´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Alan Jeffery CSV from Kent County Library Services on behalf of H. Trimmings and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

My Granddad was based at New-Arlesford in Hampshire and he slept in a small tent on a small table above the ammunition for his Company.
June 6th began as usual at 6 am with reveille, breakfast was at the usual time and we paraded at 8 am in front of the Company sergeant who was a Scotsman who told us to stand at ease and he then produced a bottle of Scotch Whiskey and said.
“Gentlemen (which was very unusual) Today is D Day! And I have carried this bottle around for a long time waiting for this day to come and I want you to drink a toast to victory in Europe.
My Granddad got orders to take some useless ammunition to be destroyed. I was going down a hill and there was a roundabout and I changed into 3rd gear but the gear sprung out and couldn’t slow down in time so my Granddad decided to go straight over the roundabout (which had a police tent in the middle) so my Granddad went straight over the roundabout and through the tent! When he was going up a country road to ‘Wallop’ lots of American tanks came towards me but I managed to get past.
At ‘Wallop’ my Granddad saw 100s or 1,000s of planes going over, this was at 10am. At 2pm. They were still going over then he reported back to the base and celebrated D-Day with the rest of the Company.
At this time my Granddad belonged to a Welsh Division but in his Company they were all Scotsmen accept for one Welshman and three Londoners and they decided to call him Mac Trimmings and when Scotsmen celebrate it’s a sight to be seen, especially when they do the Highland fling in army boots!!

Extract from accident report May-July? From DVR H. Trimmings 252 Coy R.A.S.C.
I was driving a three ton Commer truck (details of vehicle overleaf) from Gosport back to base at New Arlesford VIA Bishops Waltham. As I drove up the hill just before just before turning right into the square at Bishops Waltham, I had to take evasive action to avoid colliding with an RAF FIGHTER PLANE and in doing so my vehicle was in collision with the over hanging balcony of a house on the left hand side of the road. Part of the balcony collapsed onto my vehicle causing damage to the superstructure.
This accident was partially caused by an R.A.F. FIGHTER PLANE which was being transported on a long articulated RAF vehicle. The police ordered me to keep moving as they did not want the RAF convoy to be delayed.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.