From England to Sicily

Interviewer: Did you know where you were going?

We knew that we weren't going back to the south of England. By this time we figured we were going, you know, something was going on.

Interviewer: Had they issued you with new equipment, or uniforms?

No, no, we had the same thing. Oh we had, we ended up with shorts, and puttees. We just said, where are we going with shorts and puttees? And the shorts we brought out, after we landed in Sicily, we just threw them away, and the puttees, because with the shorts you'd lay there and the ants would chew your legs to ribbons, so we got rid of the shorts right quick. And the puttees you, you know, who wore puttees in those days, they were terrible.

Interviewer: How many days were you at sea, from Glasgow to Sicily?

I figure we were thirty, but it seemed like sixty. They kept going back, they kept going, they were in the Atlantic and they, they'd go way South and it'd be nice and warm and then they'd turn around and come back. And they were all wandering around to join up together, cause it was a big convoy, you know, a big, more ships, then they went right through to Gibraltar.

Interviewer: So it was a straight run through the Straits of Gibraltar right into Sicily.

Yeah, right into Sicily.

Interviewer: Were you, do you recall being intercepted at any time by either...

Well, you could hear them at night, you know, if a ship got torpedoed you'd hear the thump, you know, bang, and, and so we had, we had, I think at that time we had control of the air, which made us very lucky.

Interviewer: Yes.

Quite, a few of those ships got torpedoed. Some of them got torpedoed off Gibraltar, and I think most of them got ashore, and a bunch of them got torpedoed, ended up in Africa.