So that was 1939 and it was 1946 before I actually took my uniform off. So, I joined the London Scottish and ended up that night on the Surrey Commercial Docks where we guarded the docks and moved around and round – West India Docks, Surrey Commercial Docks, and several other docks – I just don’t remember them all.
As time went on, I got terribly bored with army life and I didn’t like the route marches and I didn’t like the discipline too much and so I did misbehave myself once or twice but I wanted to get out so every time [there was a possibility to volunteer], like for instant death, which was to be a rear gunner in a bomber, I volunteered for that, but thank God they didn’t take me, and then I volunteered to be a gunner on a trawler and they didn’t take me for that. And then I put my name down for a thing which I had no idea what it was. I had never heard the word before; it was a thing called commando.
INT. John you said you had volunteered to be a Commander.
JM It was a word I’d never heard of. I thought they’d misspelt it. I thought it should be command. Commandos, I really didn’t have any idea until somebody told me that Churchill had done things with the commandos in the South African War and the South Africans had commandos and he was very impressed with them. What they were, just small groups of men making life difficult for the army, so that is what it was.
So I just waited two or three days and then I was called up and a friend of mine called Connell and we both went away and we finished up in Glasgow and we got the boat across to Arran and when we arrived in Arran we were put into Number Nine Commando and the billet was at the top of a very steep hill. It was a farmhouse right at the top of a very steep hill and in the morning we had to come down early to come and do exercises and then we did half an hour exercises and we had to go back to change into uniform to come down to have breakfast and after breakfast we had to change again climbing up and down. The place was really for summer visitors; this not being summer, it was in the winter and it was very damp and we slept in our clothes; and the clothes we had on top of us in the morning were wet. It was absolutely awful. So, life wasn’t quite as good as we thought would be, but fate struck again and we were asked if anybody would like to volunteer for the Eleventh Commando, which was just up the road in Lamlash. They were going away and they were slightly short and would like some people to join them. So yes, Connell and I, we volunteered straight away and went to the Eleventh Commando which was just up the road in Lamlash, and we were there for about a month and a half, but we were put in the signal department, and I wasn’t very good at signals. I knew dot and dash and things like that but I didn’t have that kind of brain and so I was carrying a Fourteen Set which was a wireless which was rather heavy, and you put it on your back and as I wasn’t very good at anything, I had this Fourteen Set and we used to go on route marches and I had this damn Fourteen Set on my back, so life again wasn’t very good.
But fortunately, again Christmas came, and we were sent away on leave. We weren’t told what the leave was, but we went away on leave, and I went to Glasgow and spent it with my grandmother and also, I went to see my … My father had been called up at that time and he had forgotten to resign himself from the reserve of officers and he was called up as a Lieutenant, but he went to the HLI [Highland Light Infantry]. Eventually he went to the catering corps, and he did very well in the catering corps and actually he was in charge of feeding the people in Glasgow when they were bombed, in the bombing in 1940/41 I think. So anyway, after leave we came back, and my sister was in hospital. She had just given birth to a son; I called to see her and Nicky, who was just a day or 2 days old, and off we went. And when we got back we were told we were going straight onto a ship and were told we were going abroad. So we came straight from home, in to see my sister, over to Lamlash, on to the boat, on to the Glengyle -and we were there and within three days we had sailed. There were three Glen boats, the Glengyle, the Glenroy and the Glenearn and the Scotsman and they all sailed for Africa and off we went, and we had, not a wonderful time, but I had never been abroad before, so it was all very exciting, and it was really what I had been looking for instead of being bored going on route marches and so forth. And we were told as soon as we arrived there, we were going on a raid on Bardia, so we were all ready for this raid and we had all our equipment on ready to go and right at the last minute it was cancelled so that was it, and we went back to where we came from. It wasn’t anything new. We found very often that things like this happened and that things changed. And very shortly after that, they decided that the Commandos weren’t really going to be any good and that they would try something else so one of the officers was in the Scots Guards and he formed something which he called an SAS.
