to work, impossible to see. I lay down, covered my head with my shirt, ached, felt utterly miserable, cursed with greater fervour than I have ever done, almost wept with the feeling of utter defeat. I lay for about an hour when the wind began to ease off for a while, just beginning to resume our work when Wale, the old man, turned up with the Humber, our H truck. He remarked on our slow progress and started off again. The truck dug in the soft sand, we shoved, he sat and swore, eventually the gearbox gave way and Jonah stomped off in a hell of a temper.

Came the morrow, clear again. We got three or four blokes to help us, got some sandbags and began methodically on our C.P. We finished it that day, stuck our three-tonner frame and cover on and moved the boards and stuff in. Not a bad hole. 9 feet long, 7 feet wide and about 4 feet deep.

The guns came in. Joe and Derrick put them in action into the pits which had previously been prepared. We were ready! We only had one assignment here and that was to fire some smoke as if to cover an advance in the hope that the Gerry artillery would open up thus enabling our spotters to “fix” him. Fortunately for us he didn’t open up. But instead the crafty blighter sent over a couple of Stukas.

They screamed down on us and dropped their eggs. Fortunately again, no one was hurt, though the scream of plane and bombs quite definitely upset us. In our place about six of us lay flat with our heads under one chair, silly, but it’s surprising the silly things one does in a hot spot.

We had instructions to prepare to move to a more forward position. I went forward with an H.Q. digging party about seven one evening, 18th of October, I think. The rather humorous incident that cheered us all up was when Bill, driving an old Morris headed straight for a slit trench, it was very hard to keep to the track in the half light. He couldn’t avoid it, so stepped on the gas we leaped the gap, the jolt on the other side shook everyone up in the back. I could hear them muttering.

About ten minutes later, we were very low on petrol and I had to fill her up. Rather a tricky business on the move and I must have spilled nearly a gallon over myself. However, we went on – along a dimly lit “T.T.” (50 div.) trail, for a couple of miles. Finishing up in a shallow wadi, a low ridge in front and behind – the Deif-el-Muhafid Depression.

Our job that night was to build a C.P. There were groups of gunners to dig pits. Captain C. recced a site for me and we, about six of us, set too. His parting words: “For Christ sake, don’t show any lights, he’s only 1,200 yards away”, didn’t serve to cheer us up. We set to, and slaved from 8 p.m. until about 2 a.m., then dropped where we were and slept like logs. Imagine our dismay, when next morning, we found that the hole we had toiled at was in full view of Gerry. Browned off again!

Well swearing wouldn’t do any good, so after a sketchy breakfast, we began again some two hundred yards away. We finished it that day and had most of our stuff transferred from the rear position. The guns came in; we took stock of our area. On the ridge twenty yards in front of the guns was the rear company of Green Howards and a few anti-tank guns – you can imagine how far forward we were. We had orders for the guns to remain silent – obviously something was coming off.”

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