My Broken Body
Shells and mortar bombs were getting ever closer as we fled across the desert. Looking over my shoulder, I saw what I thought was a formation of British trucks on our tail. I waved and gave the reversed V-sign, a habit amongst troops to show friendliness, but to my horror, instead of returning the compliment, a crowd of Jerries began pouring out and started mounting their weapons. There wasn’t a moment to lose. I raced forward with my section, taking cover behind a mound of earth where we readied our Bren. The sand swirled in a blinding cloud as I gave orders to Drummer Charlie Baker to send word to the rest of our company.
‘Okay, sarge,’ he called, leaping back into his truck.
It was then I felt as if the weight of the whole world had fallen on top of me. I was trapped face down in the sand and couldn’t move. I heard my bones crack as my body was crushed; it was if I’d been clamped in a giant vice.
‘Mother of God!’ I think I screamed, though perhaps I just thought the words, for there was no air left in my lungs to emit any sound.
It was only after the colossal pressure seemed to lessen when the realization of what just happened began trickling into my mind. As Charlie’s truck had pulled away, it caught my jacket and dragged me straight under its wheels. I’d borne the entire weight of the vehicle as it travelled over my left shoulder and up towards the back of my head, missing my skull by a fraction of an inch. How I escaped I’ll never know, but by some miracle of God I did. I couldn’t see, and every breath was agony. Then I felt someone next to me, dragging me through the sand and rolling me onto my back.
‘Jesus Christ, Paddy,’ I heard someone say in a Scotch accent. It was my pal, Sergeant Douglas Watson, to whom I owe my life.
‘Dougie, am I blind?’ I beseeched, reaching out and grasping his arm. ‘Are my eyes alright?’
‘Take it easy, Pad,’ he soothed. I felt a handkerchief wiping something wet from my face. ‘Your eyes have been filled with sand, that’s all. You’re going to be fine.’
With the help of Dougie and another pal, Jack Noble, I was taken to a military ambulance and handed over to the care of the medical officer. After a quick examination of my injuries and a few bandages applied here and there, he declared: ‘There’s very little I can do for you, Sergeant Rochford. Just lie still a while.’
John Eyre had been having a busy time of things lately, so I couldn’t blame him for not having much time for me. There were countless numbers of casualties and the man lying beside me in the ambulance was nearing his end. He’d received the full blast of an enemy shell, which had cut right across his stomach.
Outside I could hear explosions all around us but I cared little. I laid there in a daze, slipping in and out of consciousness, while my fellow patients proceeded to die. As the more seriously injured men passed away, things became quieter for the medical officer. It was only then he found time to look me over, and pronounced temporary blindness caused by shock, a broken shoulder, several shattered ribs and torn ligaments in the knee.
The battle outside began hotting up and it sounded as though the ambulance and its occupants came close on several occasions to being blown sky high. In the end it was Mother Earth and not Jerry who helped to break the springs in my bunk, for we were tossed about so much as we raced across the bumpy terrain of the desert.
I fretted about the lads in my truck. Had they got away okay? Did they get hold of any more petrol? We’d been down to our last drop and I shuddered at the thought of them lying stranded in the middle of the wilderness. I wondered where I was being taken. Was I, like the other wounded troops, headed for a makeshift desert hospital somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where I might as well be dead? Or would I be lucky enough to make it back to Cairo, or even Alexandria? These and many other questions were racing through my throbbing head, making it hurt even more.
By nightfall there was only one other wounded man left in the ambulance, and he was in a bad way. He’d been hit by a bullet in the lung and wasn’t expected to last much longer. He’d lain motionless throughout the journey until the early hours of the morning, when he’d become agitated and began to murmur.
‘Mother,’ I heard him call several times, and I think he said ‘Lillian,’ but I couldn’t be certain.
I managed to move my good arm onto his pillow. I wasn’t quite sure why I did this, but looking back, I suppose it was to let him know he wasn’t on his own. He shifted his head so his cheek was touching my fingers, and with a final rattle from deep in his lungs, he slipped away to meet his maker. He’d fought the good fight, as thousands of men were doing all over the world, and as thousands more were destined to do before Hitler’s bloody war ended. I wish now that I’d learned the poor chap’s name so at least I could have got word to his parents and sweetheart, just to let them know they’d been in his thoughts at the end.
The few men that were left of the battalion were committed to battle again. I was a dead loss to them and they couldn’t have carted me around in my present state, so I was handed over to the 12th Light Field Ambulance, which set off through a blinding sandstorm.
The old spark stayed alight, though I was in tremendous pain. The two orderlies sat in the back with me helped to make light of the bumps and jolts. I was suffering from spasms of crushing agony in my chest, but when the pain ebbed we were able to chat, which proved a welcome distraction.
