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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE 34848 L/Cpl C.R.Houghton, “A” Sec Div Sigs, N.Z.E.F. Middle East Force, 18.1.42 Dear Mum, I have changed camp again since writing last and haven't felt at all like writing. We have just another of our rotten sand storms, during the height of which, our big tent came down on top of us at a quarter past midnight. It was impossible to put the tent back up again during the gale so we finished the night out in the mess room which is in a permanent building. After the week or so of perfect weather we had since coming here I was beginning to think we had got away from dust storms for awhile. We can get to a couple of picture shows here if we care to do a small route march and are lucky when we get there. So far I have been three times to the nearest show about a mile and a half away and each time the show has been off through engine trouble so I won't be doing the trip again in a hurry. A few nights ago I won half a 'house' playing housey-housey and collected 55 ackers (11/-). The one thing I am thankful for more than anything else in this place is that we can get showers twice a week. I was reading in a 'Truth: here some days ago where some 'poor soldier' in Trentham was complaining that he had not had a shower for a whole week and that he was filthy. I don't know what will happen to him if he ever gets over here and has to go without a shower for four months like we did. A couple of days after arriving here I received a parcel from Tira which had come adrift and was all in pieces. Nothing was broken other than the wrapping for which I was very thankful. Parcels have been very plentiful lately as the airmail arriving very irregularly has apparently given the postal staff a bit of extra time to handle them. We have been very lucky getting all these good things and cannot grumble if they don't arrive very often from now on. In six more days I will have been in this part of the world for a year and a most exciting year if I may say so even though it has been rather monotonous in patches. At present we are undergoing a further training period and I am teaching operating to a class of fifteen to twenty word a minute operators. This is a change from having to take it myself, a thing I have been doing now for nearly twenty years. I was sorry to here you had had a bad turn my dear – do take things easy and don't worry yourself sick about us over here. We are very well looked after most of the time even though we do growl about this and that. I received a letter from Wynn some days ago in which he told me about the accident he had to his eye. If you are all going to knock yourselves about over there they may send us back to look after you, I wish they would. Love to all. From your loving son, Roto. |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE 2 Div Sigs, 2 N.Z.E.F., M.E.F. 29 Jan 1944. Dear Mum, My fourth Christmas and New Year away have been and gone and I hope they are the last. Our Christmas dinner was very good but the conditions under which we had it were not the best. New Year's eve and day were among the worst I have ever put in. It commenced to rain during the afternoon and by about ten pm it had commenced to snow. Most of us were living in bivvy tents and by midnight there were very few tents still standing and those that were were awash. Mine was one of the very few that were still standing? In the morning, but to keep it up I had to keep putting my shoulder into it to relieve the pressure of the weight of snow. We moved into buildings after that for awhile but are once more camped under the olive trees. The small towns and villages are all very much alike and owing to the extremely unsanitary conditions prevailing in every one of them I prefer living in the open. We received our fourth Typhus injection today so it should be fairly hard to catch that complaint now. Your cable and letters arrived safely thanks. The parcel hasn't arrived yet but as there are a lot in the offing I may be lucky very soon. Did you ever get the bag I sent you last September. Give my love to all the family. Your loving son, Roto. |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE 2 Div Sigs, 2 NZEF, MEF, 9 April 1944. Dear Mum, Your airgraph arrived in less than three weeks so things must be looking up. I must apologise my dear for not writing more often but for some time past now I have felt so terribly “browned off” that I find it very hard to make myself write to anybody. On the thirty first of last month I was promoted to Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant and provided I can hold the job down, and the war lasts long enough I will probably be made a Warrant Officer Class 2. I didn't manage to get down to Naples when Mt Vesuvius was in eruption but I was lucky enough to get a wonderful view of an enormous burst of smoke and whatever went to make up the huge column, through a powerful pair of field glasses. We had had a series of small earthquakes for some time prior to the eruption. At a party some night ago I met a chap named Jack Powell from Maungatoroto who knows Wynn and Lloyd. Muriel writes to say she has taken over the boarding house from her mother, which may or may not be a good bet. She has been there long enough now to judge what it is like in respect of making a living and apparently is satisfied there is money in it. If the money is there I wont hesitate to turn in the P&T when I get home. After four years of an outside job I will find it very hard to go back to an inside one and what is more I don't want to go back to the old job. Give my love to all the family. From your loving son, Roto |
