´óÏó´«Ã½

This story is in my dads own words as I taped him.

We crossed the Atlas Mountains in front of Blade Force.I was with HQ Squadron, we had 2lb Anti-Tank guns towed by Portee’s, Bren Gun Carriers, Armoured Cars and Assault Troop with us. It was mainly nighttime driving. The differentials were painted white with a light bulb fixed above it. You used to focus your eyes on one in front. We was 2 — 3 days ahead of the main convoy. At Constantine we’d stopped at a hairdresser’s, it was light, in the early hours of the morning. These people were happy to see us, the first British troops they’d seen. I know we was miles ahead of the rest of the convoy. We kept well in front , the idea was to keep well in front, don’t let them catch up with us. We made sure of that. That’s when we walked into a bank fully armed to change our British Military Authority money for local money. We was drawing big crowds around, cause naturally we were the first British Troops they’d seen, we were interesting to people, we was of great interest to the civilian population we were at that time. We’d got binoculars on us and 3 or 4 of us were sharing them to get a better look at the girls. It was my turn, when whack somebody hit me across the bloody shoulders, it was a bloody officer behind us, I turned around and was just gonna say who the … of cause I changed my mind when I realised who it were. He wasn’t a British Officer neither, he was a French army officer. I thought somebody was playing around, larking around with us but no it was bloody officer in a French uniform.

I was enjoying it to a point until one night about half a dozen of us we all got picked up by the local bloody cops for being pissed. We were all put up at the local cop shop. The cops put us in there for our own safety we were told. There were no charges against us from our people we were just held in custody for the night, they released us when we sobered up. They did us a good turn in one way. We got drunk on this French plonk, we would’ve preferred English beer. The first beer we got was Canadian later on.There were only little villages after that stopover.

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