At some point in the journey the driver lost contact with our convoy and we became well and truly lost. Someone was watching over us that day, for we eventually ran into a convoy of Polish troops who were making their way to Tobruk, where we were heading, so we were able to follow them. I was amazed by the array of fresh bread and wine the Poles had to offer, and by the time we arrived in Tobruk my head was light from all the alcohol I’d consumed.
Those who once passed through Tobruk Hospital would no doubt remember the feeling of terror that stalked the wards night after night as the spineless Italian fighter pilots rained down their bombs upon the wounded men. I felt defenceless in my hospital bed, unable to walk, as bomb after bomb showered down around us. Between the explosions came the cries of the wounded, etching those frightful nights in my memory for the rest of my days. One of my injured comrades and fellow Merrymaker, Guardsman Tom Elliott, was with me in hospital, having lost a leg in battle. During an air raid he’d become startled and had fallen from the operating table, breaking his nose as he landed on the floor. I wondered if the Italian bomber would have been proud of his actions, had he seen the result of his handiwork.
When it became too dangerous for us to be there, we were divided into groups and informed we were to be transported to Egyptian hospitals by sea. They laid us out on stretchers along the dockside, where gentle hands began lifting us onto the ship’s deck. It was then I knew I must have died and gone to heaven, for I saw something so beautiful it must have been an angel: a female face. It was a sight I hadn’t seen for a long time, for all the attendants at Tobruk had been burly medical officers. Had I finally succumbed to my injuries? No, I told myself, for I was still in too much pain. If my body had been working properly, I would have reached out and touched the lovely face that was peering down at me with smiling eyes.
‘Is it true you’re a sergeant in the Guards?’ the nurse asked, extinguishing her own heavenly halo with that single sentence.
‘Yes,’ I sighed, waiting for the inevitable comment.
‘But you’re so small,’ she chucked. ‘Did you slip in through the back door?’
‘I’ve been marking time for twenty-two years,’ I said. ‘Perhaps my legs have worn down.’
That afternoon aboard the ship, two charming nurses helped to bathe me. They removed the huge pad of cotton wool that had been secured over my facial cuts. I was handed a mirror, and whilst my head looked like a swollen punch bag, I was told there wouldn’t be any permanent scarring, and was thankful for that, at least. The nurses examined my bruised cheeks and told me how far a blush reached. I’d never really wondered about that before, although I’m certain mine must have extended down to my ankles. Even to a disciplined Guardsman with years of battle practice, being bathed like a newborn babe by two pretty young ladies was one of the most daunting experiences of my life.
Feeling a little more comfortable for the first time since my accident, I settled myself down for the night. Before I drifted off to sleep, the ship’s medical officer began doing his rounds. He told me the first port of call would be Alexandria, where I was to alight and transfer to a hospital in the city. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was returning to my home away from home, close to my good friends, Jack Davy and the Shakours.
As soon as we docked, I was on my way to the 64th General Hospital. I settled in well, and it was beneficial to experience some restful nights, free of Italian air raids. Though the skies were deceptively silent, I knew the war must have reached a desperate stage, because one morning a tall, military moustachioed major from our battalion came to visit. His greeting was shamefully brief.
‘I’m sorry you chaps are missing all the fun,’ he said, the sound of his large boots echoing through the ward, ‘so do try very hard to get well, and don’t stay here a single day longer than is necessary. Hospital is no place for a Guardsman. You’re all much needed on the front line.’
Tom Elliott, who’d transferred with me, was unable to move an inch. He was in tremendous pain, and was at that time waiting to have his remaining leg amputated. I’m sure the major meant well and didn’t mean to be unkind, but I sometimes wondered if he even popped his head round the hospital mortuaries on the off-chance there might have been some Guardsmen who were still breathing!
The weeks passed quickly and in what seemed like no time at all I was allowed out on day leave to visit my pals, who only lived a few tram stops from the hospital. My civilian clothes were waiting for me at Zizinia, fresh and aired, and though I spent just a few hours in them, I shall always remember strolling along the sea front in good company, feeling at peace with the world. A few days later my old friend Jack invited me to attend the Barclay’s Bank tennis championships. I even had the honour of presenting the silver cup to the winner with my one hand, as the other was still strapped up. Seeing the inquisitive looks on people’s faces, Jack took much delight in telling everyone I’d been run over by a tank.
‘No!’ they exclaimed in horror. ‘How on earth did you survive?’
Everyone I met was keen to hear my story, and I’d never felt so popular in all my days.
Returning to hospital at the end of the tournament was a precarious undertaking. It was rush hour in the city and I was cattle-prodded into a rickety old tram, where I found myself squished between a crowd of civilian Arabs and Egyptian soldiers. The journey did nothing for my aching bones. There were always far too many passengers aboard than those old trams could hold, and that was just on the inside. To avoid paying the fare, a great deal more of them could usually be seen clinging to the exterior like spider monkeys. Frequent were the reports of people who’d slipped and landed on the tracks, sometimes losing a limb, or worse, their lives. The authorities were getting tired of this, so they sent Egyptian policemen, armed with rhino whips, to wait at various tram stops, ready to lash the trespassers off the sides.
