Sweetheart Brooch?

I think this is a sweetheart brooch, but I stand to be corrected. Any clips or fastenings on the back are now missing. The inscriptions read "Honi soit qui mal y pense" and "Royal Army Ordnance Corps".

Alliiertre Militarbehorde

This 1/2 mark note from 1944 was tucked away in the back of Don's service & pay book.

Don & Frank, Christmas 1944

Here we see Don Mackie and Frank Simpson with what must be a French family. The picture has been trimmed down so part of the manuscript on the back has been lost, but I think it reads "Bon Souvenir, Noel 1944, H.H. Sicol". Don and Frank would have been in Caen at this time and they are wearing jerkins very similar to those seen in Major Lee-Richardson's book. I presume H.H. Sicol is one of the people seen here, or a relative. It does not seem to be a very common surname; even google.fr finds very little. Pure speculation on my part, but maybe Don and Frank were billeted with this family.

Glinde

We know that 14AOD went to Glinde after V.E. Day. There was previously a German ordnance depot at Glinde and it would be logical for the British army to take over the facilities there for its own purposes. A search of the web turns up a lot of information about US Air Force bombing missions over Germany.

http://libraryautomation.com/nymas/usaaf7.html
453rd Bombardment Group - 460th Bombardment Group
453rd Bombardment Group
Constituted as 453rd Bombardment Group (Heavy) on 14 May 1943. Activated on 1 Jun 1943. Trained with B-14's. Moved to England, Dec 1943-Jan 1944, and assigned to Eighth AF. Began combat on 5 Feb 1944 with an attack against an airfield at Tours. Throughout combat, served chiefly as a strategic bombardment organization. Targets included a fuel depot at Dulmen, marshalling yards at Paderborn, aircraft assembly plants at Gotha, railroad centers at Hamm, an ordnance depot at Glinde, oil refineries at Gelsenkirchen, chemical works at Leverkusen, an airfield at Neumunster, a canal at Minden, and a railroad viaduct at Altenbeken.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Old_Buckenham

http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/aprilskies/264/missions.html
This is specific about the date.
MISSIONS FLOWN BY THE 453rd
MISSION NUMBER DATE TARGET
156 10/06/44 Glinde, Germany – Ordnance Depot
(The date is in American format i.e. October 6th)

http://paul.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/wwii/usaf/html/Oct.44.html
This confirms the date and also tells us the number of B-24s involved, but the reference to a "munitions dumb" (dump?) at Glind appears inaccurate. All other sources refer to it as an ordnance depot.
USAAF Chronology:COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
OCTOBER 1944
FRIDAY, 6 OCTOBER 1944
EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)
STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 2 missions are flown. Mission 667: 1,271 bombers and 784 fighter are dispatched to hitindustrial targets in N Germany; with one exception, all attacks are visual;19 bombers and 4 fighters are lost:
3. 406 B-24s are dispatched to hit Harburg/Rhenania oil refinery (121) withPFF methods, munitions dumb at Hamburg/Glinde (89) and aircraft factories atHamburg/Klockner (79) and Wenzendorf (46); targets of opportunity are StadeAirfield (29), the Hamburg area (8), Nordhoz Airfield (2), Bremervorde (1)and Ottersberg (1); 1 B-24 is lost and 127 damaged; 1 airman is KIA, 2 WIAand 10 MIA. Escort is provided by 156 of 168 P-47s; they claim 1-0-0 aircraftin the air; 6 P-47s are damaged.

http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/tme30/ch6sec2.html
This is taken from U.S. War Department Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451: Handbook on German Military Forces published in March 1945 and details the system of supply within Germany. It tells us specifically that Hamburg-Glinde was an army equipment depot, and such depots did not furnish ammunition.

Google searches also bring up something about Advanced Base Ordnance Depot (Glinde) Hamburg on the Forces Reunited website, but I cannot get in to their system without registering.

Don Mackie's Guitar

This is Don's guitar. It is a 1930s vintage Radiotone. Clearly he did not take it with him during his service with 14AOD, as it does not appear in any of the photos of the band. It had a very high action which made it quite difficult to play; in later years Don played mainly a nylon-string guitar which was much kinder on the fingers. When he died in 1982, my mother was reluctant to part with it, so it spent 22 years at the bottom of a wardrobe. When I retrieved it, it was not in the best condition. The back had started to split from the sides, there was a nasty crack on the front, the tailpiece was broken and the pick guard had crumbled. I took it to Graham Noden, who has a repair workshop in the basement of Andy's Guitar Shop in Denmark Street, London. Graham did an excellent job of restoring it and I think it now plays much better than I remember it when dad was alive. You can read more about Graham here
http://www.andysguitarnet.com/about-us/about-us.html

Don Mackie's Soldier's Service & Pay Book

This document largely speaks for itself. Of particular relevance to the history of the band of 14AOD, we see that Don was passed fit for overseas service on 19 October 1944. From 22 October 1944, he was classed as both a location clerk and a musician. These dates match the known history of 14AOD being sent to France after D-Day. They also indicate that when the army sent 14AOD overseas, the dance band was an intentional element. 14AOD was drawn from different parts of the RAOC. I do not know the previous history of the rest of the band, but Don was previously based at Old Dalby (it was there that he met Eileen Bailey, the future Mrs Mackie) and Claude Page was at Chilwell.

In performance in Hamburg

Denis Harper & Bert Hunt playing at Hamburg




The Five in Jive

These two were kindly supplied by Denis Harper's wife Jean. They show members of the band in performance. In contrast to the formal postcard prints, the musicians are in mufti rather than army uniform. I have shown beneath each photo the caption written on the back. Although Denis was accordionist with the Band of 14AOD, he was also an accomplished pianist. The "Five in Jive" picture is interesting as it corresponds to the personnel seen in the Glinde photos and also on the recording of "Dinah", further evidence that these members of the band sometimes performed as a quintet.

Don's guitar is an interesting detail. It is a flat top with a round sound hole. Compare this with the postcard prints, where we see him with an archtop with f-holes. Neither of these was his own guitar (which I still have - more on that later.) Someone has suggested that the archtop is a Gibson Cromwell, although the logo on the pegboard is indistinct. I can understand that Don would not have wanted to take his own guitar on overseas service, but how did the band acquire the instruments they used in France and Germany? As far as I can tell Denis's accordion, Ted's drum kit and even the white chairs are the same. What happened to the guitar?