Tommy Wills, remember Tony Fisher's uncle? Later he went off and I had dinner with a very pleasant New Zealander, and then we returned to the bar to drink Depth Charges, a combination of rum and Cherry brandy and were joined by a chap out of the Eagle Squadron, the Col. of a very famous former cavalry unit, an earl who is private in the Rhodesian forces, a chap from the Herald-Tribune and a couple of privates from the IRRs. In all quite a merry party. Eventually I had to catch transport back to camp, and when I got back found a few choice souls in out tent, so we got a bottle of rum and after a few spots decided that we ought to go and give a drink to everyone else in the section and wish them a merry Christmas, maleesh if they were asleep, that would be too bad for then, so we set out and did so, meeting with a very varied reception. Freddie woke us when he crawled in at five a.m. - he'd gone spare from the party he had been with at a local cafe and had asked some RCAF fellows for a lift to Kilo 4. Whether he had been a bit canned and his speech was indistinct or whether they were ditto, is just one of the unsolved mysteries of the war, anyway after some time in the back of their wagon he decided that something was stinking in Denmark, and hammered on the roof till they stopped, when he found out that they were going to Kilo 40 ! Well, they were ferrying the beer for their mess, so around about 3 ack emma Christmas Morn our Freddie and this crowd were sitting by the roadside twenty miles out in the miden smilling someone else's wallop. Finally they delivered him back to us.
For dinner on the 25th. we had been invited over to an M.Y. reunion at Brigade, so after the Carol Service we wandered across and some reunion it was. Forgotten friends bailed us and ligged us off to their tents to partake of hospitality, and after the night before it was just the job.I was with some of my friends the Don Rs and we thought it would be a good idea to drive their jeep into someone elses tent and did so, they were wrath and joined impartially over the heaps writhing on the floor, and many a man departed with his head date stamped! We reorganised and reformed and went over to the mess where we sat down the long tables hammering with our spoons and yelling, 'We want wallop, we want wallop!' and we got it! The dinner was suberb, the apple sauce was second only to yours, and the rest of the cocking was up to the same high standard. 'Stopper Knott was dressed as an Arab bint in blanket and strips of towel with two Jaffe oranges for boson, rapidly wrecked, and came in for much lewd banter, eventually losing his skirt and nearly his virtue! The walls were decorated with various slogans.
Extra blanket freeze a jolly good fellow.
Hot stuff this Currie. (Currie is the Brigadier)
Get used to Turkey now. (Wishful thinking ?)
Last chance to be soused of the border.
Currie put in an appearance and made a really good speech, pulled our legs and bummed us up to the sky. 'Finest armoured brigage in the world (I should think so, we've loads of decorations in this last do.) and thenproposed The King, which we drank with the usual honours. The Nicky Pease, the Squadron Leader came in and we let him know how we admire him, and he read us a letter from old Paddy O'Connor from a POW camp in Italy, commencing, 'Sir, I am ashamed to have to write to you from the above address....!' Nicky finally ended up by saying that now we could write home and say that we would definitely be in Blighty for next Christmas...I wonder? After dinner a gang of got on the roof of a truck and beetled off into town, on the way Len Goody sat on me and poured a bottle of beer inside my battle blouse, and I gave him a black eye, all in a spirit of great friendship! On reaching town we played rugger down side streets withoranges, and fetched up a service garden club for tea with buckshee iced cake. Later I went off to the Regent again and met mist of the crowd who had been there the previous night, everyone was very gay, and for the last hour we all clung to our stools and sang merrily. I said it was an exclusive place, didn't I? Boxing day found us lying on our beds, but I suddenly got landed for a rush repair job ... .. .
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