大象传媒

My father, a stretcher bearer with 1st btn, the Highland Light Infantry, sailed to the Normandy beaches on Sir Galhad, the men disembarked into landing craft and as they sailed around from behind the battle ship she let go with all her guns, dad said it was the biggest, loudest bang he heard in all the seven years he spent in the army. It was the most frightening experience he ever had - and he served in every theatre of the war in Europe. He landed on the beach and looked at his watch, it said 7.31 (a.m.)and his only thought was that it would be the last time he ever looked at his watch. He never knew how he survived, he'd been one of the last to be lifted from the Dunkirk beaches and had been in much fierce fighting.
He was shot at Verden several weeks later but the bullet went through his tunic and his wallet piercing a hole in a bank note I still have, but my mother had sent him a polished steel mirror which he kept in the same pocket, it stopped the shell and saved his life.
During the German retreat his company was pinned down for two weeks in a wood, he won the Military Medal for going out under fire to tend the wounded - of bith sides - but never took the medal from its box or pinned it on or even used the letters MM after his name, he used to say, 'I came home, I don't know how but I did, medals should go to the families of those who made the ultimate sacrifice'.
He was later one of the first who entered Auschwitz, the memory of which lived with him for the rest of his eighty-six years.
I ahve his medals now, framed and proudly displayed, along with citation and 'holed' bank note. I only found out how he won his medal after he died, all he would say when asked how he came by it was, 'I was first in the NAAFI queue three days running'. Typical of the man...and his generation.

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