It was Sunday and the weather had finally cleared. The second battalion took off at 15:00 for France, traveling over the English countryside, The White Cliffs of Dover, the Channel, and finally arriving at Airfield A-68 near Snippes, France at 17:35. It was a cold, bitter, misplaced Christmas Eve.
There was, as far as each individual knew, a battalion in the flight, but some how this was all new and different and it forced upon each of us a lost, cold, strange feeling.
Just less than a week before, everything had been moving toward a Christmas in England.Some of us were making plans for a pass to London for another mission with the Picadilly Commandos and others of a less social nature were figuring on extended periods in the sack, broken perhaps, by a movie in Swindon or something of that nature. Others had families or girl friends in Swindon where they planned to spend the holidays.
But now--this wasn't possible--were we really standing, nearly frozen, on some remote airfield in France on Chistmas Eve?
We were to wait here for three and a half hours. Three and a half hours of wondering. How near was the front? They said this field was still strafed occasionally. This was all new to everybody, but somehow we all knew it was going to be a lot worse. Looking ahead at that thought took our minds off of the last, cold feeling.
Finally at 21:09, we left Airfield A-68. We rode open, slow trucks thirty-some miles to Camp Mourmelon near Riems, France, where we arrived at 24:00. This camp had been the base camp of the 101st Airborne Division. We moved into barracks here for the remainder of the night. Beyond that, we knew nothing!
DECEMBER 25thThis was no ordinary morning. We were painfully aware of that because to us it was still Christmas Morning. However, there was no celebrating today, no Church services, and could possibly believe we were eating "C" rations for meals? We had cleaned our new billets and arranged equipment and clothing neatly in all expectance of being here a couple of days. Then the word came down. We were alerted again. We hustled about preparing to move. By 17:30 we were ready to go.
DECEMBER 26th
The alert held all that night and at 10:30 on the 26th we entrucked again. We moved 60 miles in six and a half hours to our forward area in Sedan, France. We arrived there at 17:00 and were billeted in a vacant hotel.
