Robert Bell's Service in North Africa and Southern Europe

My father, Robert Bell, was called up to the army in 1941, aged 18. After training, he was a gunner in the army. He ended up in North Africa just after El-Alamein. Father's first experience of service was chasing Germans across North Africa. He was involved in Operation Husky in 1943 and spent the rest of the war in Italy.

On retirement, father did local talks to groups. He died in 1994 and I inherited father's notes for talks. More than half of the talks were generally about growing up in Berwick upon Tweed, but in one talk, writes about being called up, training and specifically his journey to North Africa via the Suez Canal. His notes show that he finished the talks by saying that they went to Sicily and the real war started and it was hell. Father was generally discouraged from talking about the war by my mother. I always assumed that he would have seen some unpleasant sights. As a gunner and in that situation in the second half of war of allied advance, you were advancing what had just been frontline battles.

One story sticks in my mind. In the very first stage in active service, they were travelling quickly. They would stop overnight by the sea, jump in the sea and swim around and go again. Once, they were attacked by German planes. Father hid under a lorry. When the planes left, he realised he was under an ammunition truck, which was not the best spot! One of the officers was on the toilet at the time of the attack, and afterwards they found that he had been decapitated but still on the toilet. The contributor was ten when he was told this!

The contributor has done a transcript of the talks on a memory stick and has brought photos. Most of them don't say where Robert was, but one mentions that he was in Italy. One from Dec 1945 when war had ended in Italy. Another in Exeter.

One thing that remained was that father really loved Italy. Father went back on holidays two or three times after the war. Father didn't join veterans' groups or anything like that. He really grudged having been called up: he had a girlfriend at the time, and was working, so he had been suddenly plucked out of that. Father had left school at 14 and worked for grocers in Berwick upon Tweed. He didn't continue this sort of work after the war; father and his sisters set up a lending library which then morphed into a bookshop. Father had books about war, especially about war in Italy. The contributor noted that he would like to be able to trace his steps and would need to get hold of regimental diary to do this!