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desert toilet seat by cutting a hole in the top of one of the wooden cases that the fuel cans came in. They were about three feet tall and you could sit like a king as you surveyed the shifting sands.
    Water was handed out at the rate of a gallon per man but we had to top up radiators and do everything with that so there wasn’t much to drink. The water came in flimsy metal containers coated with wax, which invariably cracked as the tins had been tossed around. It tasted either of rust or candles. Washing was aluxury we couldn’t afford in combat. When the pressure was off we would wash our hands and face as best we could, then use a shaving brush to apply minimal amounts of water to the rest of the body. It usually ran out before the job was done.
    All too often we were dependent on the bowser man. I never knew his name. To everyone he was just the bowser man, plain and simple. He roamed the desert with a captured Italian tanker truck almost at will, touring the birs in search of water. He could be gone for days, always alone. He was a small, mysterious man who could read the desert and converse comfortably in Arabic with the Bedouin. Being on the blue had got to him. If he returned and caught you sitting on one of our improvised fuel-case toilets he would go wild, pull out his .38 revolver and drive the bowser round and round, shooting at the box between your legs. Nobody knew why. Despite the indignity of having a wooden lavatory shot from underneath you, he never hurt anyone and, mad though he was, everyone just accepted him.
    Then came the biggest show so far. General Wavell decided on a surprise attack on the Italian desert fortresses. The details were kept very quiet of course. Everything was on a ‘need to know’ basis and the lads didn’t need to know. That’s how it was. Our part was to go out and chart the Italian minefields and the other defences round their camps so that the tanks leading the assault could charge straight in through the gaps.
    On 7 December, vast columns of men and machinery moved into position under cover of darkness as the desert winter began to bite, leaving soldiers shivering and nervous ahead of the battle. Two days later, in the very early morning, tanks, guns and infantry were led to the start line for the attack. The route for the vehicles marked with hurricane lamps which were shielded from the enemy by petrol cans, cut open and tilted over. The soldiers were near enough to smell coffee and the other aromas of breakfast wafting from the Italian camps. At 0700 hours our guns letrip with a massive barrage and then the attack on their positions began. The Italian tanks were useless with very thin armour. We knocked out twenty-three of theirs in the first fifteen minutes then captured thirty-five more and took 2,000 prisoners for the loss of fifty-six men. In the grim arithmetic of war, that was a good start.
    The information put together by our night patrols had helped make it a big success. Some of our officers began to measure the number of prisoners by the acre, rather than the thousand. Judging by the documents I have seen since, the congratulatory messages were soon flying back and forth between the top brass. I don’t recall a single ‘thank you’ being passed on to the boys in the desert in all my time in action. I don’t think the top brass felt the need.
    2RB found a very good cook amongst the Italian prisoners. He was spirited away by our officers and put to work in their mess kitchen as ‘Rifleman Antonio’. He lasted four weeks before anyone senior found out, even though he had to share a cave with a colonel during an air raid.
    We captured Sidi Barrani, that windblown fort with a battered wall and a few hutments, where Il Duce had boasted that he had got the trams running. That was 10 December and within twenty-four hours the desert greeted the news with a monumental sandstorm.
    We didn’t have it all our own way. The Italian air force had a habit of spoiling the