大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 war site by Forbes Inglis on behalf of Bert Jones and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We landed on Juno beach, just behind the Canadians. From the minute we landed we were under attack.

Mortars, machine guns and shells; we had everything thrown at us. But we pushed forward, although Jerry often counter-attacked and we were sometimes pushed back.

I was very lucky, as I managed to cheat death three times.

The first time we were clearing houses occupied by Jerry. You throw in a grenade and then go in behind it, all guns blazing. As me and my mate, Joe Coburn, went into the building a Jerry grenade rolled down the stairs. Luckily for the two of us it failed to go off.

On the second occasion I was running across a field when one of my own grenades fell off and landed at my feet. I was lucky again as it didn鈥檛 explode.

The third time I was not so lucky. As we pressed forward through France, Belgium and then into Holland we had suffered heavy casualties.

One day, we were under heavy fire from a Jerry machine gun position. We were sent to attack their position not knowing that there was a platoon of Germans hiding behind a nearby hedgerow. They threw grenades at us and we were knocked out of action. I was wounded and eventually was flown home.

Just days before I was wounded I had written home to my girl friend telling her that when I did get back we would get married. A mate reminded me of my promise and when I got back we did get married.
We celebrated our Diamond Wedding just a few weeks ago.

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