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projected move to a different sector. On 23 January Fg Off Howard Clark returned from leading another section scramble with Plt Off F. Robey, this time an attempt to intercept a hostile aircraft, but they returned without finding any target. Always keen to get to grips with the enemy, he wrote in his next letter: ‘I am still flying the same Hurris, I wish we could get Spits out here; there are not many out here and they are really needed more out here than in England.’ Upon landing, however, he found that the squadron had received orders to come to a mobile state in preparation for a move to Sidi Bu Amud, near the main coastal road some 35 miles west of Tobruk. Were they going to rejoin the shooting war?
    The ground echelon set off on the morning of 28 January. After delays due to a severe dust storm, the squadron’s twenty-one aircraft – all Hurricane IICs by now – staged via Buqbuq and Mersa Matruh to arrive at Sidi Bu Amud airfield on 2 February 1943. Here, once again, the squadron settled down to convoy escort duty.
    The squadron Operational Record Book (ORB) writer clearly felt the need to wax lyrical and on 1 February, upon arrival at Sidi Bu Amud, he was moved to write:

    At this season of the year the desert puts on its best garment and the landscape is very pleasing to the eye, with a profusion of wild flowers in the wadis. This squadron knows this part of the desert from previous campaigns and in the dry heat of summer with the Khamseen [or Khamsin : a dry, hot, dusty wind off the Sahara] blowing it can be one of the least desirable places on Earth. To visit here in spring is a refreshing experience for everyone.

    On the matter of ‘living in the desert’, life for Howard and his colleagues was decidedly rough and ready – with the emphasis on rough. It could hardly be anything else, when one considers the terrain, the distances involved and the need for mobility at short notice. Sleeping in small two-man tents, dug into the ground or with sand piled up around them to give the impression of protection from bomb blast and flying splinters, everything else was done out in the open: messing, briefing, ablutions and suchlike. Food was scarce and usually tinned. Drinking water was like gold; water for washing and shaving was extremely limited. Howard grew a moustache and when he sent a picture home the opinion was that he looked a bit like Clark Gable! To combat the absence of fresh food, vitamin C tablets were issued and if personnel visited any liberated town or official unit, they were ordered to take their own meagre rations with them. In Tripoli, for example, due to extreme food shortage in the city, troops were ordered not to have meals in cafes or hotels, although they were told ‘this does not apply to tea or coffee or like beverages …’
    In the heat and dust, clothes became dirty, smelly and ragged. Off-duty time was generally boring with occasional football or cricket, until the heat made it unbearable, or sleeping, reading, writing letters if so inclined – although paper was scarce, too – and trying to keep out of the sun, the dust and the ever- present flies. High winds or sudden sand storms lasting days filled every aperture – human and machine – with sand and dust. Very occasionally it rained, turning everything to mud, seeping into tents and turning slit trenches into swamps until it soaked away or dried up when the sun returned. As they moved through the desert, there were constant reminders from HQ medical staff about the presence of malaria, typhus and dysentery, and the dangers of flies and of not disposing of refuse properly. Apart from these discomforts, the Luftwaffe sought out landing grounds on nightly bombing raids in order to make things even more uncomfortable. After this, a swim in the sea was sheer bliss.

    Home sweet home! Howard’s tent in the desert. (Clark Collection)
    On 4 February the Eighth Army, having secured Libya, rolled into Tunisia, but that wily fox