91热爆 - WW2 People's War - Celebrity Spotting During The War

Celebrity Spotting During The War

by ambervalley

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Contributed by听: ambervalley
People in story:听: Thomas William Whittle McRoy
Location of story:听: Alfreton, Italy and Egypt
Background to story:听: Army
Article ID:听: A2815661
Contributed on:听: 07 July 2004

Me in Uniform

Whilst on active duty I saw quite a lot of 'well known' people.

Whilst in Egypt Winston Churchill and General Montgomery came out to see us on seperate occasions.

There was Stan Cullis a Manager and centre half for Woverhampton Wanderers, Wilf Mannion who played for Middlesborough, they had a full team out in the middle east. Miller from Northanpton, Jimmy Connor, a Scottish football international and Halford from Spurs we played a football
match on the welfare grounds at Alfreton. A Major Wiems, who was cousin to the Queen Mother was also stationed at Alfreton Hall. Major Leg was president or chairman of the Wimbledon Tennis.

I was in Italy when I saw Joe Louis boxing in a cinema. In Cairo there were lots of cinemas they were called 'Shafto's'

There was also a famous trumpet player, I forget his name, who was also stationed in Italy.

At Cairo I saw Josephine Baker who did a striptease for thousands of troops, my friend who was a military policeman got the job of lifting her down from the stage, he said when he lifted her down that she was not a patch on his lass.

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Message 1 - Famous trumpet player

Posted on: 07 July 2004 by Ron Goldstein

I think you man you refer to was Nat Gonella
Regards
Ron

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Message 2 - Famous trumpet player

Posted on: 07 July 2004 by Trooper Tom Canning - WW2 Site Helper

Ron - quite right - Nat Gonella, he played for us one time - we also had Gigli and his daughter come and give us a two hour concert - fabulous ! Then we had a singer - Patricia Brown ( I think) with her pianist Jimmy, when I was in Hospital at Ancona - she sat beside the bed of a chap who had lost both legs... we thought she was great for doing that ! We also had two Champion Table tennis players - one named Brooks - show us how to play the game - it was a hoot !
We had Danny O'Neil in our squadron who sang his impersonation of Joseph Locke singing "Violetta" every night in the NAAFI at Villach..until some tone deaf Artillery bods started throwing things at him ! It was a lot of fun...at the time ...but you had to be there !

听

Message 3 - Famous trumpet player

Posted on: 07 July 2004 by Ron Goldstein

Tom
When I was in LAA one of our Driver Ops was Douggie Ward of the well known Hedley Ward Trio.
He was in the same Bty as my friend Larry Fox and was a very nice type.
When I can get Larry to pull his finger out and start posting stories I am sure that there will be some items and photos of general interest.

Ron

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