 |
| Church and town of Beaucamps-Ligny Pymouss, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
On the 12th. of Sept. we packed up again and moved off. What a gypsy's life! This time it was a drive of approximately fifty miles. We passed through St. Pol [Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise], Béthune and headed towards Lille. We reached our destination at Beaucamp [Beaucamps-Ligny]. The 'highlight' in this trip was the tremendous enthusiasm of the civilians. Each town we went through was packed along each pavement with people waving and cheering. As usual the hundreds of flags were prevalent and of course we had the usual shouts for cigarettes. All through France we were greeted by anyone from the smallest boy or girl to the old men with the magic word 'cigarette'. We couldn't ignore it for unfortunately in this case, the word is similar in French and English. All the kids would shout "Cigarette for Papa" but it was obvious that the majority of cigarettes they got were smoked by themselves.
Having got our waggons into a field at Beaucamp we once more got down to the job of erecting tents and so forth. Two days covered our stay here. I was on guard one night and found a plum tree and a pear tree that had some good fruit on them. I had a good feed next day.
 |
| MOVEMENT OF CONVOY This time aiming for 84 G.C.C. (Group Control Centre) |
All these route instructions were stuck into the diary and I'll just draw attention to the obvious here: somebody was typing them up while on the move with this band of non-flying RAF nomads. I don't know who typed them, but I do know that at some point the RAF had taught my father touch typing.
<< Previous Entry | Index to Diary Entries | Next Entry >>
