Christmas 1944 ‘Somewhere in England’
No Warship Wednesday today for obvious reasons.
But I do have something special for you guys (and we do have a companion piece publishing tomorrow)
While poking around my normal haunts of antique stores, library sales, and the like, I came across an old book and bought it. No surprise.
A bigger surprise was finding this old veteran tucked in between the pages, used as a bookmark. It is well-traveled and yellowed, printed on cheap paper using wartime-quality ink.
But it has traveled 81 years to be here and deserves a mention.
I am presenting you with the program and menu for the 1944 Christmas dinner aboard the United States Landing Ship (Tanks) 294, at the time, “somewhere in England.”
I thought one of the more humorous parts was that “Cigarettes!” with an exclamation point is listed under desserts.
USS LST-294 gets hardly a mention in naval history, but she was there. I mean t-h-e-r-e kinda there. Like the first wave of D-Day on Omaha Beach, kinda there. And that was just over four months after she commissioned.
USS LST-294 high and dry on the beach at Normandy, June 1944.
Cigarettes! Indeed.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em, boys.