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This story has been submitted by Alison Tebbutt, Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of Susan Tebbutt. The author has given her permission and fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My Dad left home at a very young age. During his teenage years he joined the Army and became a soldier in the Kings Royal Hussars cavalry section. He came from a large family who were not very well off. He joined the Army to gain a better life and to learn a trade. He enjoyed the discipline and comradeship that the Army offered. He also said that because he served in so many countries and met so many people that it broadened his outlook on life.

When the war started he went into the tank division 8th Army. He served in Egypt, Italy and North Africa. He fought at El Alamein. He told me that his tank was hit by German fire. He was seriously injured and saw some of his closest comrades killed in the blast.

He always said that even though the war was spent fighting the Germans, he actually owed his life to the German surgeon and nurses who nursed him back to health. Due to this, he always had mixed feelings about the Germans after the war. When he recuperated the Germans handed him over to the Italians as a Prisoner of War. When he finally escaped from them with other POW’s and managed to regroup with his unit, they greeted him with the words, ‘Bloody hell mate, we thought you were dead.’

He admired Montgomery and always felt that he wouldn’t have been able to fight- especially at El Alemein had it not been for his ‘words of encouragement’ before the battle. My dad told me Montgomery would get him so full of anger that he was then able to fight.

When I asked him about dying he would say simply 'well my name was never on the bullet.'

The stories he told me about his experiences during the war were more about his life in the Army and less about how he suffered as a soldier. He did get emotional at times, and regretted the great loss of all those young men he fought with as well as the loss of those he fought against. I always felt this was something he wasn’t able to recover from and all the memories remained with him until he died in 1990.

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