"After the fighting in North Africa was over Monty had promised 30 Corps, which comprised 50th Tees and Tyne Division and the 51st Highland Division and others, that they would return to Blighty.  He did not say that we would be preparing for the D Day invasion.

After the invasion of Sicily we embarked from Bizerta on an American L.S.T. (Landing Ship Tanks), for Syracuse on Sicily.  As an army cook I helped make the bread rolls for the troops on board.  After a time we had orders to board a Belgian boat called the Berg Leopold which took us to Glasgow.

The Berg Leopold was a flat bottomed boat which had been used in the Belgian Congo and it rocked violently in a bad Mediterranean storm.  From Glasgow we were sent to Swaffham in Norfolk and spent several months being re-equipped for the second front.  Our next move was to Salisbury Plain to await D day.  Once troops had been briefed they were kept in a small camp where they were caged in until they moved on to the boats.  We were then moved to Gosport to board the L.S.T.s when they returned for us.  D Day was delayed to the 6^th June because of bad weather and we had to sleep on the road to Gosport and finally got aboard on Thursday evening and reached Gold Beach on Friday morning.  The doors and ramp at the bows of our L.S.T. jammed, and by the time this had been remedied we had a dry landing as the tide had gone out and left the L.S.T. stranded on the beach.

Gold Beach was near Arromanches.  The big guns on the battleships were shelling the German positions and the beaches were full of equipment, soldiers and all the paraphernalia of war.  It was nice to know that the jerry planes were unable to attack us like they did at Dunkirk.  After a time we moved into a field about two or three miles from the beach.  A farmer and his daughter were busy milking cows in the field.  I don't think they had much time for us, traipsing about in the fields.  Our planes were going over all the time and I remember looking up and I saw two objects hurtling towards the ground.  I thought they were some type of bomb: they turned out to be spare petrol tanks which the planes jettisoned before turning for home.

Before crossing the Channel all troops were issued with 24 hours rations; self-heating tins of soup, chocolate, tea, sugar, milk powder, baked beans etc. and a device for heating it.  We soon had the cook-house organised and compo-rations were then issued.  Twelve men's rations in a crate and of 6 different types so we could use a different type each day; all we had to do was open the tins and heat the food in our hydro-burners which we had used in the desert.  We were able to make a kind of porridge by mincing the biscuits and heating this up with milk and sugar: biscuit burger we used to call it.

It is said that for every front line soldier there are 12 back-up men. The R.A.S.C. delivered rations, water, spare parts and servicing.  We collected our compo crates from the D.I.D. (District Issuing Dump) indenting for one crate for each dozen men we were catering for.  Travelling over in the L.S.T. we shared the journey with some enormous American articulated lorries which were in fact mobile bath-units and laundries for the use of troops.

After a time we went on to full field rations, all cooked outside using our hydro-burners and improvising ovens and other things out of old drums or what we could lay our hands on.  Sometimes we were able to cook in an empty building and once we were billeted in a large house with a kitchen.

No doubt you have read how British troops were pinned down at Caen and the Americans could make no progress at Cherbourg.  After some time the Americans advanced from Cherbourg at great speed and the British also advanced.  The Germans were then caught in the Falaise Gap.  It was a terrible slaughter of their transport horses and men.  The humans had all been buried but the horses were still lying there and the stink was dreadful.

We were moving forward at a great pace, crossing, I think it was the Seine, on pontoon bridges and moving in to Lille.  The next stop was Brussels. 

I was in the Catering Corps, but was constantly attached to different units."