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It’s Iceland again but the CBs had arrived. The US Construction Battalion in full strength. In two weeks or so they had erected their camp together with a huge hut containing a cinema and pool tables etc and ice cream and chocolates.
We (Roy Tarrant and my pals)were very anxious to visit their hall but of course it needed permission from our Captain.
Bladder and Ginger were appointed to approach the Captain and request permission to attend one night while off duty. To our great surprise we were granted permission together with the Lieutenant and the Chief Petty Officer. What a night that was. Free everything and boy did we enjoy ourselves.
From then on we started to use their washrooms, their showers and hand basins and hair brushes and mirrors which (washrooms) were only a small distance away.
Oh boy! What luxury. We were really living it up. In return we had a few bottles of Canadian beer which we gave to one of the Yanks who came over to our hut occasionally. We didn’t know at the time that he was a hypnotist until he told us one day he could stop us smoking. Obviously we didn’t believe him until he said to Teddy “I’ll start with you”. At the time I was sat on the end of my bed when Teddy was being asked to look at a watch and the Yank was dangling it up close to both of us. Before I knew it I was told to get off the bed and realised it was me who was the hypnotised one and not Teddy. I was stretched out between two chairs in a horizontal position and had to stay absolutely still. I knew what was happening but couldn’t do a thing about it. “Now Taff” the Yank said “scratch yourself”, which I did at his command and then I realised I was under his control and couldn’t do a thing about it. He told me that when I woke up I was not going to drink or to smoke. When I did wake up I was given a cigarette but I threw it away in disgust. Obviously it had worked.
This Yank did his hypnotism to three others of our tribe all over a period of a couple of weeks and truly in that time not one of us had any home made cigarettes. We didn’t have any “Players” or boughten ones. I know we had a drink or two though we were never drunk because of manning the signal stations.
Although our Sub-Lieutenant from the Capital brought cigarettes and drinks for us, our non-smoking and drinking lasted quite a long time, quite a few months in fact and unfortunately we had notification that our yank had been transferred to another part of Iceland.

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