Good morning The Germans surrendered in May 1943, but my Great-Grandfather was there for a year afterwards, driving across the North coast as an ambulance driver. His unit was one of the vehicle companies. I will get the war diary from the National Archives but I find them to be extremely specific, and I was wondering if anyone knew enough to give me a general overview of what was happening in North Africa in 1943-44. As the war had already ended, I’m not sure what he would have been doing there… Many thanks Catherine
North Africa was used as a base to invade Italy. There were also hospitals there that the wounded were evacuated to.
To identify the hospitals in North Africa 1943-1944 check out: Hospitals WW2 - Scarlet Finders The Axis forces surrendered on 13/5/1945, Sicily was invaded in July 1943, in June 1943 there was a Free French administration and only in August 1944 did the French regain political control - of Algeria and Tunisia (Morocco too, although not my focus). In my own research I found a British presence in French Algeria well up to VE-Day, May 1945; with air force bases, training the French Air Force, two large military hospitals (one RAF), radar stations, depots and all required guarding under the terms of a June 1944 agreement with the French. There was a British Troops North Africa (BTNA), with a HQ in Algiers, commanded by a brigadier in May 1945. It is unclear to me if that included the RAF. There was a separate command for Central Mediterranean Forces (CMF), which I expect covered Libya and Egypt, plus Malta etc. Do either abbreviations appear in the records you have?
Then there was the camp at Qassasin, near Cairo, used by many units. Search Results for Query: Qassasin | WW2Talk
North Africa activities following the end of hostilities Men were treated in various hospitals throughout North Africa all along the coast from El Alamein to Algiers. Hospitals were holding men for long periods as the medications were comparatively basic. Antibiotics had only recently become available in quantity from America. American Doctors were horrified how long men were being nursed and unavailable to fight. The Germans in particular, who had no antibiotics, remained in hospital for months, even years and died from the simplest of infections. These are a few mentions from one man, a Junior Officer who was in Tunisia until December 1944. Training for their next role. They were training in the hills and mountains around Tunis. He seems to be enjoying it all with he exception of his time in hospital. A month later he was to experience the horror of six months at Anzio. He contracted a common illness, Jaundice. Many also caught Malaria and could be laid up for months, the wounded might be there much longer before being sent home or to Italy when the fighting moved on. Algiers My Sergeant Major, a most excellent worthy by the name of Hawkins suddenly showed up. Having been missing since the day of Djebel Djaffa. Nobody knew where he had got to, though it seemed unlikely that he had been killed or captured. Our theory that he had got lost in medical services proved correct. On the night in question he had gone out to Banana Ridge with two of the guns. When they were surrounded he got separated from the main body and joined some infantry on a ridge. Here he took over a dead man’s Tommy Gun and grenades and fought with them until the Jerries got a mortar ranged onto them. After a while he was wounded in the head and right eye and managed to get back to an ADS. By this time he was blind and they sent him back for further treatment. Eventually he was flown to Algiers where they took the shrapnel from his eye and he recovered rapidly. But it took him a month to get back to us via many transit and training camps. Sousse Since yesterday I have become a shop window soldier, resplendent in new K.D. new flashes, webbing and gaiters scrubbed white and highly glazed boots. The reason being my sudden appointment as Officer, i/c Regimental Guard on an important H.Q. in a town in our area. My present duty of guarding an HQ has been a good break and a change of scene, though not without worries. Yesterday for example I had an exhausting time rescuing a ration train from another train of predatory Jocks, searching the latter, making numerous arrests and putting a damper on man’s immoral delight in buckshee foodstuffs. Bou Ficha Artillery Training Area We have had a baptism of RAIN with the “blocks on”. It all happened when we were out on a firing exercise. A tremendous thunder storm, whistled and circled round us for three hours. The rain was everything that monsoons and tropical deluges are cracked up to be. It fell so thunderously that the ground was completely obscured by a mist to a height of three feet, caused by the spray and splash of water hitting the earth. Our exercise was quickly ended and I was left with one gun stranded on the other side of the Wadi which was dry one minute and ten minutes later a raging flood fifteen feet across and four feet