Avoid being captured by Abyssinian soldiers at any cost

Asmara during the British occupation of Eritrea

The next instalment of my grand-uncle Dick's memoirs.

And so we moved into 1941, the war going well. The army was advancing with the help of the South Africans and Indian Divisions.

Periodically we helped to load up the Wellesleys with packs of leaflets for dropping over the Eritrean and Abyssinian territory, written in Italian, Eritrean, Abyssinian and English. They spoke of the Allied Successes.

Bags of Marie Theresa Silver Dollars were also dropped by the aircrew to Abyssinian patriots to pay them to carry on the fight. This was an old Austrian Dollar, but because of its silver content it was used as an additional currency throughout the Middle East.

Our billets were now built of mud bricks made from Nile mud with simple wood moulds. They dried in an hour. We watched our NAAFI built and grow from nothing in a few days.

Incidentally in the camp there was a tree ringed with an iron railing stating that General Gordon used to ride out from Khartoum on his camel to pray. He was a very religious man.

Two miles away was a Free French Squadron with Long Nose Blenheims. We managed to arrange a hockey match with them and on passing the aircraft we noticed one Blenheim, with both engines completely nude, with not a cowling in sight. We found out that a sand storm the previous day had caught the ground crew completely by surprise whilst at 'tiffin' (lunch) and about twenty cowlings were now bowling across the desert fifty miles away, never to be seen again. I do not think that we ever saw that Blenheim move again.

Once a month, on Saturday morning, was 'de-bugging.' Wooden rope beds were taken outside and all the joints brushed with anti-bug solution and we would watch them crawl out to be 'assassinated.'

The army had now entered Asmara, Eritrea, shortly followed by the Squadron moving into the Italian Air Force Camp which had been bombed the first day of the war. Attached to a rear party I remained behind at Gordon's Tree to service a few Wellesleys on rectification. Finally, I climbed aboard one of the last aircraft and flew into Asmara.

Asmara was a fine city with shops, cafes, an Odeon cinema and a football stadium. The war was practically over with just isolated pockets of Italian troops, mainly holding out on mountains, scared to surrender, but only to the British. For an Italian to be captured by an Abyssinian was a fate worse than death. They say they were given to their women who cut off their testicles, put them in their mouths, and sewed their lips together.

British soldiers were told not to surrender their prisoners to the Sikhs who would offer to take them back behind lines. Some Sikhs had had their hair cut of by the Italians when taken prisoner, against their religion, a terrible insult. The Sikhs would slit their throats.

Sports teams suffered. It took a good few weeks to acclimatise ourselves to enable us to complete a game without chest pains and shortness of breath. We were 7000 feet up.

One problem on road traffic: we made them change their right hand side drive to left hand drive, resulting in the buses offloading their passengers in the middle of the road. It was dangerous when suddenly confronted with oncoming traffic. A couple of civilian deaths ensued.