A, Stewart MnrDmm/d D.F.C., M.D. C..M.

way home, and if you are caught on the road, you go back another 10 miles.”

We were given blank shells for our rifles. One day there were six of us in the group and we were going down

, a long slope to the Sid River intending to go over the bridge some distance away. There was a large herd of cows in the field and I pointed the gun and fired a blank shot at them. They stampeded towards us as if they were all angry

bulls and we headed for the Sid River and waded across. We had to go through the town in our wet clothes in the month of December. One of the crew got lost and did not arrive until night. We were told they did not worry about the men, they could write them off, but the guns were what they worried about.

I would say that by the end of the month, I was in the fittest condition in my lifetime. The day after our return to Bournemouth, Officer Spear and I were sent on a fitness course to a golf course with only two golf balls. It was the first and last game I ever played, but Spear had played before. He was an Optic Engineer and was sent to England in the early part of the war as an expert. On his return to England, he was interested in historical sites and we visited several, which did me a good turn when I taught a history class in Halifax some years later.

Shortly after arriving at Bournemouth, PO Hodgson, who always was a schemer, arranged for four officers to visit the town of Warwick. Scott and I stayed with the Mayor of the town and Butler and Hodgson stayed with the keeper of Warwick Castle. He would take the four of us to the castle in the morning and tell the gatekeepers that we were helpers, but when we got into the grounds, he would say, “Your are on your own.” We would explore one of the well known spots in England, owned in past years during the War of the Roses by

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