'Tanks Pal', tank landing ship, off Sicily, July 1943

Photograph compiled by Major Wilfred Herbert James Sale, MC, 3rd/4th County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), World War Two, Italy, 1943.

A cartoon of a pelican storing tanks in its bill with palm trees in the background, set in a life buoy ring attached to the superstructure of Landing Ship Tank 368./p>

Transported on American-built 'Landing Ships, Tank', or 'LSTs', sailing from North Africa, the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) landed in Sicily on 10 July 1943 as part of 4th Armoured Brigade, fighting their way across the island as the Italian and German defenders retreated towards the Straits of Messina. The surviving Axis forces evacuated the island by 17 August.

LST-368 was a LST-1 Type 2 Landing Ship Tank built in the United States by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation of Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1942. It was delivered to the Royal Navy in January 1943. It had a short life but an eventful one, taking part in the Allied landings at Sicily, Salerno and Anzio, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and the invasion of Malaya in 1945. It was struck off the US Navy's register in 1946 and scrapped in 1948.

From an album containing 246 photographs compiled by Major Wilfred Herbert James Sale, MC, 3rd/4th County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters).