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My father James Black worked as a clerk at English Steel in Sheffield but during the war he was conscripted into what he told me was the most feared regiment in the British Army — the Army Dental Corps. He told me that he used to pull teeth out of Italian P.o.w.s in Sheffield. I think this could be true because when me and my sister ever had loose teeth he would put his fingers in our mouths — say ‘let me have a look’— and without feeling a thing he would then have the tooth in his hand to show us.
At the time he met my mother- she was a bit Spanish or Mediterranean looking — and before he took her to introduce her to his parents he told them she was called Elise Maria de la Scamadina- she was actually called Elsie Mary Scamadine.
He had a great sense of humour and he used to show me his bullet wound in his arm — which I believed for years but later came to realise it was an army vaccination mark. He must have had all his dentist training in the Army Dental Corps because as far as I am aware he’d never practised dentistry before- certainly not in the steel works. In later years he would proudly wear his regimental tie. He always smoked a pipe with the distinctive smell of St Bruno tobacco. Three months after he died in 1989 I was in his garden on a summer’s afternoon totally alone. All of sudden I could smell the distinctive aroma of St Bruno pipe tobacco and I knew it was my dad.

This story has been submitted to the Peoples War website by Rupert Creed of GMR Action Desk on behalf of SUSAN OLDHAM and has been added with her permission. The author is fully aware of the site's terms and conditions.

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