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Am sending this through Mum as I don't know your a/d ON ACTIVE SERVICE “A” Section, Div Signallers, N.Z.E.F. Middle East Force, 18.5.41 Dear Miro, Well old cock how are things with you – no worse than with me I suppose. As you will probably have heard I managed to be one jump ahead of Jerry all the way getting out of that slippery place called Greece. The country itself is not bad but with a hell of a lot of ranges. There was still snow on some parts and in one camp I was at, up near Mt Olympus we actually had a snowfall one day. I arrived at Piraeus, the port of Athens, and after spending one half day in Athens itself, travelled up country with a few stops to within fifteen miles of Salonika. Some of the boys were lucky enough to get right into Salonika and they told us what a nice place it was but by the time I got to where I did the jerrys had bombed the place to hell and had advanced into the city, so all I saw was the smoke from the ruins. Up in that part of the country we passed hundreds of refugees on the roads some with carts and others carrying their belongings on their backs. There were dozens of children and to see what they were putting up with on the road was not pleasant at all. Further back when we were withdrawing the sights in the towns, that the hun had razes to the ground, would make anyone fighting mad. Larissa one of the big cities, was just a shambles, with perhaps not more than 5 per cent of the buildings undamaged. There were large gaping craters in the middle of the roads and it was a hell of a job trying to drive through the place. Just south of Larissa I had my first taste of dive bombing and boy was I scared. It was 7.30pm and we were all marshalled at a point near the road in a paddock where we had put most of the day in waiting for our turn to join the convoy. I was sitting in the back of our wireless truck which was filled up with gear when someone shouted “Aircraft”. I was a mass of activity in a split second but by the time I had scrambled out the diving bastards were already circling into line to commence operations. I didn't have time to beat it out of the ring of trucks so went to earth in a narrow shallow slit trench lying about two inches below the surface. I inclined my head and looked up from under my tin hat and saw the first cow coming straight towards me and after he had dived practically the full length of his dive he released his bomb and as it fell end over end towards me I made sure my last day had come. The next thing I knew was that I was showered with earth and the concussion from the explosion nearly gave me the tattars completely. I haven't been able to find out the name of the make of the bomb but it burst only two feet from where I was, taking out only a very shallow sod. It is possible that it was a shrapnel bomb known as a “Personal Bomb”. About fifteen to twenty seconds later I looked up to see what was going on and saw another of the black bastards diving toward me. The bomb he released was an enormous sized thing and at first it appeared to be coming straight towards me until about half way down when I could see it would just go over my head. Seeing it going by didn't stop my bum going in and out making little buttons as I shook that much with fright that I think I must have worked my way down into the solid earth another couple of inches. When the bomb exploded I got another showering of earth and if possible shivered more than ever. After that I thought it was too tough a spot so out I got and hightailed it for a deeper slit trench somewhere further away from the trucks but by the time I found what I was looking for the raid was over and three of our trucks and two motor-bikes were either on fire or otherwise beggared. The big bomb was apparently a one thousand pound bastard as it left a hole deep enough to hide a truck in. It fell twelve yards from me. The next morning we got another dose on the top of a pass about thirty to forty miles further south and lost a couple more trucks. The bombing is not so good but the sound of the siren on the dive bombers will live with me for ever. Every day and practically all day from then on until we finally embarked on a destroyer at the southern end of the province of Corinth we had the buggers bombing and machine gunning us. I can quite imagine why the Tommies over here love the huns for the way they have been bombing England after seeing the terrible mess they made of towns in Greece. The only thing I regretted about leaving Greece was the fact that the jerrys would get all the wonderful fruit that was coming on. The place has practically no natural bush or even scrub but fruit trees are there in millions and as they never have fences of any description it would be easy to