It was early in 1941 and our Anit-Aircraft Regiment had been re-equipped after losing all the guns and vehicles at Dunkirk, and we had sailed via the Cape and the Suez Canal to Egypt. Shortly afterwards we joined the 30,000-strong Army under the command of General Wavell and began the task of driving the poorly-equipped and badly-trained Italian forces out of the Libyan Desert.

As the Italians retreated they poured salt into the desert wells, and so we had to rely on water being brought by tankers from Egypt, hundreds of miles away.

We were therefore rationed to three cupfuls of water per man per day. The result was that the British Army at the time must have presented the dirtiest-looking outfit ever! We had no water for washing, we could not shave, and consequently we all sprouted beards - mine was red! Our hair and beards were thickly coated with the fine sand that churned up as our vehicles ploughed through the desert.

The lack of drinking water was no doubt responsible for quite a number of health problems. One of these was constipation. One day my driver had been telling me that he was suffering severely from this latter complaint when we suddenly spotted what we referred to as the 'Flying Circus'. This was a group of Italian planes that came overhead almost daily. As soon as they saw a few vehicles they would open their bomb doors and release all their load at once. It was very seldom that they caused damage or casualties because vehicles always travelled well apart. Nevertheless, it was always rather nerve-wracking.

On this particular occasion we had jumped out of our vehicle and laid face down in the sand. After all the bombs had dropped, some rather too close for comfort, I looked up in time to see my driver racing towards a small sandhill a few yards away.

He returned a few minutes later with a pleased expression showing from behind his grubby beard.

"It's alright now," he said. "I no longer have constipation!"

- Arthur Cope