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The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Gord and Leslie Davison.

Everyone was convinced that this operation would be cancelled too, however when we were confined to barracks it was pretty obvious that, finally, we would be on our way. Sure enough we were awakened early Sunday morning, told to pack our small kits and leave everything else in our kit bags. These would be taken by sea and delivered to us in Holland after the operation was over.
The previous evening, Saturday, the whole barrack room had participated in a marathon game of "brag". This is a form of poker played with three cards. On the Saturday afternoon we were paraded and had to change all of our money into British printed "Invasion Money" plus a nominal amount of each currency as our next weeks pay. These were French francs, Belgian francs and Dutch Guilders. As this was the only money anyone possessed this is what we played for.
I have always been pretty lucky at cards and consequently won most of the money in the room. As each player was wiped out they drifted off to their beds to sleep, knowing that we had an early call.
Around midnight there were only four of us left and it was decided that we would retire for the night as we had no idea when we might get another chance for a good nights sleep. I totaled up my winnings and, after converting it at the official rates, I found I had won the equivalent of fifty-six pounds. This was about six months pay and I was rather elated.
Whether I would ever get a chance to spend any of it remained to be seen; nevertheless I stashed it into my inside battle dress pocket and was soon asleep.

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