Alexandria, 1942: all smiles before tea. Paddy with his British and Egyptian friends, while wounded on leave.
Many sympathetic eyes were upon me as I stood in the carriage, covered in bandages and sporting an empty jacket sleeve. Not wanting people to get the wrong impression, I slipped my bad arm up through my collar and took my cigarette out of my mouth. The expressions of pity turned to shock, and then to grins.
‘I’m delighted to see you still have your arm,’ one lady passenger said to me. ‘I thought you’d lost it.’
‘I’ve been run over by a tank,’ I told her with a wry smile.
If ever a Guardsman was detached from his unit, he was expected to return as soon as possible. This had been drummed into our heads from a young age, so it came as a bitter blow when I was examined by the medical board and regraded from A1 to B2. These were medical categories, and whilst the former signified that a soldier was in tip-top condition, the latter meant he was deemed unfit to fight on the front line and was restricted to base duties only. The feeling that I’d let my battalion down was difficult to bear. I didn’t share this news with anyone, for I had no intention of being given base duties when so many of our men were out on the battlefield, risking their lives in the firing line, in need of all the relief they could get. There were no two ways about it: I had to return to my line as soon as I was able.
The following day a driver arrived at the hospital to collect some of the A grade Guardsmen who were being discharged and sent back to duty. My ward was all hustle and bustle that morning as a bomb had been let off outside by a gang of renegades, so in all the commotion it was fairly easy for me to sneak away unnoticed and join the other Guardsmen in the back of the truck. I made some excuse about being late for roll call, and one of my pals helped me into the vehicle just as it was pulling off.
The summer solstice of 1942 was approaching, and our diminishing band of men was based at a military camp in a desert village called El Daba, some 100 miles west of Alexandria, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. There were only a small number of troops here when I arrived, for the rest of my battalion had found themselves caught up in a hostile campaign in the middle of the Libyan Desert, having come face to face with the Desert Fox himself. News of their progress came trickling in over the coming days, and by the sound of things our lads were in desperate straits. The grapevine had it that some of our bravest and most respected officers had either been taken prisoner or killed, including our own Lieutenant Colonel Tom Bevan. He’d died from the wounds he’d sustained during a courageous struggle.
It wasn’t long before news reached us that Tobruk, our remaining stronghold in Libya, had fallen to the enemy. It was said that 25,000 of our men had been taken prisoner, with thousands more killed, wounded and missing in action, including hundreds of Coldstreamers.
I struggled to process the information. Hundreds of my pals were lost; and if I’d not made such a foolish mistake in the desert a few months back, I’d have more than likely been among them.
Second by second the hours ticked by until some heartening news reached us. Our valiant Major Tim Sainthill had refused to surrender, and about 180 of his Guardsmen had fought their way out through the bombs and the minefields. As they made their way back across the desert they’d rallied other surviving troops from the South African regiments. All told, this band of survivors had swelled to over 300 men. By some miracle they made it safely through the clouds of war and on to the home straight, only to run into a column of German soldiers. Yet their luck hadn’t quite run out. With quick thinking, they removed their headdress and waved to the unsuspecting enemy who, thinking they were their own chaps, waved back and let them go.
It was a jubilant evening when these happy stragglers began to arrive at our base. I even saw two men kiss one another as they embraced. Normally that sort of conduct was unheard of in the Guards, but nobody minded that night.
Tales of our harrowing defeat came in thick and fast. Several drummers from my platoon, including the great comic, Stan Lee, had escaped from Tobruk and had made their way to Mersa Matruh, never knowing that Jerry had got there first; and into the bag they went. I hoped to goodness he’d destroyed the photographs of the Comic Stormtroopers comedy show we’d put on before the war. Stan had taken the part of Hitler, and he’d looked uncannily convincing.
We slept soundly that night but in the early hours of the morning we received a shelling, which told us the Germans were hot on our tail. We pulled camp, tents and all, and when the place was completely bare we moved off leaving nothing for Jerry to claim. We even filled in the WC so he’d have to dig all over again if he wanted to use our base as a camp.
We journeyed throughout the remainder of the night and reached our new position before dawn had broken. This place was called El Alamein: just another name for nowhere. Nevertheless, it was a British-controlled nowhere, at least for the time being, and it was our job to see it stayed that way. We were told a special message for our unit had been received from Winston Churchill himself, who’d issued us with the select task of holding this line at all costs until reinforcements arrived. In short, we were asked to ‘do or die’ for forty-eight hours more. Would we be strong enough to hold on until then? We’d heard the cavalry would be bringing a fresh supply of weapons and armour; welcome news indeed. Throughout the course of the war we’d been so ill equipped we may as well have been fighting with nothing but a stick, and now even that was blunt. I knew if ever there was a time to call upon the store of extra energy that was supposed to rest behind our elbow, this was it.
