.. Please put a penny in the old man's hat ...  Gunner Jack Ward, 9th Regiment, Medium Artillery (Royal Artillery) displays the star turns in his battery's Christmas dinner, December, 1944.  I may not be around much in the next week (Lonestar celebrates !) so I would like to take this opportunity to wish everbody In Here (even Lonestar) a very Happy Christmas, and a prosperous New Year.  With very best regards, JR.

Christmas is coming and the Goose is getting fat,

Wynford Vaughan-Thomas at the microphone.  Vaughan-Thomas joined the BBC in the 1930s following his graduation from Oxford University (Modern History). His early BBC work seems to have been concerned mainly with commentary on public events (he broadcast the Welsh-language commentary on the Coronation of King George VI, for example).  He made his reputation, however, during WW2 as one of the BBC's most intrepid and stylish war correspondents.  The highlight of a wartime career that was seldom less than exciting was a report made in an RAF Lancaster bomber during an actual bombing raid over Berlin, in the course of which said Lancaster came very close to being shot down.  After the war, Vaughan-Thomas went on to build a succesful career as a journalist in print and in broadcasting, an author, and something of a professional wit.  He died in Fishguard, in his beloved South Wales, in 1987.

I am old enough to remember seeing interviews given by Wynford Vaughan-Thomas in his later years, on his wartime experiences and on many others in his long and varied life.  He certainly had a way of telling a tale in an amusing way, and a number stick in my memory.  There was the one about Dylan Thomas (no relation) and the poetry reading ... but more appropriate to this site was the one about his participation in Operation Dragoon, the Allied landings in the South of France in 1944.  Wynford, along with a number of fellow war corrs., landed on a beach near St Tropez.  As was often the case in "Dragoon", there was no opposition from the Germans at this point.  As the journalists approached the sand dunes, they were initally alarmed to see movement among the dunes, only to be astonished by the appearance of its cause - a French waiter in "full dress", carrying a tray bearing several glasses and a bottle of champagne.  Offering the champagne to the surprised correspondents, the Frenchman remarked (in what language I do not recall), "Welcome to France, gentlemen.  Only, if I might offer a slight criticism, you are a few years later than we would have preferred ...".  A formidable Welshman, happy wit, and humane man.  We could really, do with more like him.  Best regards, JR.

Distinguished British war correspondent.

British universal carrier of 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment moving at speed over rough ground , Scotland, November 1942.