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My late uncle and aunt, George and Evelyn Noon lived at 3 Colwell Rd, Leicester (next door to my grandparents at No 5). He told me quite a few things that happened to him whilst serving in the Grenadier Guards during the WW2.

My aunt and uncle married shortly before war was declared and spent their honeymoon in Germany. Consequently when war broke out they were contacted by British Intelligence Services to send all the photographs they had taken plus maps, brochures etc and anything they had heard or seen which would have been useful for the war effort.

During the time of an invasion threat at the beginning of the war and after his call up and training he was on guard duty one very cold winter’s night at either Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. The late Queen Mother came out of a door and felt his hands holding his rifle, asking him if he was feeling cold. She went back inside and sent out some warm gloves for him to wear.

This period of time he was also told that if the Germans invaded he would be in the last ones to defend the King and Queen. Fortunately this didn’t happen and he was sent to fight in Europe. He had many narrow squeaks during the fighting. On one occasion an NCO told him to ‘dig your slit trench here’ he said ‘no thanks’ and dug one somewhere else. When they advanced he saw the poor chap who had dug in that spot dead, with a bullet hole in his head.

During constant battles in Italy against the enemy forces and with no sleep or respite he was taken prisoner. He remembered being prodded sitting in his slit trench and waking up to see a huge German soldier standing over him with a rifle saying ‘For you the war is over.’

He was sent to a Prisoner of War camp in Poland. He told me about the Russians who were in a hut separated from his own hut with barbed wire. The Germans didn’t feed them as good as the allied prisoners, they were starving. If the allied prisoners threw any food they could spare over the wire to the Russians, the German guards would let loose a dog in the Russian compound.

One day a Russian came out of their hut door and waited for the dog. It came after him and the prisoner ran back into the hut followed by the dog. The door closed and it wasn’t long before a window was opened and the dogs skin was thrown out! That’s how hungry they were.

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