大象传媒

During the months leading up to June 6th, My Great Grandfather was a Sergeant in the Paras. About three months before, John and a few of his friends were having a quite drink in a pub call, The Royal Oak. It wa about 7:30, when a bunch of heavies started a fight with 3 American soldiers from the 101st Airborne. Dispite the GI's trying to calm the situation, after all they were having a quite drink themselves.
My grandfather "John" intervend, and helped out the Americans. After about 5 minutes the Police arrived and took the heavies away, who turned out to be local farmers who had hired out there land to the army, but the army had accidently killed one of his cattle.
The GI's were greatful, and spent the rest of the night hanging around with my uncle and his friends.
Once lockdown came, John, and the GI's in particular David Masters an officer, thought they would never see each other again.

However, both my uncle, and the GIs from the 101st airborne, took part in the D-Day airdrops, when during the afternoon, John was captured by the Germans.
LT David Masters and his platoon, were far away from his mission area due to the miss drops, came across a small farm house which looked like a staging area for POWs and also enemy communications.
Masters attacked the farm house, and destroyed the communications array there. Howerver when he came to investigate the farm house, he found John my Great Grandad.

After D-Day, They both met up again during operation Market Garden, my Great Grandad narrowly escaped the slaughter at Arhnam.

After the war, both stayed good friends, and David Masters even moved to England, and became my Great Grandad's next door Neighbour.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.