DESERT MAIL

          Mail would come to us in the desert in a canvas bag delivered by truck from Cairo. We would
        also be given (one per man) an air mail blank which we would pocket and write at our leisure ready for next week when the mail truck would come again. We got the air form as a free issue but we did have to buy stamps to stick on them. Sometimes if the truck got strafed by an enemy aircraft, the mail would be late, or if the truck caught fire due to this action, then good bye mail. Also two more crosses would dot the desert, the driver and his mate.
          Mail was pretty good in that it took about a week to get to us, but a parcel would come by boat. I
        remember when it was my birthday, my Mum sent me a cake and when I got it 3 months later it was so mouldy I slung it, but some of our blokes grabbed it and scraped the mould off and ate it.
          Leave was offered to service men after so many months in the desert but some could not be
        bothered because they had no money in their pay book to go on leave with. To clarify that, a soldier gets so much a week pay. In my case when I joined up, my pay was ten shillings a week. Now let's look at that before we go any further.
          When I first joined up, I took the advice of one of the old soldiers and asked the pay officer
        to send two shillings and six pence home to my mum as a regular allowance. Then I would have to spend two shillings and six pence per week on cleaning gear, soap, razor blades, haircuts, toothpaste, boot polish, cloths, pay my laundry bill, etc. That left me with five shillings to pay for cinema once a week, canteen tea and bun every morning a 10 o'clock, writing gear, stamps, etc., so if at the end of the week I had a penny left I would, as you say, jump up and click my heels.
          When I moved to Aldershot to the main regiment I was no longer a recuit but a regular soldier and
        my pay increased by--you are not going to believe this--three pence per day. I went on the rifle range along with all the other blokes and when they found out I was a marksman they said put in for the marksman badge (crossed rifles) and you will get an additional 3 pence per day. I got no chance to do this before the regiment was shipped out to Palestine, so I missed out on three pence a day for the rest of my seven years active service.
          It did not seem important to us in Palestine when WW2 was declared, but when the Australians
        came to give us a hand they had a lot more money than us. Prices sky-rocketed and we felt like the poor relation all of a sudden. The American soldiers got paid more than the Aussies, so when they hit the Middle East, life for the Tommy soldier really turned sour, moneywise. If we had a quid to spare then we would opt to go on leave when it was offered, since it was useless in the desert unless you had no toilet roll.
          On odd occasions, if an officer thought one of the blokes was getting sand happy, he would have
        him shipped to Cairo for a course of looking at by the shrink there. And maybe a month later he would come back looking fit and well and burbling all about the belly dancers in Sisters St. in Cairo and the blokes, having been bored to tears in the desert, would suddenly erupt with "AW SHADDAP!"
          A bloke was lucky if he could time his leave to coincide with the British fleets visit to Alexandria.
        Sometimes during a conversation or a game of cards on a blanket laid out on the sand a bloke would throw a fag into the kitty in the middle of the blanket and mumble "Ah eard t' fleet's in Alex arber agi'n ( I heard the fleet is in Alexandria harbour again) and if you were watching you would notice furtive glances back and forth between some of the players, and some one would venture "Funny, Ah wus thinkin' it wer time I ad a leave, might put in fer it termorrer."
          When the fleet was in Alex Harbour all the matlows would congregate at the fleet club and play
        bingo. Of course in those days it was called housey housey, or tombola, and when some lucky person got a ticket full he would shout "house". Nowadays we scream Bingo. I played there one night and I had been sipping the sherbet. Somebody called "house". Then this bloke leaned over and pointed to number 17 on my card and said, "That number came out 6 numbers ago," so I missed out on a full house, 95 quid (pounds). So I asked this bloke to give me a swift kick in the butt to wake me up and he did.
          Cairo was a good place to go on leave, but once the sun went down you kept away from the back
        streets where it was dark and it was a good move to always go in pairs when away from the main body. There was always a fresh coffee smell or Turkish cigarette smell and the smell of fresh bread as you walked the streets in the main areas and there were always scruffy looking kids demanding "baksheesh" (food or money) and little walads (boys) carrying a heavy box and begging you to let him shine your shoes for money.