Rosalie Hewins - Censored: The Personal War Travelogue of a WWII Artillery Officer in the Middle East, Africa & Italy

My father, Arthur Edmund Holder, was born on October 20 th , 1918. He was always known as Pat, as he was said to look like an Irish boy.

He was born and raised in Highgate, London. He was educated at Highgate School which dates back to the 1500s. Graduates of the school are known as Old Cholmeleians and there are many references in his letters to Cholmeleians or O.C.s who he ran into during the war.

My father entered the Civil Service in Westminster, London in 1937 and was posted to the Ecclesiastical Commission. Each evening after work, he studied modern languages (French and German) at Birkbeck College, London. He had intended to make a career in the Civil Service. Those plans were put on hold when war broke out in 1939.

My father and his cousin Owen Sellers joined the Army in July, 1939 and were both posted to Taunton. They enlisted in the Officers Training program, having already been in the OTC at school. After 6 months training at Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain my father was commissioned in August, 1940. He was then posted to Lincolnshire and finally, in 1942, was sent overseas to the Middle East. He served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He was initially stationed near the oil wells of Kirkuk, north of Baghdad. The aim was to protect the oil fields if the Germans broke through the Russian front. Fortunately, this threat never materialized.

After 6 months in Iraq, my fathers regiment drove 2000 miles across the Sinai and Western deserts to join up with the Eighth Army at Benghazi in Libya. He first saw action at the Battle of Enfidaville in Tunisia. This battle was the final battle which forced Rommel and his German army, as well as the Italians, out of North Africa. His position was Regimental Survey Officer which involved surveying the Regimental field guns for optimum accuracy. In September 1943 he took part in the Allied landings at Salerno, Italy. By a twist of fate, one week before the landing he was relieved of his role as Regimental Survey Officer and once again became a Gunnery Officer. When the landings at Salerno took place, the new Regimental Survey Officer promptly stepped on a land mine and was killed. My father spent the remainder of the war in Italy, fighting his way north in the Italian Campaign through Monte Cassino, Cesena, the Argenta Gap and the Po Valley, and finally running a German S.S. generals' POW camp. He was demobbed

(demobilization aka discharged) in March 1946.