deep. Eventually we winched it across, my sergeant major and a gunner being swept away in the process. Thanks to their gas capes which held the air and kept their heads above water, they scrambled ashore twenty or thirty yards downstream to the cheers and laughter of the rest of the gun team. I’m writing from the bottom of a mountain, a lovely situation and most enlivening after our long and sluggish existence in the olive groves. Above us a great pile of rock (Djebel Ressass) rises almost vertically fifteen hundred feet from our camp making the tents and guns look very small and harmless. In front of us the land rolls away across stony ploughed land down to a winding and bush lined wadi which twists away down to the sea. Beyond that the vineyards and plough switch back upwards to the mountains where a few red roofed farms hide away from the winter rains under the rocks. All the horizon on three sides is a jagged line of blue black peaks, while on the open side the door opens to the green coastal plain with a glint of sea in the distance and the clean white clusters of Arab villages-whited sepulchres with a vengeance! I’m in hospital (Sousse) with Infective Hepatitis, our local brand of Jaundice. I’ve been here for a week now and before that I was languishing in my tent for a few days so the disease is now well on its way to recovery. I can’t say it’s been enjoyable and I received the wrong treatment to begin with, which gave me some considerable pain (That was before I was sent to hospital) But I am now much improved and hope to be out of bed for a couple of hours tomorrow. Amazing how tempting the thought of getting up can be! For days now I’ve been directing every thought to convincing the doctor that I’m fit enough to escape from the blankets and today, to my great joy. I succeeded. My complaint is very common out here and mysterious too. Nobody knows what causes it and the treatment is completely empirical. Earlier in the year it was a common complication of malaria but a couple of blood tests have shown that I’m free from that. I chose a most unfortunate time to fall ill when everything was at sixes and sevens, which was why I had such a bad time before coming to hospital. As it is, when I get out of here in another week or ten days, I shall be very much like bread cast upon the waters and it will take me some time to find my unit again. The hospital in which I find myself is a very handsome place, albeit rather crowded with Italian battle casualties. Before the war it was a new civilian hospital and part of it is still reserved for the local population. It’s a big ferro-concrete flat roofed building with tiled floors, fine big fly proofed windows and excellent lighting. But large though it is, many of the corridors are lined with stretchers and all the wards are packed. Another letter from Jack B. who’s Eighth Army Vampires (blood transfusion unit) were tantalisingly near me on my travels. But I just couldn’t manage to see him. He sent me a picture of a hospital he used to work in at Sousse which turned out to be the same one in which I recovered from jaundice. One photo even showed the windows of my room! Rather a long explanation but hopefully it illustrates the sort of things that were happening and how an ambulance driver would have plenty to do after hostilities.
The RAF maintained a presence on the south side of the Med until the end of the war, all the way from Casablanca in the West through Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt through to Palestine. 145 MU was at Casablanca assembling Spitfires from March 1943 to April 1945. The heavy bombers of 205 Group (Wellington, Halifax & Liberator) didn’t move out of North Africa to the Foggia area of southern Italy until late 1943/early 1944. Until then operations over Southern Europe continued from North Africa. Day and night fighter and AS squadrons were required to protect Allied convoys transitting the Med. Air attacks on Allied shipping with glider bombs amongst other weapons were frequent until late May 1944 when the Luftwaffe anti-shipping units were withdrawn just ahead of D-Day after suffering heavy losses. 8 U-boats were sunk in the Med in 1944, the last not until Sept 1944 in Aegean waters, the last area of their operations. It was really only in 1945 that shipping could sail independently and unescorted through the Med. RAF anti-shipping operations were carried out from Libyan and Egyptian bases across into the Aegean area until late in 1944 after Greece was reoccupied and islands there were isolated. Beaufighters, Baltimores, Wellingtons and Marauders were all involved. And the Canal Zone in Egypt became a major training area for aircrew yet to be deployed to Squadrons deployed in the Med and the Far East. And of course Algeria provided the base for the conversion of those Churchill tanks to NA-75 standard in 1943/44. So plenty of military activity, and plenty of personnel with the opportunity to get sick & injured before they could be shipped home.
