My father's war in the 8th Army

My father was called up in 1941 and did his basic training at Church Stretton and then went on to Catterick and Watford to be drafted. In December 1941 he sailed from England on the refrigerator ship 'Island Princess'to South Africa, and then sailed up the east coast on the 'Nieuw Amsterdam'which was then apparently the 7th largest ship in the world. He was in the 8th Army, Royal Artillery, 56 London Division - their sign was a black cat. Although my father never spoke about any particular battles or gave details of any fighting, he did tell me the places he had been to. He was in North Africa at Alexandria, El Alamein, Tobruk (where he said they only had sea water which turned the potatoes purple), Benghazi, Sidi Barrani, Cairo and Tripoli. He drove the water truck and also drove the ammunition trucks up to the guns. At Sfax they joined the Americans and went back to Tripoli to re-group ready for the attack on Italy. He did a beach landing at Salerno and joined the American 5th Army. He also did a beach landing at Anzio but did not say much more about it except that a lot of men were killed and they had no wireless. My father had a scar on his leg from a shrapnel wound but he never said where or how he got it. I assume it was at Anzio as I have a letter he wrote home to his parents where he said that the fighting was very bad and he had never prayed so hard in his life. The date of the letter coincides with his time at Anzio. From there he went to Rome and across to the north coast of Italy - Pesaro, Rimini, Cesena, Ravenna, Ferrara and Venice. When the war finally finished he was at Trieste. He never kept in touch with any comrades after the war as they decided that they just wanted to forget about it, but I often wonder if there is anyone out there who was possibly in the same unit and remembers him.

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