大象传媒

The Highland Division had been moved down to Belgium from Holland around Christmas 1944 to support the US Army in its defence against an enemy counter-attack in what was later called the "Battle of the Bulge".

The Americans had heard rumours that there were some enemy units which wore US uniforms and had US arms and vehicles and so they were very vigilant and, at roadblocks, the sentries tended to ask all kinds of questions to catch out the invader, such as "Who won the World Baseball Championship in 1942?" or "What contest did the Cleveland Rams win last year?" These would, of course, stump most Germans, but it would also stump most of the Jocks , most of whose knowledge of sport was limited to "fitba", and then only when concerning Rangers or Celtic, and so there were many rather tense moments when US sentries failed to recognise British uniforms and vehicles or strong Scottish accents!

At that time, the weather was very cold and although I was wearing log woollen underpants and vest, two sets of battledress, a greatcoat, a leather jerkin and a waterproof cape, I still felt frozen stiff; strangely, I never suffered a cold or anything worse at all then or at any time I was in Europe.

My Battalion spent most of the time there in reserve and it was fairly quiet for us; however, on one evening I was walking through a village having collected my Platoon鈥檚 rum ration in a mess tin, when two American fighters dived down and sprayed the village with machine gun fire. I had to choose between throwing myself flat to avoid the chance of being shot or keeping going without spilling the rum to avoid the certainty of being regarded as a "right sassenach" by the Platoon for causing them to go without it.

The Platoon got their rum, but only because I refused to lie down on a frozen road just because some stupid pilots couldn鈥檛, map read! We all wore a fluorescent orange patch on our backs to identify us as friendly, but they just couldn鈥檛 have been looking.

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