This is is from my book, Twenty-One. When the war came to an end they had reached Czechoslovakia. You can find out more about Tom and Dee at their family website: www.
May , with the Allied invasion of Northern France just a few weeks away. For the past six months, the US Eighteenth Infantry Regiment has been based in a large camp between the villages of Broadmayne and West Knighton, outside the county market town of Dorchester.
And on this particular May evening, Privates Tom and Dee Bowles and several of their friends from Battalion Headquarters Company have been given a pass out of camp, and so have headed to one of their favourite haunts, the New Inn at West Knighton. It is a traditional English country pub, quite different from the bars back home in America, but the GIs of the 18th Infantry have always been made welcome there.
In one, the Bowles brothers stand around the barrels, clutching their pints, alongside their buddies Dotson and John R Lamm. In another, the two brothers perch on the broken brick wall at the entrance to the pub. Many years later, the film will be rediscovered, and in perfect condition. It is hard to believe the reality β that they were snapped on a warm evening in May more than fifty years earlier, just a couple of weeks before one of the most momentous moments in history.
Bowles , were handing in their ties and dress uniforms and being given their kit for the invasion: new gas masks, gas-proof clothing, and even anti-gas ointment to put on their shoes. It was unusually warm that May and as they began wearing these new gas-proof clothes they all began to sweat badly: the new kit was almost totally air-tight.
