I always worried when I did not get a letter for along time. It was the bombing that I worried about mostly. I thought that the air letters were a bit delayed, also the daft, incompetent people here who run the post office had not even got my name on the list and any letters that might have arrived here for me from the 42nd were sent to 2nd Echelon. We did not have to do any work and we paraded once a day for roll call. All the chaps were waiting to go home and the chief topic of consideration was shipping. I had recently met some chaps from India and Ceylon and I got on with them very well. I also met a chap who used to be a batman with me at Ipswich. He was at Salerno and told me a lot about the other chaps who apparently did very well. In October I saw an officer from my old unit who was second in command and we had a very long talk about things and the doings of the chaps. I was delighted to see him.

By November there were not many chaps here who came before me, most of the old ones have gone to the UK or South Africa. We were living the same old life of deadly boredom which repeated each day with terrible monotony. One morning we were marched to a lecture on 'Why Christian Ethics?' and the learned preacher asked the bored, weary audience 'What do we mean by a good life?' and they shouted up 'free beer'. Whenever I hear anyone say 'Men have no patience' I think of those weary heart aching months I spent in that awful land. I went to a nearby town and tried to get baby a doll and a rubber ball for Dorothy but could not see one anywhere in the shops. Prices were terribly high and the shop keepers were taking advantage of the troops as usual. Life stayed the same, very hot with cold winds ready to give anyone a chill, what a place to live in!!

While I was stuck out in Egypt, Vera and Violet Queenie received news of deaths amongst their relatives. An aunt wrote to them in November 1943 from Lydney in Gloucestershire “Thank you so much for your kind and sincere sympathy. We cannot believe we may never see Walter again but hoping in the tiniest shred of chance he may be safe on occupied territory although the admiralty gives very little hope. They share the enemy communiqué reports that survivors reached the shore in rafts and by swimming. It is considered unlikely, in view of the prevailing conditions and of the careful search made by our surface ships and aircraft that more than a few saved themselves in this manner. They only left Devonport the night before as Walter posted a letter to me which I got the day it happened, 23rd October, Essie's birthday. I hope God will spare us further sacrifice in this awful war. I've lost three nephews, two at sea and one in the Dieppe Raid also my brother lost his dear wife owing to the raids on Plymouth just a month ago. I hope you are all quite well. Please excuse any further news; this blow seems to knock me out.”

Finally in the latter part of November 1943 I went with 44 other soldiers to Port Suez to join a ship which already had about 450 soldiers from the North of England, about 50 Polish ATS who were all pregnant and were returning to the UK to have their babies and various nurses, WAFs, ATCs etc. The convoy consisted in all of eleven merchant men plus two warships to escort us. We took two days to pass through the Suez Canal, it is about 100 miles long with two lakes in the middle. The canal is very narrow for the most part and ships have to sail in single file and so the lakes are very useful for reorganising convoys. On the Egyptian side of the canal there were a lot of natives who seemed to get some money from the women on the ship to get various items for the ladies’. All the soldiers I met in the Middle East were glad to leave Egypt.

On the way to the UK our convoy stopped at Sicily for one week, which by then had been captured. When we got to Algiers one ship collided with another ship and both had to put into Gibraltar for repairs. This meant that 9 transports and 2 warships reached Liverpool on 19th December 1943. I am sorry to say it but the northern soldiers were always trying to goad us, they seemed to think that we were all cockneys. From Liverpool we went to the St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford where we saw the Women’s Institute ladies who gave us a pre-paid postcard to send off to our families to let them know that we had arrived home safely.

For about four hours at St Luke’s Hospital I thought I was in heaven and that all the nurses were angels. I had been at Sunday school at Yately when I was a boy and the teacher had talked about heaven and hell. We had met hell in the Middle East and here was heaven, in Bradford! The place was light, warm and friendly with no harassment or fear. On the Friday and Saturday we were inspected by medical officers and on the Sunday we collected our pass, ration cards and money and some of us were allowed to go home on leave. As soon as possible I left for London by train and then got another train from Paddington for Reading and got to my home, 15 Prospects Street at about 12.30 p.m. When I got home Dorothy asked who I was and I replied that I was her father. She replied that I was not her father and when I asked her who, in that case, was her father she pointed at a picture on the wall and replied that that was her father! On one occasion while out with her aunt, Dorothy started cheering some soldiers in lorries who she assumed were British; she was told off by her aunt as they were in fact German prisoners of war. Dorothy had not actually realised that Germans were human beings like us and had had a picture of them in her mind as long white poles. In 1945 Dorothy was to have a sister as Vera gave birth on 27th January of that year to our second daughter Rosemary Jane.