by Blitzkid » Mon Apr 25, 2022 1:48 pm
In 1945-46-7 I was in Palestine. March 1947 our camp moved to northern Palestine there was trouble, I and ten others were assigned to protect a building, this building comprised Five floors, the ground floor and second floor were a branch of Barclays bank, dealt with all bank transactions of British forces in the Middle East, third floor was allocated to us, fourth and fifth floors the shipping offices for the whole of the Mediterranean sea.
Our job was to protect it from any saboteurs, there had been a spate of suitcase bombing, Two men was posted outside the front door, to search articles, they would be relieved every four hours. I and another were about to relieve the two, when passing from the second floor to the bank floor I spotted a suitcase, I screamed for everyone to take cover, blew my whistle, a great white light light, an explosion and no more. I heard a voice in my ear,-- stay still don't open your mouth or eyes, don't move a muscle, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand, I squeezed his hand, then do not move and I will get you to hospital, now does any where hurt you, I will mention parts of your body, if you have pain squeeze, but no where hurt only my ears, I felt some one lift me, the medic said sqeeze if you hurt, they got me to the hospital, cleaned me up, and found only cuts and bruises on my face and forehead, and my nose had bled, they looked for shock. Kept me in for two weeks (fearing shock), and I was sent back to my unit. My face had been peppered with small brick, plaster and glass, but everything healed. Today I have only two small dents in my forehead.
In Sept I was sent home on six weeks leave.
Turned out the two on duty were new to the game, just arrived from England, they had no experience of the policing job, the sergeant was demoted to Corporal, and we had a bout of training on police type of duty.
A single railway track led from Haifa to the Suez about 80 miles, this had been mined several times, this was an empty fruit train going back to the Suez and about a dozen of soldiers were in the rear coach, once again I was thrown by the force of Blast and we landed in a heap, the weight of the engine had set off a mine, no one was hurt and we continued our journey by lorry about ten miles to Port Said then by boat to Southampton.