get. Some of the boys have great tales to tell about getting out, some having as many as three boats sunk by aircraft before they finally got to Crete where they were picked up and sent back here. Every day now for over a fortnight small parties have been arriving in all kinds of craft, some bought, some stolen, and some by the Greek owners. I was very pleased when I finally got aboard a destroyer as I had only four and a half hours sleep in seven days having had to travel all night and work a wireless set during the day besides dodging behind trees to get away from the machine gunning from the air. As there wasn't enough room to enable me to lie down I had to be content to go to sleep lying over two rifles and somebody's boots but even that didn't stop me from sleeping. Before my retiring the crew turned on hot cocoa, for which I will ever be grateful to the navy. They did a wonderful job as they always do. Since being back here in Egypt I have had some great laughs with the boys about what happened and about the way some of the boys who had done so much boasting behaved when the time came. One chap on my set once made the statement “I don't know the meaning of fear” in the presence of a tent full of the boys before he left this country and when the time came he was so scared he wouldn't leave his slit trench to go to mess on at least three occasions just because he thought he could hear a plane. His nerves are in such a bad way now it is possible he will be sent home. The heat here now is terrific it being around the 120° mark. Flies are also a curse and with the two combined with the eternal flying dust and sand life is not what one would call pleasant. Thank goodness we can get “Waitemata” here, off the ice sometimes. Well brother this is the ½ oz mark so will have to knock off. I hope the family is keeping well. Regards, Bluey. |
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AIR MAIL LETTER CARD 34848 C.R.Houghton, “A” Sec. Div. Sigs, N.Z.E.F. Middle East Force, 18.5.41 Dear Mum, I had my third stab in the arm for Typhoid this morning and am in for a stab for Tetanus on Tuesday so they are certainly making sure we don't get much trouble from those complaints. My arm has a lump on it the size of a pullets egg now but is not giving me any trouble. I am glad Florie and baby are doing fine. You mentioned in your last letter that Lloyd was always broke – well he will get a chance to save a few ackers when he gets into a place like this away from the city but it certainly does go fast in Cairo. A few days ago I was sent some miles from here to fetch back a truck and ran into a very dirty dust storm. The wind started up shortly before noon and by half past 12 noon it was impossible to see further than ten yards away. Arriving home about dusk with my eyes very sore I found that the lucky beggars here had had only a mild storm as the wind was off the sea. That night the wind turned right around and blew from the unlimited desert making the nights rest very uncomfortable. Where we sleep we have a bivvy swung between our truck and the side of the truck dugout and during the night the sand piled up on top of the bivvy till the supporting ropes couldn't hold the weight and down came the lot plus several of the rocks that the strings were tied to right on top of us. We certainly woke up in a hurry thinking we were being buried alive but after seeing what had happened we went to sleep again without removing it. I would love to have had a photo of us crawling out the next morning as we must have looked like real desert rats. Yesterday I met Robbie who gave me the negatives of the photos he took while we were in Palestine, so I have now given them to one of the boys going on leave tomorrow to get some prints taken off and will send some when they arrive. Today I received several Matamata papers and in one was part of a letter I had written to a person in Matamata about Greece. I suppose that is the piece you saw. What with Ellen reading out my letters to her class and getting them published in the press I will have to close down on the baloney or the boys will give me the raspberry. At football last Sunday afternoon I met several boys from Matamata that I hadn't seen since they arrived some months ago. Well my dear I hope you are keeping fit and well and also the girls. From your loving son, Roto. PS. Thanks for the stamps. They are very acceptable. Just received a letter from you written in Whangarei and am very pleased my latest nephew has been named after myself and Lloyd. The news gave me a great kick. I only hope he doesn't get his all his uncles bad habits. I used to live in the last house on the right in Mansfield Terrace which runs off Kamo Rd to the left four or five streets up from the shopping area. It is a very old place with a rusty roof right next to the railway line. My old landlady doesn't live there now. Mr Steedman dad's old friend used to live on a road running off Kamo Rd to the right somewhere near the race course. Can't remember the name of the road. Roto. |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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NATIONAL PATRIOTIC FUND BOARD ON ACTIVE SERVICE |
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