During the voyage on the Glengyle, I had noticed on various occasions an extremely tall Scots Guard Second Lieutenant wandering around the deck. He was so tall that he appeared to bend at the top. This particular officer was David Stirling who stood six feet five inches and was to be the founder of the SAS. Also, on board and a member of the Eleventh Commando was another junior officer belonging to the Royal Ulster Rifles. His name was Paddy Blair Mayne. He was not as tall as David Stirling, but he was twice as big. He had played rugby for Ireland, and he was of an independent nature which in the future got him into a lot of trouble. Mayne was fortunate enough to meet Stirling whilst he was under close arrest for striking a superior officer because he thought he was responsible for some unnecessary loss of life while in action in the Latane River in Syria. Stirling was able to convince the senior commander that Mayne would be more use to him than in prison and he thought he could find some use for him. He eventually became Stirling’s second in command and after Stirling’s capture took over the unit. He ended up being highly decorated with a DSO and three bars and with a personal score of approximately 130 planes destroyed on the ground. He was later promoted and became Lieutenant Colonel Mayne and commanded the SAS until the war’s end. There must have been a reason why he didn’t get a Victoria Cross and I believe it was probably his original misdemeanour in striking a superior officer.
After the war he returned to Ireland, went back to being a lawyer and I met him again in Edinburgh on three occasions at the North British Hotel during the rugby internationals and with a drink in him. He was a fairly fearsome sight. He became a senior law officer in Ireland but was involved in a car accident in which he tragically lost his life. One other officer of note travelling in the same boat was Captain Geoffrey Keyes of the Scots Greys, also of Eleven Commando. He was the son of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, World War I hero of the Zeebrugge Raid. He distinguished himself in the Latane River in Syria and received a Military Cross. Later he led a raid to capture Rommel in his headquarters and unfortunately Rommel was away celebrating his birthday in Rome. Keyes was killed during the action but for his bravery he was decorated with a posthumous VC, not a bad trio for one ship, apart from the fact that I was also travelling on it!
In the Middle East I served in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Libya. We were known as Lay force commanded by Colonel Laycock also on the Glengyle. We were to be a commando used for coastal raids; in fact, soon after our arrival we ventured out on our first operation. We sailed for Bardia which was then occupied by the Italians. Again, it was cancelled. We never ventured out again. This was due to the Navy being unable to provide cover because of other commitments.
The Commandos were dispersed. Number Seven Commando went to Crete; Number Eight went to Tobruk and the Eleven, The Scottish Commandos, was broken up; many members belonging to the Long Range Desert Group. I joined the Long Range Desert Group. We were Number Eleven.
Many years later of course when I was writing a book, I named the book after much thought, “ Fate Becoming a Friend”, and I suppose the one thing that changed my whole army was when I was on the docks waiting for the 11th Scottish Commando to go to Cyprus I had a terrible bad throat and it was so sore that I eventually had to go to the M.O. who sent me straight away to hospital in Palestine and I missed, unfortunately, going to Cyprus and of course I lost all my friends. And whilst I was in Palestine the 11th Commando went into action in Syria and a number of my friends had been killed in it – two of them had been with the radio – I had been in hospital and had left my radio to some unfortunate bugger.
I waited around in Palestine on and off for maybe a month until I was sent down to the commando base depot which was beside the Suez Canal, and it was whilst I was there that I met a person who became a great friend of mine, Dallas Allerdice. He, in many ways, had an effect on me. Strangely enough, he was a very small man, no more than five foot six but he became an international rugby player – scrum half – and had 8 Caps after the war but spent most of his time in the water swimming and as a physique had something similar to what we used to call in our day Charles Atlas. That was Dallas’s figure and he was admired by many people.
There we again met a friend, a young officer who became a friend of ours. He formed a group which joined up with the Long Range Desert Group [L.R.D.G.]and we did patrols behind the lines then for the next six months, which was very exciting, and [we saw] a lot of action and we were machine gunned and we were hiding away from the Italians and Germans and spent most of the war behind the lines. And I have to say, before I was taken prisoner, I spent most of my life behind the German lines. In those days, when you were in the desert, the desert was only fought along the coast, from inland from the coast, and anybody could be there and you could be hundreds of miles. So when we were recalled to what was called ‘Railhead’, we were about two or three hundred miles behind the lines at that time. And when we got to ‘Railhead’ we discovered the real name of it was called Alamein, so it was from there that everything changed.
