Baghdad and back
We moved to Baghdad and stayed till about June '41. We had to put down the rising, show the flag! There were pockets of fighting, and we had to find and liberate pockets of prisoners. For instance, a hundred of us were sent away for days, up to Mosul, and Kirkuk, mostly in Kurdistan, about 200 miles over road less terrain. There were about a dozen lorries. We were to release the Kurds and British nationals.
Entering Baghdad
Mosul and Kirkuk were oil towns, sending oil down to Tripoli in Syria, the "T" pipeline. After his coup, Raschid Ali had stopped the oil. The British staff and engineers and those holding British passports had all been arrested. We liberated them. The rebels did not put up much resistance - rather, they made off, hoping to fight another day. Whilst we were on this mission, others in the column were on similar sorties.
Suddenly we were recalled, and had to set off, the whole column, up the "T" pipeline to confront the "Vichy" French Foreign Legion. We travelled north, up the Euphrates, to the "T" pipeline, and along it. We met the Legion west of Palmyra - a ruined city, only peopled by a few Bedouin. It was just a mass of toppled columns, like ruins anywhere in the middle east - or Egypt or Athens. It was a large oasis.
We were held up by the Legion who held the heights all around. They were owing allegiance to the Vichy government, and thus to Germany. We were held on the plains, and the fighting was intense. We lost one third of our transport. We had to dig in and began to run short of food and water. A detachment of transport was sent south towards the "H" pipeline unescorted, for speed. They were captured by a pocket of Iraqis. Another detachment had to be sent, this time with armoured cars, to try to bring back supplies from our "dumps" on the "H" line.
I remember I lent a chap, Roy Risdale, two piastres to buy some drink at the Naafi van. Another chap, Harvey, came up and said, "Did you lend him money? I lent him some and he's never repaid me". Next day Harvey says, "Risdale's bought it! Told you you'd never get your money back!". That was the army!
Eventually we got supplies of food and ammo, got the vehicles ready and broke through to Homs Hamma and finally Aleppo. This was the fiercest fighting of "my" war. (The French Armistice - 9 July '41).
We were stationed in Aleppo, Syria, some two weeks. We stayed in a fig grove, nets all up on the trees. We liberated the prisoners of the French. Some of them were blokes from our own column who had been taken back in Palmyra, Iraq. We put the French legionnaires into "the cage" - the POW camp. It was a large compound with observation towers. Soon the whole place quietened down and we could stroll out round the groves and into town - not singly, of course, but in small groups. It was a beautiful green town, full of fruit trees: plums, pears and apples. It was the wrong time of year for the citrus fruits. You just picked your own fruit and paid what was asked. French was the spoken language and the growers had lost all the markets for the fruit. They had no way to export it.
Aleppo
Then we were ordered off south to Sarafand, for refit and leave. We made off south through Hama, Homs. Then to Tripoli on the coast, and we stayed in the French Foreign Legion barracks and made ourselves very visible - showing the flag - for a day or two before moving to Damascus.
I remember one of our funnier incidents in Damascus. We were near the rear of the column at that time and a halt was called for a meal. When this happened, we did not leagar, but set up kitchen as we were. The field kitchens were metal containers, like a cloche, like a tunnel with round holes on top on which to place the pots or billie-cans. A strong, noisy paraffin blower - like a large blow lamp - was placed at one end and blew into the tunnel. To make it quicker we could close the other end. Well, when the column halted, we were still (the end of the column) in the middle of the town - the main thoroughfare - a beautiful street - and we had to set to. The watchers gathered round - crowds of men and children - and watched us cooking and eating. A real public performance.
In the desert, when we cooked, it was with sand fires. We had some of our petrol in "bowsers" and some in four gallon tins. With difficulty we cut the tin in half, horizontally, with our bayonets and filled them with sand. Then we dug the tin down in the sand to steady it, poured in petrol and lit it. It burned with a low blue flame, but very hot. Then we put on the dixie. When the flame died low we would lift the dixie, and stir the sand with a bayonet, and it would brighten up again. Experience taught us how much petrol was required, for there was no way you could add any to the fire.