Ted's crowd - Thursday 21st September 1944

61^st Recce Regt RAC

B.L.A.

Thursday Sept 21^st

Chotie Darling,

                                    Just a few lines (as there’s no news*) to let you know I’m OK and still fighting fit(?)

            I hope your course has softened down a bit (as you should be more used to it by now) and that you’re enjoying your first visit to Scotland.  I never managed to get to Edinburgh when I had my course in Scotland, though I managed to get to Glasgow.

            My hand’s still shaking from testing a new armoured car we’ve received.  It’s funny how driving a car fast makes the old hands so wobbly.

            Heard from Diller this morning from home, where she’s on leave – including a footprint (in ink) of Michael*….Heavy nostalgia!

            Very pleasant house I’m in, writing this – a well-to-do surgeon’s town-house, English Georgian style – front-door on the pavement.  Some very good prints of the Flemish masters.  The countryside here is very dull, being quite flat but the small towns and villages we visit from time to time are very interesting. 

        Managed to buy a fountain pen yesterday for 100f. (10/-) – really very cheap.  I’ve saved about £100 since D-day so I must have a fling occasionally.

        My mate Geoff Winzer hasn’t yet caught us up again nor Jimmy Waddell, who’s still in England.  There’s only about 50% officers with us now – which makes life much duller.  To compensate this however, the area we’re now in is much more interesting, more people, shops & BEER!

        Ted’s crowd are the originators of this new push, though I haven’t yet met him.  Is he still in action?

                Must close here, Darling, for tea

                                    Much love

                                                            Dicker

 

*Dick had to censor the letters of his men and so would have censored his own as he wrote them, leaving out anything that would indicate his unit was involved in Market Garden and possibly trying to put any interceptor off the scent.

**The Williams family dog – I think.

 © Chotie Darling

 

On Arnhem bridge, although fighting had continued through the night, the airborne troops were over-run and forced to scatter through Arnhem.  Most were taken prisoner including Freddie Gough (who later escaped in 1945).  German traffic was now able to cross the bridge to engage and halt the advancing Guards of XXX Corps at Elst (between Arnhem and Nijmegen).  The 1^st Polish Parachute Brigade dropped at Driel, on the south bank of the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine), under heavy fire from the Germans.

52^nd Recce, Dick’s future regiment, arrives in Son en Breugel on the Wilheminakanaal and comes under the command of 101^st Airborne Division.  They move up to Grave on the north-west tip of the salient.

 

Eric Brewer of 61st Recce ‘B’ squadron is moving up Hell’s Highway:  “Moved at 4.30 in the morning to Holland.  Went through to Andover (Eindhoven?) to a place called Halover.  Went out on Recce but things quiet, a few vehicles knocked out here.”  (From ‘Beaten Paths are Safest’ by Roy Howard, Brewin Books 2004).