Johns' Story (cont.)
1943-1944
ENGLAND-NORTH AFRICA
Olive grove and airfield in Tunisia
We left Liverpool in early January for a trip to Oran, Algeria in North Africa. In order to avoid the threat of German submarines and aircraft that patrolled the southern coast of England, the convoy sailed a great circle route a thousand miles out into the Atlantic to reach the Straits of Gibraltar. Three days at sea our ship suddenly stopped dead in the water while the rest of the convoy and all of the escort ships but one cruiser sailed on.. We had lost our rudder and could not steer—a thousand miles at sea, unable to move, subs who knows where, but thank goodness, out of range of the German patrol planes. In retrospect, I don’t think any of us were as scared as the captain of our ship. He would appear at least twice a day to assure us that they were doing everything possible to get us repaired and under way. It took three days to get the ship repaired and off we went by ourselves, sitting ducks till we arrived in Oran. Better food than our last sea trip anyway.
We had lost our rudder and could not steer—a thousand miles at sea, unable to move, subs who knows where, but thank goodness, out of range of the German patrol planes. In retrospect, I don’t think any of us were as scared as the captain of our ship. He would appear at least twice a day to assure us that they were doing everything possible to get us repaired and under way. It took three days to get the ship repaired and off we went by ourselves, sitting ducks till we arrived in Oran. Better food than our last sea trip anyway.January and February are rainy season months in the Mediterranean. We disembarked in the rain, proceeded to a muddy hillside, and tried to set up our tents so we could get out of the rain and dry out. The mud was pure clay and very slippery. It was the worst camp we made during the war. Thank goodness we were there only one week. Cold and wet, we hit the road again in the trusty army trucks for our next move to Algiers..
Wow! Real barracks with army cots at a regular airfield and a good runway. Too good to be true? Sure it was. We stayed here only three weeks or so before moving on. Maybe that was a good thing. In our second week the Germans followed some British night fighter Mosquitos back to the base and bombed both the runway and a couple of the barracks. Missed the building we were in, thankfully, but we didn’t get much sleep that night. We did go into Algiers to a couple of restaurants. In one we had a great meal of shrimp and pasta. Six of us were in the party and they placed a huge platter of large unpeeled shrimp in the middle of the table. I had never eaten shrimp before, and that platter full of funny looking things with hard shells gave me a few moments of doubt. Boy, they were good after months of army rations.