And just before we went away, we were moved from Alamein to Alexandria and while we were in Alexandria we got word that there was to be a group of two officers, and the officers would take two men of their choice to go on a raid which was being planned at that time. So one of the officers was Graham Taylor and the other one was another London Scottish officer, and as soon as we knew it was Graham Taylor, Dallas and I knew he was going to pick us, as he was a friend of ours. And he did, much to the jealousy of a lot of people who would have liked to have been picked. But we were picked, and we went with this group, and that eventually became, “The Raid on Tobruk” which took place – let me have a look now. [John checks his autobiography]
So it was on the 13th of September 1942 that we left our base in Etla and made our way in the general direction of Tobruk. When we arrived about thirty miles from our objective, we laid up for a few hours prior to moving off. The object was to arrive in Tobruk in the late evening. We waved goodbye to the LRDG and made our way down the escarpment and onto the main road. We tried to look as downhearted as we possibly could because we were supposed to be prisoners of war, sitting in the back of a three-tonne lorry, sitting on our arms, unknown to those [the enemy] we hoped. We tried to look downhearted which was not difficult, even with the knowledge that we were sitting on our weapons. My personal feeling in retrospect was being downhearted, but a feeling of nervous tension, rather like before an important race, only more so.
As we drove down the road, we passed many Germans and Italians who called out to us in some way. The whole episode of travelling down the main highway in enemy held Tobruk was surreal. We were being passed by German and Italian staff cars, and later a whole German motorcycle and sidecar platoon. When we stopped at a check point, I for one held my breath. We apparently had the correct password, “Rosalia,” because in a few moments we were waved through. At last, I didn’t know exactly where we were – it is a complete blank – I could not believe how easy it was for us to accomplish the first part of the operation. Three trucks full of British soldiers, sitting on their weapons, had infiltrated into one of Rommel’s most important towns and the one in which he depended for his fuel in his advance on Egypt and Alexandria. We waited until it was dark and in the desert it is almost instantaneous. There is no twilight.
At the commencement of the attack the commando was split into two groups, one under Graham Taylor and the other under Major Campbell. The success signal meaning that the coastal batteries, as that was the reason for us going – which was to blow up those batteries – the signal for the success was a coloured Verey light. One group dealt successfully with several of the coastal batteries and with a number of Italians. In carrying out our operation our officer, Graham Taylor, was wounded. On entering a hut, he was immediately fired upon, and Dallas and I pulled him back, while those behind threw in grenades. We left Graham Taylor propped up against the sandbags. It was about midnight when a wounded Graham Taylor ordered the Sergeant Major to send up the success signal, simultaneous red/green Verey lights.
Unfortunately, the other group under Major Campbell had run into some difficulties and their success signal failed to appear until some considerable time later. Lieutenant Mike Duffy, the other officer who had been sent in with Graham Taylor had been killed and Major Campbell was amongst the walking wounded. He was suffering from a severe attack of dysentery. The operation that had started with so much success, as far as our group was concerned, suddenly came to a halt. The quietness that prevailed was somewhat disturbing. We suddenly found ourselves with nothing to do. It was not until about two o’clock in the early morning that Colonel Hazelden saw the success signal from Major Campbell by which time it was too late and that some of the motor torpedo boats which had been trying to land had been sunk.
INT: So, what happened to you? Were you then captured after that?
JM: Looking out to sea as the sun rose, we saw two of the Tribal Class destroyers being heavily shelled. In fact, HMS Sikh had been hit, which subsequently turned out to be a steering gear.
Something must have gone wrong in the planning and unknown to us other artillery must have been available to the German and Italian forces. As our attack from the sea was known to the Germans, additional artillery had been introduced. The attempts of the Zulu to tow her sister ship off to safety was thwarted by the enemies’ shelling. As the morning wore on both destroyers were eventually sunk, together with an AAC ship [Anti-Aircraft Cruiser], HMS Coventry, with a considerable loss of life. Both destroyers, apart from its complement of naval personnel, also carried Marines. No wonder they were not able to carry out their allotted task. It was soon realised by our officers that the situation was desperate and although Dallas and I were never told nor heard, I did read later that Colonel Hazelden had given an order of, ‘every man for himself’.