Mustapha Barracks, Alexandria, 1939: the Coldstream Guards in fancy dress. It was all fun and games, just before the war.
It was some hours after sunrise when things began kicking off. One of our petrol lorries was dive-bombed by a German aircraft and both the driver and passenger were burnt to death in their seats. Their smouldered remains were visible in the cab, and RSM Len Rowlands asked for volunteers to get them out. I volunteered along with a Guardsman from Headquarter Company, and together we sweated in the hot sun, struggling to remove the bodies. It was an almost impossible task, for the heat from the explosion had caused the cab of the lorry to twist into a mangled wreck. The effort made my shoulders and ribs ache, but I fought to hide my pain. More volunteers came forward, and between us we managed to disassemble a sufficient amount of the exterior to allow us to slip inside. As we pulled the charred corpses out, parts of them fell off. Their feet had become wedged underneath the pedals and I had to retrieve them. The smell made my stomach heave.
After committing the bodies to the ground, I was sent for by the commanding officer, and the stony look on his face told me that whatever was coming next wasn’t going to be anything good. Without a word he presented me with a medical record that had arrived fresh from Alexandria. My heart sank when I saw ‘B2’ stamped across the page. I knew I’d be found out eventually; I’d just hoped for a chance to do my bit in battle before then.
‘I admire your loyalty, Sergeant Rochford,’ he said, ‘but as I’m sure you’ll understand, I’m duty bound to ensure that every single man I send into battle has the highest possible chance of returning to me safely. That includes my wayward sergeants who seem to think that military regulations don’t apply to them. I’m sorry, old chap, but I’m afraid there’s no way I can permit you to stay with us.’
I knew then, as I stood before him with throbbing ribs and an aching arm, that it would have been pointless trying to convince him I was fit and healthy enough to stand side by side with my comrades. I was of no more use to my battalion, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. I already felt like a yellow belly and this made everything seem so much worse, but everybody wished me well when I left. I was grateful for their support.
The left-out-of-battle detachment, where I was transferred, had formed up at a place on the edge of the desert called Mena, on the outskirts of the capital. The poor chaps who’d been left out of the ‘fun’, as the officers termed it, were having a hell of a life here. One of the sergeant majors at the base seemed to really enjoy making life dammed uncomfortable for the unfortunate soldiers, many of whom still hadn’t recovered from their traumas. They were booked left, right and centre, and for absolutely nothing at all, whilst each morning the officers would swan in at whatever time suited them from where they’d been roughing it at the nearby Mena House Hotel, having spent the night in a soft bed, with a private bathroom and a push-bell to summon their attendants. It was all so unjust but I tried not to let it bother me. I kept my head down and got on with life as best I could, hoping that one day my lot would improve.
Rumour had it that the British authorities had placed King Farouk under house arrest within his palace at Abdin in Cairo. It seemed Britain was taking no chances with this crafty monarch. They’d even moved his yacht, and that of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik, the heir presumptive, from Ras el-Tin Harbour in Alexandria to Lake Timsah at the town of Ismailia, part of the Canal Zone. The reason for all this was that Farouk was partial to the Italians and his palaces were infested with them: they’d filled every role within his household staff, enjoying the king’s protection throughout the war.
Our detachment was bursting with speculation, and it was funny how the rumours were spread. We’d no proper toilets at Mena, and had to make do with going behind a small mound in the desert in the shadow of the pyramids. This was the perfect opportunity to spin a yarn or two before heading back to our duties. One rather appropriate story I heard while squatting was the tale of an unfortunate patrol of Guardsmen who’d been sent out to spy on the Afrika Korps. With only the light from the desert moon to see by, the patrol, flat on their tummies in the undergrowth, had seen the Jerries relieving a couple of Italian sentries. Bursting to go, the Wops nipped over in the direction of our watchers and commenced to urinate into the underbrush, soaking the hidden Guards. They’d been ordered not to move from their position at any cost, so our poor lads just had to lie there and bear it.
‘Hey, Paddy,’ one of the young lads called out one day as I was squatting behind my little mound, ‘I heard a smashing rumour today, and this one came directly from the officers’ mess. Mick Laycock said he’d overheard the company commander telling one of the senior officers that they’re sending us to a place called “The Land of Milk and Honey”. They say it’s a place that has an abundance of everything, including fresh spring waters and brothels galore!’
We were leaving. This was the best news I’d heard in a long time. I was sick and tired of life in Cairo, and this new place, the Land of Milk and Honey, sounded far more appealing. The lads and I never guessed it would be Syria.