Cliffs of Dover

But we were training very hard down there around the Straits of Dover. It was quite a good time for us in a way because we got great rations. They were trying to convince the Germans that we were the assault troops so they set up a big naffy there and they, they poured all sorts of groceries in there, and liquor. And we discovered that they had eggs coming in, in big crate, big crates. I think they must have had 12 dozen in, in each layer, from Ireland and we went in and he said, "Do you want some eggs for your Regiment? " And I said, "No, I'm just here for a Battery." He said "Let's call it a Regiment." So, so he gave me all the eggs we could possibly eat. This was in May of 1944. Luckily, there were a lot of, lot of wild garlic growing around this place we were camped, just on the edge of Dover. So we had wild garlic omelettes for every meal until we got sick of eggs. But I also remember that they had cases of Victoria plums, which are beautiful, great, big, purple plums that, I don't know if they came form Victoria, Australia or if that was the name of the species of plum, but, I remember those. That's the first canned fruit I'd had for four years. And I think they wanted the German spies in the area to say, hey they're pouring, they're fattening up these guys. This, this division must be one of the assault division's. In fact, it worked because the Germans held their, as you know, held their SS Armour Divisions right across there at Cap Gris-Nez, for weeks after they should have been moved down to the real invasion site. So our activities down there were toughening mainly. We were playing volleyball all the time out in the open so that, although we camouflaged all the guns and trucks, the Germans could still count all these hundreds of volleyball courts. And they would think, "Those stupid Canadians! They didn't realize that we could see their volleyballs."