STEAM AT WAR 10




We were taken by ambulance to the casualty clearing station where we were able to witness the superb efficiency and dedication with which the staff dealt with the severe to not so severely wounded. I was in the latter category and received attention at 22.00 hours that night. I awoke next morning to find my burns skinned and dyed and dressed. There turned out to be small sutured areas on the balls of my thumbs and a skin graft inside one wrist. The largest visible wound was a relatively small area on one forearm from where the skin had been taken for the graft.

Next day my driver was flown to a hospital near Cairo and an ambulance train took me to the then forward hospital at Gerawla about 12kms east of my unit base at Similla. I vaguely remember my admission to the hospital and waking up in what seemed to be next morning feeling good. A patient in the next bed said, "Gee Kiwi what happened to you! You've been asleep for three days. They brought your meals and took them away again". I thought that such a thing could not have occurred, but some days later I was to see a British soldier with no apparent injury but in poor physical shape do just that. When he awoke the ward sister washed and shaved him, cut his hair and trimmed his toenails and fingernails. A man transformed! I used to admire these Tommy soldiers for when enemy prisoners of war were brought out they were escorted by some of the soldiers who captured them. Such escorts often looked more battered than their prisoners. After three weeks I was discharged back to my unit and following two weeks light duties rostered back onto the railhead trains. My driver of the incident a much older man than I did not show sufficient recovery and was returned home. For his attempt at rescuing me he was mentioned in despatches. The Similla-Mashiefa trains were given some protection with the addition of anti-aircraft gun equipped wagons marshalled next to the engines and guards' vans. The tender skin on my hands and wrists chafed and bled and I received dressing replacements at the regimental aid posts at the ends of the trips. Healing became permanent after about two weeks. .

During this time the allied forces commenced the withdrawal to El Alamein. We were the only loads travelling west with mostly fuel to sustain the retreating army. Came the final two days when we withdrew every locomotive and railway wagon possible with as many as five east bound trains occupying a single 13km section. Unclaimed petrol was set on fire and about 150 wagons were left behind. Following four days of start-stop progress over heavily bomb blasted and hastily repaired track the company arrived intact at Alexandria. Our train together with three or four locomotives was shunted into the absentee King Farouk's private station where we camped for a week then moved to a permanent site in a suburb close to the walled railway yards. We enjoyed the experience of living in a luxuriously grassed park that was alive with toads and small lizards that scuttled everywhere.

As the front line stabilised at El Alamein we commenced running supply trains to a temporary railhead at Burg El Arab 56kms west of Alexandria. About four trains a day were run during the early parts of the nights. In anticipation of our return to the western desert railway a fleet of American diesel electric locomotives was shipped to the vast army stores at Suez. 16th and 17th railway personnel were selected for training in their operation. For this group the companies chose the steam locomotive firemen who had accumulated long service on the railhead runs. I became a member of a detachment to a locomotive instruction school at Suez where we had about a month gaining handling experience shunting the rail network serving the stores yards spread out over several square kilometres. We then took several of the new locomotives via the Egyptian State Railways route along the western side of the Suez Canal to El Firdan and across the new army erected swing-bridge to the eastern bank. We then worked trains over a new military line constructed from El Kantara to El Shatt that was another military supply dump at the southern end of the canal opposite Suez. For about six weeks we worked supply trains over this route, some bound for the El Alamein front and others from El Kantara to Gaza on the first leg of their journeys to Turkey. Finally we delivered the locomotives to our base at Alexandria and set about training more drivers over the Alexandria-Burg El Arab section.