Wednesday 28th June - day three of operation Epsom

. . . until the wee small hours when the German nebelwurfers and British guns fell silent, the casualties stopped coming in, or went somewhere else, and we could get some sleep. Well after dawn, we woke, washed, shaved and had breakfast. Our Don R, Cpl. Farrier went off for new orders while we repacked the truck on the assumption that we were on the move again, as we were now too far from the front to be of much use. Farrier returned, all smiles and we were on our way again, past a new, smiling redcap, actually wearing his bright red peaked cap instead of a battle bowler. The traffic jam had disappeared and we were no longer exposed to enemy gunfire. The M.P. waved us back the way we came yesterday and we gave him a friendly wave in return.

We carried on, all the way back through St. Mauvieux-Norrey to and through Bretteville to a large field that had, only two days before, been our brigade concentration area, but now held 8th Corps assembly area. A Coy was already there with their new D.I.Y. trailer, which they had assembled from a number of wrecked vehicles found in their rest area. It was painted in the normal camouflage colours with the division symbol, the unit number on R.A.M.C. colours and the company letter, plus the name "ODTAA", the title of a London play, based on John Masefield’s 1926 novel, and meaning "One Damned Thing after Another". There was no time for them to show it to us in detail, as they were on their way to Cheux and Hill 112 to relieve us!

Now we settled down to a leisurely day of repacking the trucks for maximum comfort on the move, followed in the evening by a film show in the main tent.

Friday, 30th June 1944.

Now we had the press - not this day's edition, but fairly recent. Broadsheets were just one folio sheet, all war news. We often wondered just where they got enough news to fill the papers in peacetime. There were hardly any adverts, mostly government announcements like "Be like Dad, keep Mum" or "Eat less bread, eat potatoes instead", but some of them were illustrated by “Fougasse”, a great cartoonist and there was one wryly-amusing ad for Whitbread's ale. This consisted of a map of Normandy with the announcement "This is where your Whitbread is going". None of us had seen as much as one bottle of any brewer's product! Ah, well!

The papers that certain of us most wanted to see were the Glasgow ones. It seems the most popular items were the antics in the strip cartoons, “The Broons” and “Oor Wully”, especially to Tommy Fleming of Glasgow and Angus, our Glaswegian cook. The rest of us were more interested in the broadsheets with the war news, or the tabloids with their comic strips. “Plain Jane” was now far from plain. She had become a blonde beauty who kept losing her clothes in more and more revealing fashions. The term “strip cartoon” now had a new meaning. We carefully preserved all the papers as our ration of 2-3 sheets of 4”x 4” brown papers was never quite enough, despite the advice of one wag, who put up a notice in the latrine, "Use both sides of the paper".

This day, we were standing on our tailboards watching the bombing of Villers Bocage.

Saturday, 30th June 1945

Before we crossed the Rhine, all men over 40 became eligible for discharge, becoming Group #1. Others were now following under a points system based on age and months of service. I would be due for discharge in about one year.

Sunday, 2nd July 1944

We were woken, none too early, by the sound of a heavy ladle hitting a large tureen full of real Scots porridge, hot strong and salty. Angus Glenn, our chief cook, called "Breakfast" and we all got our mess tins filled with porridge, our mugs with sweet tea and everything else in a soldier's field breakfast. Afterwards there was hot water to spare, so we could refresh our morale before foot slogging to a nearby Mobile Bath Unit. The mud had dried up once more, the roads were dusty and afterwards our bodies were damp from hurried drying with small towels, so Tommy Atkins and I, the only ones who had had a bath since arriving in Normandy, felt no cleaner, and the others echoed our sentiments, so we decided to use trucks for the next visit.

Dearest Christine, The name Cecil Harris does ring a bell but I can't visualise the face that goes with it. We were not in the same unit. I doubt if he was a member of 44 Brigade, as we all met in the woods before our first battle for an eve of battle service. There was, however, another "Church Parade" later, for all Jewish troops who were disengaged at the time. This is not in my diary reconstruction because I can not be sure of the date, except that I am fairly sure it was a Saturday.

Do you know what unit he was in, where he came from or any other personal particulars?

Tuesday, 4th July 1944

In the absence of personal diaries it is difficult to be sure of exact dates, battle dates seeming longer and rest periods shorter in the memory, but round about now we believed that we had become reserve formations. The newly formed 12th Corps had landed, with 53rd Welsh division in the lead assuming the role of 15th Scottish division.

Thus assured, a number of us trooped off to Bayeux in twos and threes, hoping to see the Bayeux Tapestry and bring back some fresh food. The nearest we two got to achieving these objectives were a view of a painting of the tapestry and a hectogram of unripe Camembert.

On the way back, our water bowser picked us up, and picked up as many others as could find handholds and foot holds on the vehicle, as we were all overdue back with the unit.

We arrived back to find the trucks already being loaded. All our kit was on one three-tonner, as the 15cwt was out looking for stragglers. The field kitchen and penthouse were now being loaded on the other truck, so we lunched on the unripe part of the camembert and discarded the ripe part, thinking it had "gone bad", as we had never seen Camembert before.

Now we were off on the same familiar route. Once more, we were turning left at Cheux, but carrying on way past our previous position. We went through unfamiliar villages across the Odon near Tourville and via Gavrus to the wooded slopes of hill 112. There we commandeered a white painted house with front and back gardens, where, fortunately, as we did not had time to dig, there were already slit trenches left behind by other units, and including a mini bunker, which Hall and I claimed. Casualties were already there waiting to be made fit for evacuation, as more kept coming in, not only from our own division, but also from the two divisions defending our flanks and the division which we were relieving - the newly blooded 53rd (Welsh). Soon we would be dealing with casualties from our own company and burying our own dead, after which most of the company would withdraw, leaving only three of us to lick our wounds and carry on through the night. . .