Front lines In the sense of facing the enemy, rifle and bayonet in hand, grenade between his teeth dodging incoming bullets constantly - no. His contribution however was, while not so immediately dangerous, was just as valuable and not without peril. His first unit in the theatre of war was in the RASC Platoon attached to 53 LAA Regiment Royal Artillery where his task would be the ferrying of ammunition from the ammunition park (dump) to the gun sites where the regiment was engaged defending airfields, ports, vulnerable points, headquarters and the like from air attack. With the General Transport Company, much more varied stores from supply points forward to units and the Petrol Transport speaks for itself. The way the army operates in the field as far as supply is concerned is that supplies, ammunition and petrol is brought forward by the supply system (of which he was a part) but only as far as what is called the B Echelon of the unit(s) concerned - from there the units collected stuff and took it to the front line. This of course does not rule out the odd occasion when he may have got too near for comfort and he was of course vulnerable always to attack from the air and long range artillery.
Medical - there should be a page entitled Medical history - it would be foolish to speculate. Don't be mislead either by my reference to a Casualty Clearing Station - this is a sort of intermediate medical facility between the units and a hospital and would treat an ingrowing toe nail as much as a shrapnel wound.
Durations in Egypt/Italy - there were three sets of initials covering that theatre of war and the clerks often mixed them up anyway. MEF was Egypt and across to Tunis, BNAF was Tunis to Algiers and then came CMF which was Italy and Balkans. They also were in force in different time frames.. Best way to know where your man was is from his units and where they were (it gets more complicated when a man crossed with his unit from North Africa to Italy!! So his service outline seems to exclude Italy (CMF) - not so, it was just that that part of his history is, pedantically, incorrect as he left BNAF for Italy.
Still with me?
As I suspected, the first part of his service you have now posted covers his time in England (caled Home in the record)
Joins in Nov 40, trains as a driver, learns about ammunition transport in Jan 41. Has leave and then is assessed as worthy of attachment to the Royal Regiment of Artillery and joins the RASC section of 53 LAA Regt RA in April 1941. While he "belongs" to 53 LAA, he is loaned out (Attached and "CTBA" ceases to become attached) for brief periods to other UK units, all of which is covered in the lines to the bottom when he has embarkation leave on 13 Feb 1942.
Convoy. I now look forward with excitement to hearing from Scouseboy who will tell us which convoy it was your man travelled on.
maxD
