Desert Watch: A Story of the Battle of Beda Fomm (Hardcover)

The story commences at his place of work in the showroom of a well-known Liverpool Builders’ Merchants and his elated acceptance of promotion that he has to forego when he receives instructions to report to his Unit in Shaw Street.

On Regimental Church Parade next day, War is declared as he is lustily singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" in St. George’s Church, Everton. That night, his first away from home, he gets a nostalgic attack of homesickness and experiences the boredom and loneliness of guard duty, but gladly savours the conviviality and comradeship of his fellow soldiers.

Three days later, he moves with his Regiment to a mining village in Derbyshire, where, during one of the coldest Winter’s on record, he learns to adapt to the rigours and hardships of Army life.

In January 1940 he gets his first taste of foreign travel when after an uncomfortable, 2 day train trip across France he embarks from Marseilles, on a troop ship taking the 1st Cavalry Division to Haifa, Palestine. Spellbound by the wonders of the Middle East, he quickly settles down and experiences life at its best – and worse – in a large Military encampment and on detachment. He swims and sunbathes, he tries his hand at boxing, he attempts to learn the language, he explores Palestine, he visits a Brothel and does a spell in a mental ward of a Military Hospital.

On Italy’s entry in to the War his "holiday" comes to an abrupt end when his Unit is transferred to Cairo, Egypt where he encounters a surprising coincidence after a rugged scramble to the top of the great Pyramid at Gysa. After three weeks intensive training on anti-tank guns his Unit moves again, to face the Italians on the Libyan/Egyptian border. There follows seven months of unwashed, boring, exciting, hilarious, frightening, nomadic life in the wilderness, existing on a pint of water a day and corned beef and biscuits and enduring a never-ending fight against the vicious flies, oven-like heat and blinding sandstorms.

The Climax of the story is his small part in a unique dash across uncharted desert with "Combeforce" to ambush and destroy the Italian Army at Beda Fomm, a pin-point on the map of Libya and to become the guilty owner of a pocket watch destined to change the lives of many members of his family.

8 Chevaux 40 Hommes, the sequel to this story, due to be published Summer 2001, tells of the tragic demise of the gallant Liverpool Territorial Unit, The 106th Royal Horse Artillery after the debacles of Greece and Crete in 1941 and the incarceration in a German Prisoner-of-War Camp of the author.

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