Even though we realised the situation was a lost cause and without direct orders to make an escape we joined up with what was left of our main group. As the sun rose, in the morning light, it could clearly be seen that our situation was hopeless. The Italians tried unsuccessfully to capture us, but it was not until they bought in the Germans that they were able to bring about a conclusion. It was here that I had an amazing piece of good fortune.
The Germans soon sized up the situation and under covering fire started throwing grenades. One fell right by my foot, and I was lying on my stomach at the time with my legs drawn up and my first reaction was to cover my head and bury my face in the sand. There was absolutely no room to move in the small redoubt. The thought that flashed through my head was what it would be like going through the rest of my life without a foot? I believe in hindsight that I was being over-optimistic. Miracle of miracles that the blast must have gone into the sand, but I still had both feet. Our situation was absolutely hopeless, and the Sergeant Major, very bravely, put down his rifle and stood up with raised hands and we became POWs. There were two of our officers, who after a horrendous desert journey, eventually got back and re-joined our forces. They also must have seen the impossible position that we were in and decided to get out. Unfortunately, Dallas and I were not in that position, not being officers.
INT: What do you mean that they got out? Did they manage to escape?
JM: Yes, but they weren’t with us. Whilst we were all waiting, not knowing what to do, they were making their escape, but we couldn’t do it; we were private soldiers. You can’t just leave – we would have been had up for desertion. We could have been shot for desertion. But, if you are an officer [you’d say] – ‘Well, we saw the situation; we used our initiative and got out.’ And they would have a medal for it – because you got shot; and they got a medal – but that’s life, isn’t it?
INT: So, what happened when you were a prisoner of war?
JM: My memories of life as a POW is one of permanent hunger, lice, and boredom. Amongst themselves prisoners were put into two categories, ‘the bashers’ and ‘the hoarders.’ Dallas and I were ‘bashers’ this meant as soon as you got food, especially Red Cross parcels, you ate the contents. ‘Hoarders’ on the other hand use razor blades to cut their bread into small pieces and laid out their meal as though they were going to have a banquet and ate things very slowly. According to Geneva Convention, prisoners are supposed to get a parcel every two weeks. I have no knowledge about Germany, but in Italy the provision of parcels was very erratic. We got maybe one a month, something like that. Anyway, they were very good, particularly the Perth ones because the ones from Perth had porridge in and that was a great favourite. That was very good. I didn’t know at the time, but my mother used to go and help to make up the parcels.
INT: Your prisoner of war camp was in Italy?
JM: Yes, we were taken to Italy. Something which I actually hadn’t mentioned, another terrible experience, was going over in a ship going from Africa to Sicily and then from Sicily to Italy. And we were down in the hold, nowhere to move, just in a hold; very similar to Eci’s situation [the Jewish girl John was eventually to marry] on the railway [to Auschwitz]. Sick everywhere. So as soon as we got any food, we ate it but the rest of them seemed to keep it. We never thought we were going to get through the terrible situation. I would never like to be in it again. You weren’t responsible for yourself; you were amongst so many other people anything could have happened.
INT: How long were you in the prisoner of war camp?
JM: About a year. In a camp, it’s like being a civilian again in many ways. As I wrote down at the time, the camp became like a little world of its own. We had entertainers and there were always those who wanted to play female roles and became great favourites in the camp. We also had our own market where it was possible to exchange an article in your parcel if you preferred something else. You could sell cigarettes. For two cigarettes you were able to get quite a lot of food. Fortunately, cigarettes didn’t bother either Dallas or myself. But for those who smoked, it was even worse. I was very sorry for them, but they were a bit of a nuisance themselves, because they were begging for cigarettes and what you wanted to do was exchange them, but you couldn’t give them away and exchange them at the same time. So, you kept half of them to exchange and the other half to be able to give people cigarettes, because they were so desperate for them.
