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When war broke out he was living and working in Manchester.

Bill had joined the Territorial Army in 1938 when rumblings of war could already be heard, so he was immediately called up when war was declared, along with the rest of the workforce at the upholstering firm where he worked.
"Everyone in the building went, apart from two people.
It was quite common for that to happen.

After training in the 52nd field regiment in Ardwick, he was sent abroad and did not return to England until 1946.

Working as an equipment repairer - a "waxy" as they were known - and transporting ammunition for the artillery,
Private Netherwood was involved in fighting in France, the Sinai Desert and Italy, and was posted to Iraq to guard the Turkish border to prevent 'Jerry' from attacking from the East.

His views on war, and in particular its futility, are clear as he shares some of his memories.
"After most of the fighting I was involved in, I have to say I was surprised that we actually won the war.
The Germans always had better equipment and firepower, and more of it, wherever we went it seemed.

"Dunkirk was carnage; to be honest I thought 'this is it, it's all over' when we were on that beach.
We joined a queue of about 10,000 soldiers lining up to be shelled and killed, basically.

Being in the artillery, we knew exactly how long it would take for a shell to be sent over and when they would hit.
But most of the soldiers didn't and so many just ran into the sea.
I'll never forget that sight, just hundreds of soldiers in the water, alive and dead.

Most of them were under 21 years old. "We were caught completely on the hop after the French and Belgian front had collapsed, cut off with no equipment, nothing.
That day would have put the wind up the most courageous of soldiers."
But he does recall how the Navy saved many of them that day:

"They were marvellous at Dunkirk. I'll always remember one of the naval officers standing on the wooden platform we were dropped onto when it was our turn.
"He was a high-ranking officer, but he stopped amid all the shelling to warn us about the holes in the platform made by the bombs and not to fall through them.
I've never forgotten that." Most of the memories of war are still very clear and vivid for Mr Netherwood, now 88.
"These days I'II sometimes forget what I had for dinner, but I can remember some of those times 60 years ago like they were yesterday.
And I'll never forget my army number, I doubt many soldiers have, we knew it better than we knew our own name.

"In the Italian campaign Bill and his unit spent time in Rome, Florence and Naples, where the soldiers had to put up with three weeks of solid rain.
"It was so grim, it was the only time we were issued a rum ration.

" An experience which remains horribly fresh in his mind is the battle at Monte Cassino in Italy, which was heavily bombed several times in the summer of 1944.

"There were at least 200 planes overhead, dropping bomb after bomb.

At the end of the attack the place was just a mess, rubble.
I was sent in to clear up the casualties, and for several hours my job was to sew the medals onto dead bodies.
That was perhaps one of the worst things I had to do."

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