One Man's War: Operation Compass (Part 2)

Al Murray (0:09)

It felt like a grand adventure. One of the things was you made an immediate circle of friends, and I had one or two fellows from Cosby who worked at the post office. And when I joined the TA, 12 of them joined. So out of those, there was about three of them with me. We stayed one night in Valletta and in the morning, we arrived at Alexandria. And it was then we realized we were in Egypt. We could see the fezzes and so on. We collected our kit and marched off the ship. My first impression was of the military police because we came down the gangplank, there were MPs on each side of the gangplank. Their eyes were strange with webs under them, even though they were only young men. And they seemed to be staring at nothing and their eyebrows are all scorched.

We got on a train and set off. We didn't know it then, but we were going to Cairo. The Royal Armoured Corps depot and we were part of the RAC, which in Cairo was a place called Abbassia, so Saturday midday we arrived at Abbassia. The train went straight into the garrison and we saw people standing in tank uniform at the side of the train. And there were people who we knew had gone in before us, so they said, You've made a big mistake.

We were still in battle-dress and we were very, very hot. In those days the battle-dress was all hook and eye and was all hooked up to the neck. You couldn't wear a collar and tie. They herded us into the dining-room and my first impression was that it was at complete odds with England. When we came to the dining-room you had to take your beret off, fold it up, wash your hands. We didn't queue up with the mess-tins as we had before. You had to sit at tables with table-cloths and flowers and you were waited on by Sudanese waiters who wore these white jackets and a fez and the colours of the regiment, which looked like a girdle and they brought the food to you.

Halfway through the meal a very elegant officer came to the table and asked us if we had any complaints. I thought, what a different life this is. And that was, of course, Sam Bradshaw describing his passage to Africa, Jim.

What an adventure.

James Holland (2:01)

Yeah.

Al Murray (2:01)

Leaving England.

James Holland (2:03)

Amazing, isn't it?

Al Murray (2:03)

Finding himself in Egypt. Quite extraordinary and a world away from the barracks 500 yards from his front door in Liverpool.

James Holland (2:10)

And this, of course, is the bit that we were talking about in the opening quote that you read out, Al.

Al Murray (2:15)

Yeah.

James Holland (2:15)

Yeah.

Al Murray (2:16)

These waiters. It's extraordinary. Well, welcome to Episode 2 of our We Have Ways of Making You Talk series about One Man's War, about Sam Bradshaw. And in our first episode, we looked at Sam's...

James Holland (2:29)

Literally four days of his war. I mean, that was it.

Al Murray (2:31)

Yeah. A shocking experience as part of Operation Crusader, when the Battle Group 6 RTR, along with 2nd Rifle Brigade and some horse artillery, were sent to engage, or well, to try and do something about the German presence between them and Tobruk. And the Germans got the jump on them basically. And we saw the consequences of the weapons gap that exists in the desert at this point of the war, where the Germans have anti-tank weapons either on tanks or just mounted stuff, that they can deal with the British armour at a distance where the British armour has no reply. And the consequences were that in Sam's squadron, three tanks at one point out of 19 survived. And then as he went hull down, he was then knocked out himself as well. And we saw Sam's shocking odyssey back to the rear in order to be treated for his injuries. Badly wounded in his leg. A man bleeds out in him in the ambulance as they're lost in the desert with a major with a missing arm. I mean, it's just, I think we said this in the last episode. Who needs Hollywood? Who needs a scriptwriter?

Reality is writing you a script that you can't top.

James Holland (3:41)

Well, yeah. And you can imagine what I was like as a young, you know, I was in my early thirties when I went to see Sam for the first time. And I was sat there in his front room with him in his armchair, you know, in his blazer with his regimental tie on. And he had great big thick glasses and big thick hair, kind of graying hair.