Anyway, the camp was food was very monotonous, and food was a mug of earth – that’s coffee for breakfast. At midday you received a ladleful of skilly – which is a soup that contained rice, pasta and various greens including dandelions. In the evening, the bread ration was distributed. That was one loaf per person plus a piece of cheese. The loaf was the size of a morning roll. To be fair, the ordinary Italian soldier did not get much more but of course they could complement their meagre ration with purchases and parcels from home.
Eventually, we heard that they [the Allies] had landed in Italy, and they were gradually moving up Italy and we were given strict instructions from the Army that all prisoners of war in prison camps were to stay where they were, because, if the prison camps suddenly emptied themselves, and the prisoners were everywhere, they would have held up the advancing troops. But they didn’t advance very far. They took a hell of a time to come.
We were all paraded and given strict instructions that during the day we could wander round the camp, and outside the camp, but had to report back at night and there was a roll call at night and then the next morning there was a roll call in the morning.
But the Germans suddenly arrived, and they (the Italians) said not to worry because they weren’t going to move anybody, but they started moving people. You were in a compound. In my camp there were four compounds – 1,2, 3 and 4 – and we were the last people there, so we were in 4 Compound. So, they started with 1,2,3.
But on the Sunday, we realised that the next day we were going to be moved so Dallas and I said we must try and do something about this. We couldn’t imagine what we were going to do – so many things you thought you could do. You thought you could hide and look for a place to hide, but the Germans were throwing grenades down holes so that was pretty risky. I remembered that when we first came into the camp, all we had were the clothes we had in the desert, so the Italians gave us some old bits of Italian uniform. So, I said to Dallas let’s go round and collect as much of the Italian uniform as we can. So, we did, and we managed to get a shirt and a pair of trousers, socks – I don’t know what we did for shoes, I can’t remember – and so got dressed in Italian shirts, and we walked out of the front gate, and we walked across the yard and there was the office was on the left-hand side and it was a Sunday so there was nobody in the office. So, we went into the office, which was empty, and saw in the various rooms, and there was one room that overlooked the road, so we lifted the window, nipped out of the window, across the road and up a hill. We went straight up the hill as fast as we could go and when we got to the top we had a look down again at the camp and two chaps came out behind us, but we heard firing so obviously there had been people watching and there had been so many people watching that they got wind of it and these two behind us, both friends of ours, they didn’t get shot but they got stopped, so they didn’t get away. Dallas and I just lay in a trench until it got dark and then when it got dark, we started to walk, and we walked all night and believe it or not we nearly walked back into the camp. We thought we were miles away from the camp and when we looked down, we could see it, but that was the last time I ever walked at night. We had walked in a circle.
So, eventually we got back, and we lived with a family who looked after us, very bravely. Of all the people they should be, they were Pentecosts, very holy, in Italy. They were Ciccones – the family Ciccone. [relatives of the singer, Madonna]
INT 2 (John’s daughter, Sharon): You haven’t told the story of how you came across them.
JM: Walking through Italy, one day we stopped at a house, and they gave us something to eat, and we used to write them little notes to say that they had helped us, and they used to keep those for the troops when they were coming through to hand to them to saying that we did this -and there was suddenly an earthquake. This chap looked at his wife and his wife looked back at him, and they picked up the child and ran. It was quite a serious one but that is the first time I have ever been in a real earthquake.
So, making our way, we came across a whole group of people coming back from the market, and they recognised us as being British or soldiers or prisoners and they said they knew somewhere they could take us, so we said okay and off we went with them.
There was a lovely house on the left-hand side, and they went in to see this chap and he came out and he spoke English and he said, ‘Well I’m sorry but I can’t take you. The German officers come and have lunch with me and have dinner at night with me sometimes and I am quite friendly with them so I really can’t take you in the house it would be too dangerous. But just down the road on the right-hand side you will see a house on the road, just go in there.’ And this was this group of Pentecosts. We went in the house, and they gave us food, and I couldn’t understand it because the mother of the house kept going round muttering to herself – ‘Gloria Gesso, Gloria, Gloria Gesso’ but that’s what they did all day, blessing the Lord and Jesus. Every night there was a service, and they were excellent.
