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My 21st Birthday in the front line
Posted 3 Minutes Ago by Mostyn Harris

On the 8th of December 1944 I celebrated my 21st Birthday in the front line during the Italian Campaign. After an attack we had come to a temporary halt to establish a new position. While the guns were being dug in I went to out to recce a cluster of farm buildings and I approached the farm house with caution. I crawled around the perimeter of the farmyard until I came to a barn, I opened the door and gingerly entered. In the centre of the barn was a huge vat. I cuppud my hand and turned on the tap and to my great delight my hand was filled with
red wine! I raised it to my lips an it tasted really good!
The barn had been shelled (may be by us)and the roof had received a direct hit. I climbed up the side of the vat and peered in through the open top. I saw lots of broken roofing tiles and pieces of wooden slats in the vat but it seemed in no way to effect the taste of the wine!
News about the vat of wine spread like wildfire and soon many were crawling to the barn with their mugs!
As the day wore on many threw caution to the wind and walked upright to the barn, the more visits they made the less concerned about snipers they became!
When the cook presented me with a birthday cake I was so pleasantly suprised, for how he managed to obtain the necessary ingredients from our meagre rations and bake a cake in such primitive conditions, I shall never now!
So I celebrated my Birthday with cake and wine, in a slit trench, in the front line, even Jerry cooperated by providing the firework display free of charge!

I can't remember ever thanking the cook for behaviour 'Beyond the call of duty' but if by some chance he reads this story, I would ask him to please accept my grateful thanks for making my 21st Birthday.
Some month later I would recieve a much battered parcel containing a birthday cake from home and when I opened the parcel amongst the crumbled cake and icing I found the letters spelling out 'Happy 21st Birthday Day'.
I felt such a strong longing for home and the emotion nearly overcame me as I imagined my Mother scraping and saving from her rations to bake the cake and to send it to me.

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