He enlisted in the Cheshire 22 Regiment on 24 January, 1934.
While in the army, he took up athletics and won a running medal in 1935. He was
stationed in Whitley Bay for a number of months, where he met and married Florence
Ross, daughter of Arthur Ross, the town’s main florist. He was then posted to Northern Ireland, thence
to North Africa, the Sudan, Khartoum as a senior NCO. He served in Malta, then
Egypt and Palestine and was then sent on to India before the war, including the
North West Frontier. In 1937, he ran the mile in 4mins 26 seconds in the Bombay
District Athletics.
Dad (bottom, 2nd
from left) Bombay 1937
Dad climbing in Kasauhl,
India
Onboard trooptrain,
Sudan
The war was imminent and he was posted back to Sudan from
there joined the landings in Sicily, where he was wounded in the shoulder by
shrapnel. He saw friends and officers die, but rarely spoke of his experiences.
When recovered, he joined the invasion of Italy and got as far as Rome
After the war, in 1946 he demobbed and trained as a painter
and decorator and became an expert in this trade, in the days when DIY was
virtually unheard of.
In July 1948 they adopted me, when I was a few weeks old.
Dad and infant me on
the beach
Dad used to work away from home on various painting
contracts, notably one of them being at Spadeadam, Cumbria when the UK worked
on the Bluestreak missile, which was later aborted. He came home at weekends on
his motorbike; I recalled sometimes in winter when he would be blue with cold
on arrival. Eventually, he found a job on the council as a painter and
decorator until he retired.
In the early 1970s, Mum and Dad bought a guest house near
the sea-front of Whitley Bay, a dream they’d long held, and made a reasonable
success of it, until she was taken by cancer at the age of 58.
Jen and I lived in Hampshire, as I was in the Navy, but Dad
continued to live in the guest-house. After a number of lonely years, he
remarried, to Kit, a local lady. When Kit died, we brought Dad south to a home
(1996) and it seemed for the first time in my life I actually saw a lot of him. Yet
still he would not reminisce about his time in the Army.
He died on 10 April, 2000 - 'he ran a good race'. If he’d lived until today, he’d
be 102. Rest in peace, Dad.
2 comments:
What a fascinating man! In a way, it's sad he never shared his experiences, but then his is a generation that kept things inside, not tell the world about them. Instead, you can only imagine what he went through during the war.
Joe, my 93-year-old father-in-law doesn't remember what he had for breakfast, but he can tell us all about when he was stationed with the army in Edinburgh. We know he was in Asia during the war, but he, like your father, doesn't say much about it. Maybe it's better that way.
A very interesting story and lovely to read about your family background. Sorry I only just spotted this. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting, Cathie. Yes, I think their generation was perhaps more stoic.
Post a Comment