Douglas Mitchell

We were all delighted to be paraded in the desert. Actually we joined after the breakthrough at El Alamein. The journeys over the desert were certainly an experience and it was amazing how one existed on small amounts of food and water. Washing and shaving every morning except where conditions did not allow it and then saving the water on that day to use the next day. Petrol was wasted beyond belief. The majority of a 4-gallon can were leakers. There were no jerry cans like the Germans had and nobody seemed to bother about it. We were able to get eggs from the nomads in the desert and they used to exchange it for tea. Well we weren’t very kind to them I suppose. We used to dry all the old tea leaves and put them in a tin, just sprinkle some new leaves on the top and give it to them for which they went away quite happily. Then they got to realise what was going on. They would empty it out first before they would accept the tea for the eggs so we lost out on that in the end.