Sandy Handley continues his account:
“Christmas 1944 was cold and threatening snow. We were mainly out in the open, seldom inside bricks and mortar – surprising what a body could put up with. I know sitting in our Humber was really draughty at times.
Christmas Day 1944 we were not on Recce patrol. Our HQ decided the forward troops should have some fresh meat instead of tinned corn beef or tins of stew, which tasted horrible. They sent some fat pork and potatoes. Of course, we hadn’t the equipment to cook. We boiled the pork in a large biscuit tin and the same with the potatoes. Some earth doused with petrol was used as a fire. I thought HQ needn’t have bothered. It was a poor effort, all the messing about, and I always have hated fat pork anyway. They say ‘hunger finds no fault with the cook’ but this was ridiculous. Later I opened a tin of corn beef and had biscuits spread with our ration of margarine and jam. I can’t say that we were starved – the ration packs we had were OK.”
(From Ex Trooper S Handley’s ‘61 Recce - Memories of Normandy 1944 – 1945’, unpublished)
Some troops may have been enjoying a little more luxury. In the newsletter of the Old Comrades Association Max Murphy, of B Squadron’s anti-tank troop, recalled spending Christmas 1944 at the ‘Chateau de Wepion’ - presumably the beautiful Chateau de Dave, also known as Fernan- Nunez Castle, on the banks of the River Meuse south of Namur.
However, by Xmas day it had become extremely cold in the Ardennes:
“Christmas Day saw the peak of the German advance, and I remember that on that day on returning to base, after a bitter cold day of patrolling through the snowy forests, we were all handed a Christmas celebratory bottle of beer. When I opened my bottle and tried to drink from it - nothing came out - the beer was frozen solid! The only solution was to break the bottle and lick the beer like an iced-lolly.
We spent the next few days in patrolling the hills and woods of the Ardennes, amongst the thick snow and ice which often made the forest trees look like fairyland.”
(Extract republished from 'From the Breakout to the Rhine' by kind permission of Don Aiken.)
Freezing conditions would have caused difficulty for Allied patrols on the ground. Dick mentions that his squadron leader, Major Frank Harding, was injured on Xmas day in a ‘terrific crash’ when visiting the troops in his jeep. Suffering severe concussion he was likely to be hospitalised for a month.
Roy Howard tells an amazing tale of Christmas Day 1944 in his book of 61st Recce ‘Beaten Paths are Safest’ (Brewin Books 2004). Temperatures were the lowest recorded for sixty years and he was on a mountain near Dinant, crouched in a hole in the snow wearing white camouflage overalls. They heard the occasional Christmas carol from German troops in the valley below who the RAF attacked the next morning.
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