..."The order was given to retreat, with me bringing up the rear of course, trying to roll up the damn tape. Well – the patrol hurried back to our lines and I was doing my best to gather up this white tape onto the axe handle. Of course the tape kept getting tangled in bushes and stuck on every little twig. As the others disappeared ahead of me I was all too aware that I was now more likely to be shot by my own side than by the enemy! Thankfully, the NCOs stopped just ahead of me in the woodland and all was well.
Later on, I was the PIAT man. This was a very effective infantry anti-tank weapon and I was dug in at the side of a road to take care of any oncoming enemy armoured vehicles. All the telephone wires were down loose on the road from a previous bombardment. From the other direction one of our bren-carriers came belting down the road and caught the wires which at the same time had wrapped around my legs. We shouted and screamed for them to stop... which happily they did, just as I was being dragged out of my trench!"
It was about 4 months after the landings when the Royal Ulster Rifles were in support of what was to be the big advance at Arnhem. This was the plan to use paratroops to capture the town and secure the bridges across the Rhine. The plan failed, and in the course of supporting action John was caught in a mine blast triggered by a heavy tank acting in support of the infantry. John was blinded by the blast and evacuated back to ‘Blighty’ through Nijmegen & Brussels. After hospital treatment in South Shields, John's sight recovered.
Having convalesced in Scarborough, John was sent to Southend-on-Sea and resumed training in a holding unit. He was sent out to Italy and was based in Naples for about 9 months as part of the army of occupation. These were good times, comparatively speaking, and some men signed on for another 3 years. John returned to London
and was on embarkation leave for Burma when Victory in Japan was announced.
"I was in the Edgware Road and remember there was some sort of party going on. We knew the bomb had been dropped on Japan but I was still expecting to be shipped out to the Far East as the war was still going on there. A young woman came running up to me in the street and threw her arms around me, shouting ‘the war’s over!’.
So that was it. I was demobbed in 1946."...
