大象传媒

I had to laugh at the story about the chewing gum. We never got caught out with that because we had chewing gum included with our rations. We used to have the American ''K'' Ration packs while we were attached to the American Army, which was most of the time after ''D'' day. Our Regiment was equipped with Churchill tanks with a trailer at the rear full of Flame Throwing Fuel and gas cylinders. They were called Crocodiles,and we were in a Specialist Division, ''The 79th Armoured Division''. There were a lot of different tanks which had various attachments fitted to them, and each Regiment was split up amongst the different Armies. One squadron stayed with the British, one went with the Canadian and our squadron went to the Americans. I think we were better off than the other squadrons because the food was a lot better, and we had plenty. The ''Kpaks were really for the Infantry, but we used to like them as we didn't always have the chance to cook any food, which we used to cook on a small stove in the tank, We sometimes put the tinned food on the exhaust to cook but we often forgot about it, it got dried up, and so we had to use the stove. The packs were each different, one for breakfast, dinner and evening. I can't remember all the contents, but it was something like this. Biscuits, tinned cheese, dried fruit, (raisins etc, chocolate, tinned Spam, a tin opener, toilet paper and of course, chewing gum. There were other foodstuffs but I can't remember every thing that was in them. I don't know if you have seen the T,V. programme, The Band Of Brothers, but we were in the Ardennes with them, but from looking at the T.V. there were no British troops there at all, and I know there were other British troops in the area. I can remember an argument between an American Brigadier and our Major who was in charge of us. the Yank wanted us to ditch our trailers and use our tanks as ordinary gun tanks, because their tanks were short of ammunition, and they wanted to withdraw. Thankfully, our Major won the argument and we all withdrew together. We got on very well with the Americans and I don't think there were any problems with any of them. To get back to the story about the chewing gum, what I did see happen quite a number of times after the war finished was this! The British soldier would half fill a cigarette packet with soil and then top it up with cigarette ends making it look like a full packet. They used to exchange these for various things, mainly wine or Schnapps (wood alcohol). these transactions were mostly done from the train when the troops were going on leave, and the German civvies were on the track-side, as neither side could retaliate if they had been caught out. The Germans were just as bad as the soldiers, the bottles were filled with water!!! You couldn't trust any-one.

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