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| La Brasserie Moderne (The Modern Brewery) in Carvin Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
For the last five days of our stay here a Fair came to Carvin and was set up in the square. It consisted of two ordinary round-abouts, one chair-a'plane, small swing-boats for the kids and the Dodge-Ems. I spent quite a lot of money on the Dodge-Ems, but it was good fun and quite a change. Nobody bothered about the blackout here so the Fair stayed open until midnight each night and lights were shining all over the place.
I used to go to the Café Moderne quite a lot and the people there got to know me. The[y] were a very nice and jolly crowd there. It was a very clean place and recognised to be the best in town. There was the man who owned the place, his wife and two girls of about twenty-two who served behind the bar. One of their best customers was a friend of ours, a man called Garston ______. I can't remember his long surname. It was he who had arranged the football match with Carvin for us and he seemed to have a finger in every pie in the town. He was only a small man but he was very jolly and even if he could only speak a little English he kept us laughing all the while. He had been a prisoner in Germany for three years.
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| Taken in Carvin, Oct 1944 |
The best time we had there was the night before we moved from Camphin. We had packed up all the tents early that morning and loaded them in a truck and they were driven off with another two trucks to form the advance party. All the rest of the packing and clearing up was done during the day and finished about four o'clock in the afternoon. We were then allowed to go out. I had to stay around for bit longer to help the fitter M.T. [1] as some unknown person had put a couple of gallons of water in the petrol tank of the truck I was to drive next day. No it wasn't me. I went down to Carvin after tea with two of my pals and visited the Fair again. Later we went into the Café Moderne and they asked us to stay for supper so we did. We soon found that it was going to be a fairly large gathering. Garston brought his wife, daughter and two sons. There was the owner and his wife, Lisa. She always told me to call her Lisa and not Madame. Madelaine and Germaine, the two girls who worked there were also called in and there there were four of us and one of our officers. We first of all polished off the grub then then sat back and started a sing-song. This was interrupted occasionally by somebody jumping off their chair. The old man had been sticking corks under some chairs and setting light to them. It got a little warm to the seat. Somehow the time passed and after a few of the old party games it was a quarter past three. We decided to go then and the officer who was with us drove us back to camp. We arrived there and after a talk I got into bed about a quarter to four. All the vehicles were lined up ready to move off the next morning and my bed was in the back of one of the signals vans on top of some petrol cans.
Next morning we were up again at 7.30 and after breakfast we took down the last couple of tents and got everything packed. The mechanic had some more trouble starting my truck and eventually it caught fire. It was soon put out with the Pyrene extinguishers. In a little time the engine did start and the convoy moved off.