And we stayed in one house for a while and then we thought it was far too dangerous for them. So we thought we would go and have a look and see if we could go and find a cave. We did find a cave and we went and lived in this cave for quite a long time, until we had been there too long and it looked as though somebody was making their way there, and when people keep going to the same place all the time, it looked as though we could be found. So we decided again, that if we were found there they [their helpers] would be blamed anyway, so what we should do is, we would go and dig our own cave. We did that. Borrowed some shovels and went into the centre of the wood, where we would never have been found – a huge wood- we dug a huge cave, and we lived in there.
INT: And how did you manage to eat?
JM: We went down at night, and they gave us food and we went to Church.
INT 3: How long did you live in that cave, John?
JM: On and off nine months. And then we heard they [the British] were close to us, so we thought well we would try and get back, so we did. It was just as easy to stay where we were – the weather was nice and nothing to worry about as the Germans had gone.
Ginado took us in a pony and trap, and we went down, and we saw a sergeant, there were Signals, Royal Forest Signals, and they were setting up areas and it gave them a bit of a fright when we told them what we were. They did not believe us, and they took us back under arms to their officers and they sent for Italians, and so Italian officers came to speak to us. I spoke quite good Italian; Dallas did not speak such good Italian. I spoke quite good Italian but not enough. The Italians soon found out we were not Italians.
Int 2: You were nearly caught – tell us the story of when you were nearly caught.
JM: Oh yes, we were nearly caught once, on one occasion. There were two brothers – Ginado and his brother. They had both been in America. They went to America just after the First World War. A lot of the Italians went over to America to build the bridges and the roads and things and send the money back home and that is how they got the farmhouse. This farmhouse that we lived in belonged to two brothers, one which we had [we lived with]. The other brother had about twelve children, not as many as that, they had about nine, I think. They could not afford to feed us, but they did on one occasion ask us to go for a meal, and that night, when we went for a meal, there was a knock on the door and very foolishly now I think about it, we nipped out of the back window. They were two plain clothes Germans looking for prisoners. We were very lucky, but stupid as well, because if they had any sense, they would have had people waiting at the back of the house to grab you as you got out, but that never occurred to us.
And then we went back to Naples and just as we got into the barracks I saw a jeep with a Gurkha officer in it. My brother had moved from the HLI, and he was a Major in the Gurkhas and so I ran over to this man and said do you happen to know anybody called Peter Mackay and he said, “Oh, I know Peter, yes.’ I said would you tell him his brother John has been a prisoner of war and I have just got back and am just waiting to go home. Would you just tell him I am fine; I am all right. He said, ‘Yes, I will.” And apparently, he just turned round and went back, not far away, and told my brother and next day Dallas and I were blanket pressing, I think, and this officer walked in and Dallas and I kind of jumped up and I said, ‘Christ, it’s Peter!’ My brother! And he came round and brought us uniforms and Dallas, and I became immediately Majors [laughter]. Peter took us out, took us to the restaurants, pubs and for coffees and we went to see La Boheme.
INT 3: Where was this, John?
JM: In Naples. It was wonderful. And then we were on the boat, and we were home, and from home I had some leave and then eventually came back, went to various regiments, and finished up in a regiment with Dallas. Dallas and I stayed together all the time and then we went to Belgium. We were in big barracks in Belgium – that’s where Dallas and I took music lessons for dancing, neither of us could dance. We only had two lessons then I left. I think Dallas continued.
And there was an officer going round and he was starting up a new infantry base in Germany. And at that time I was a full Corporal which I shouldn’t have been because if you are a Corporal and you get posted you are supposed to take your stripes off, but I never knew and I didn’t and I was a Corporal and they said to me would you like to come and be a Quartermaster Sergeant with me and I said yes, fine. I think so. I’ll speak to my chum. So, I went to Dallas and said, “Look the war is nearly over. I have been offered this. He’d been offered an opportunity to play rugby for army teams so we decided that we would split up. But not for long, because he came to see me when he was playing a game not far away from where I was stationed.
