Acton, acton, and welcome to another edition of our Christmas readings. And this is a continuation

of the one I was doing the other day from Anthony Kotrel, the Walker respondent. And in the first

bit he was about him landing on D-Day and his D-Day experiences of the 6th of June 1944.

And now this is the following day and the following few days in those first days of D-plus-1-2-3.

So we're rejoining the action on Wednesday the 7th of June and this is his kind of sort of

written up diary recording of his experiences. So Wednesday the 7th of June, the problem now was

to catch up with and join the Armoured Brigade. This is the 8th Armoured Brigade incidentally.

I hopped on an ammunition lorry which took me no more than a few hundred yards before turning off

into a field in which was encamped some sort of rear echelon of the Armoured Brigade. My next venture

was rather more profitable. I got on the back of an r-f-lorry carrying men on their way to service

planes as soon as strips had been put down on which they could land. They had come straight from

the beach and were still virginally surprised by everything they saw. Look, there's a donkey

over in that field! said one of them. Wonder they are me an eating it! We passed a soldier leaning

domestically in his shirt sleeves from the upper window of a house. Look, said I'm Donnie! said one

man. Going to the dance tonight! He shouted to the soldier.

No fucking dance here! shouted the soldier. We were in a long procession of traffic passing along

a hedgerless road with some sort of green crops on either side. We advanced cautiously and presently

stopped. There was a constant rumble of gunfire ahead of us. We regarded the surrounding countryside

with marks a suspicion, expecting shots to ring out at any time. In the field near where our

lorry had stopped, there were three dead Germans. The r-f-men were seeing this for the first time

and their reactions were mixed. Some got to look out. But you all come back, said one non-looker.

The first German was a big lumpy youth who had been killed by something which have blown away

...