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| Place-Max-Lejeune-a-Abbeville. Pline, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Next day, the 7th. of Sept, we were on the road again. This time for a long run and it was to be done as quickly as possible. Our objective was St. Omer and it was a run of about 130 miles. St. Omer was at this time only just in Allied hands. After 44 miles we reached Rouen and crossed the Seine, on we went and after another 62 miles we crossed the Somme at Abbeville.
As it was getting late in the day by now it was decided to stop the night in a farm yard and barn. We could put our beds in the stables, barn or anywhere we could find to get some sleep. As we had had everything packed the night before at Lieurey I had made a rough shelter of a tarpaulin over a fence and slept under that. Unfortunately, it had rained very hard during the night and I had somehow got wet. This time I decided to try and get some sleep in the cab of my truck. I managed it but it was a little cramped.
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| MOVEMENT ORDER 1. Lieurey - Rouen (44 miles). 2. Rouen - Abbeville (62 miles). 3. Abbeville - St. Omer. |
When dad was on the ship, he referred to helping the driver, indicating that he was not the driver himself. But he did become a driver whilst serving in the RAF at some point and here he refers to the truck as "my truck", which might infer that he now had control of it. Dad had told me that one day a driver was needed and he was asked if he could drive, told to drive maybe a hundred yards down a straight road to prove it and that was that. This suggests this was in France. He never did take any other driving test.
