大象传媒

21st Birthday
Where and how did you spend your 21st birthday? Due to events in the autumn of 1922 it was predetermined that my 21st birthday should fall on the 1st June 1944 so were was I?

We will start a little before that in May 44. I was a Lieut in the 25th LAA Regt RA 50 Div which we all know was an assault division in the Normandy landings.
Due to the loss of a complete battery in the assault on Sicily it was decided that the unit would be split up into subsections of 3 guns per ship. I was leading a subsection due to land on the afternoon of D-Day.

The regiment was stationed in Romsey (on Lord Louis Mountbatten鈥檚 estate Broadlands) In the middle of May we started to move to other camps to form up into boat loads for loading onto Landing Ships Tank (LSTs) with 3 self propelled Bofors 40 mm guns and two three ton lorries. We set off on our journey meeting up with the rest of my boat load which was called a 鈥淏rick鈥�. We moved towards the coast from camp to camp as boats were loaded on the hards at Southampton finally in glorious sunny weather we moved block by block into Southampton. Here I think I should tell you a bit about the gun crews. Most of them had served in the Middle East and in the assault on Sicily and were pretty battle hardened which means they were not new or very keen on this sort of lark. Among other things we had been issued with Liberation Francs although I don鈥檛 quite know where we would spend them.
As we shuffled slowly forward with our 鈥渂rick鈥� we stopped in the middle of Southampton. Amongst our boat load was a War Correspondent whom I think was Bill Downs from Canada complete with his escorting officer. At each stop the gunners dismounted and started doing what gunners do, that is playing cards, writing letters etc. At one stop a very agitated escorting officer came up to me and-said 鈥淒o you know your blokes are playing cards鈥� 鈥淪o what?鈥� 鈥淏ut they are sitting on the pavement and using francs鈥�.So I said 鈥淚 know they shouldn鈥檛 really play cards for money but I don鈥檛 suppose that it really matters鈥� 鈥淏ut an enemy spy might see them鈥� Then I pointed out that if an enemy spy was about with all performance that was going on in the area he probably wouldn鈥檛 notice my gunners playing cards with francs.
We duly arrived at the hard and backed on to a Landing Ship Tank (LST). Good,thought I we should be able to get a drink or two in the wardroom to celebrate my 21st. After a problem with a large crane which finally had to go on last as its jib stuck out over the bow gates it was fairly late on 31st May. Having settled the troops in and the vehicles tied down we set off to the Wardroom to organise a drink. Horror of horrors we were on an American ship and as with all American ships it was DRY! So that didn鈥檛 look too good for my 21st birthday party, fortunately as a consolation somebody found a bottle of whisky in their pack and six of us sat round in a cabin and finished it off.As you can guess it didn鈥檛 go all that far.So that was the end of My 21st birthday party.
John Absolon 25th LAA Regt 50th Div May-June 1944.

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