Robert Adams

My father Robert Adams was a territorial before the war and signed up at the outset of hostilities. After training in UK (including the Orkneys) he joined the Devon and Cornwall Royal Engineers. He was mobilised in 1941, his first posting being to North Africa where he became part of the 8th Army Desert Rats serving under ‘Monty’. Later he went on to Italy initially landing in Salerno and later Livorno (he always called it ‘Leghorn’.)

He often mentioned the deprivation he saw in Naples and the infrastructure left in ruins. He was Mentioned in Despatches for his work on Bailey Bridges (see accompanying article from RE Journal Dec 1962.) This is when the REs came into their own rebuilding roads and bridges which the Germans had destroyed during their retreat in 1943/4.

During this ‘liberation’ he met an English woman called Louise Clay. She was a nanny for a count and countess living in San Sepulcro and Florence. The whole family were so relieved to see the Allies arrive. She corresponded regularly with my parents well into the 1960s and sent us gifts as children. We always wondered what happened to her but later letters went unanswered; so if anyone knows or knew her it would be lovely to know where she spent her last days.

My father lost many fellow soldiers and friends during the course of the war, often killed or wounded in bomb/mine clearance activities. His great friend ‘Bunny’ Greatrex was blinded and lost a leg during one of these operations in North Africa and my father subsequently escorted him the annual El Alamein reunion in London.

As a rule he spoke little about his wartime experiences unless asked. My brother made some fantastic tapes of him talking before he died. Other notes reveal he was relieved to finally get on the boat home and leave the wretched war behind. It wasn’t until his 80th birthday though that one of his wartime friends Eric Schmidt paid tribute to him and told us stories we’d never heard before. One anecdote was during a heavy bombardment in the desert when my father was found reading Rudyard Kipling in his bivouac by way of distraction.

Post war my father went back to being a civil engineer specialising in land drainage and sea defences. Jobs took him from Cornwall to Lincolnshire and finally to the Isle of Wight where joined the River and Water Authority in the early 1950s. He spent the rest of his days there after he retired.

‘Bob’ Adams as he was affectionately known to friends, was a true Christian. He was chairman of the local Parish Council for years and involved in many local organisations on the Isle of Wight. Although not diagnosed, I believe he suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life following the War. He slept very lightly and had a terrible twitch in bed (according to my mother!)

My brother and I were born in the 1950s. He was the kindest most passive man you could ever wish to meet, adored my mother Saxon (who had been a WRN in the latter days of the war) whom he met in the Kent archives researching a family tree, one of his favourite occupations.

He attended the annual Reunion for the 571 company in Exeter from its inception and became chair for several years. As numbers dwindled they were jointed by surviving men of their sister companies. It was the bond of the ‘boys’ which mattered not rank or position and they reminisced a lot. Their final reunion was in the mid 1990s when those left became too infirm to travel.

My father died in 2001 aged 89. He was a very proud soldier who like many others never said much about his time serving in the war unless prompted. He always stood for the National Anthem, collected for the Poppy Appeal each November and laid a wreath at his local church in Thorley Isle of Wight where he is now buried with Saxon. He had a good eye and could shoot well; but I could never imagine him picking up a gun to shoot any living creature. Aggression just wasn’t part of him.