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On the 'ronson' thing can anyopne point me to the earliest source for the use of this? I am really after wartime documentation rather than post war memoir usuage
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I'm coming into this thread late to add my "penny's worth" of remembrance.
As an ex Ack Ack man who was posted willy nilly into the RAC, I found myself in December '44 at an RAC Training Depot at Rieti, in the exact centre of Italy.
It was a hotbed of rumours and mis-information and certainly we were all pre-warned about "Ronsons" & "Tommy Cookers" to the extent that I'm sure that half of the trainees were reluctantly convinced that they would not last for long if posted to units that used the dreaded Shermans.
I am soberly reminded that at the same camp when I revealed that my brother Jack was an Air Gunner in Bomber Command I wax instantly offered the news that "he would be lucky to last three months".
In actual fact my dear, much missed, brother was to be shot down and killed over Nuremberg on the night of the 15th of March 1945