The other memory I have of the voyage is the occasion when Larreur and I were formally invited to take tea with the captain of the L.C.T. He had heard about us from the captain of our ship. He was an Oxford graduate familiar with the English tea- drinking habit, and, in fact, shared it. At the appointed time Larreur and I scaled the rope ladder up to the smaller ship's tiny deck at the stern and were escorted to the captain's cabin. Being so high up the cabin and the bridge had a magnificent view of the convoy. We could see our very few escorts, just two destroyers zigzagging ahead of us and one frigate behind chasing up the laggards among the ancient freighters. The captain's steward produced a pot of very good tea with some English biscuits, all served in what looked like very expensive English china. The whole occasion took on a slightly surreal effect, perched up there so high above the sea, sipping tea from fine china and making polite conversation about Oxford prior to the war. Larreur said afterwards that he too had the same feeling, but neither of us saw the captain again as we docked early the next morning.
My last memory of the L.C.T. is of watching, from the dockside, as two enormous floating cranes came up either side of the ships, were connected to the smaller one and hoisted it high above our vessel. Our ship then backed away and the L.C.T was lowered gently into the water. I immediately seemed to spin round and sail thankfully away. Our ship returned to the dock, lowered its ramp enabling us to drive our vehicles ashore. The unloading of all the vessels and distributing their contents around the town was a highly organised operation. Each vehicle was allocated a patch of ground, usually in car parks, bomb sites, public parks and other open places. I was on a factory car park with Larreur's office nearby.
I was writing home the next morning when Larreur came over carrying a huge sheaf of papers. He asked, positively plaintively, for my assistance. The papers boiled down to movement orders for the day after next. The road between Swansea and Hull, to where the division was to go, were divided into sections, and a time period was given during which we could occupy that piece of road. The idea was to prevent the chaos that would ensue if a division going south tried to cross the path of a division, such as ours, going north. The plan was complicated enough for an English-speaking division familiar with English roads. For a French division, after two days in England, only about half of whose personnel spoke French, let alone English, it was difficult to envisage any of us ever getting to Hull.
We were routed chiefly along second class roads through the Welsh border country for the first day. There were no sign-posts as they had all been removed during the period of possible German invasion. We were given just two days to get ourselves to our destination. We were directed to a small town for the first night where there was said to be sufficient space for us all. I remember we were also informed that 'food and drink (non-alcoholic) will be provided'.
This operation was, naturally, an immense challenge to everybody. My job was eventually defined and it centred around my supposed ability to deal with the Berber- Arab stretcher-bearers. I was to use four jeeps into which my 'staff' were to be crammed. I cannot remember how many but each jeep was filled to overflowing. The job was to travel the route in advance of the division and place one of our two Arabs at every difficult crossroad or turning where the convoy might go astray. It was going to be difficult to make sure that they knew which direction was the correct one, but numerous tins of paint were thought to be sufficient to deal with that problem. At the end of the day I was to traverse the route again and collect up my 'team' for the following days efforts.
Not one of my Arabs spoke a word of English and few could manage more than a few words of French. This did not prevent them from establishing a thriving business in the sale of white paint, and when I arrived to collect those I could find late in the evening, it was clear that there were likely, in the future, to be several rather brown- skinned Welsh children in those border towns north of Swansea.
In fact everything seemed to go surprisingly well and when I drove into our sleeping area I expected to find a reasonably cheerful Larreur. What I did find was a furious Sergeant-Chef who was going to deal very harshly with someone, somewhere, when the culprit was tracked down. The reason for all this fury was because we were six Shermans short. To lose six thirty ton tanks sounds rather difficult; nevertheless they had not arrived and either my directioning system had failed or the commander of the detachment must be to blame. "There is only one thing to be done Sous-Lieutenant Woodcock, we have to go and find them". Noticeably I was formally addressed, it was not Monsieur or Dennis; clearly things were very serious. I did wonder if I was going to be asked if I knew how much one of those tanks was worth!