大象传媒

I'm looking for any veterans of the Herefordshire Regiment who may have known my father and be able to help with information. His name was Raymond John Phillips, born 08/07/26, but known always as Jim or Jimmy. He had very curly hair,thick glasses and was from Swansea in South Wales. He was with 159 Infantry Brigade, 11th Armoured Division in the 2nd british army(they were poor bloody infantrymen he used to say)They landed in france on the 13th July.Unfortunately I have mislaid his army number, but I know that he lied about his age to join up, when he was shot he was near Osnabuck and taken to a field hospital there where he met my mother who was a Belgian nurse. They married in London in 1946 but my father stayed on in the army after his recovery and moved around "mopping up".When he was shot he was taken to the hospital by a young German soldier, who told Dad that he thought he should have a chance at life, this man later contacted the newspapers to know if my father had survived and with the skimpiest of descriptions they found Dad and Curt and my father had a very tearful and eventually drunken reunion years later.My father had some photo's of a group of lad with "The Dead End Kids" written on the back and someone called Scarface was amongst them. They all looked quite handsome so I wasn't able to tell which one he was. Can any one help please, The reason is that my parents have both passed away now and I would like to know the full story for my children and grandchildren to know their family history,as my father died in 1975 before my children were born, and if it hadn't been for the war I would never have been born!!.
This year I visited the Herefordshire regiment museum and spoke to Lt COl Tom Hill who was very kind and helpfull, we discussed the possibility of me visiting Cerissy Belle Etoile, in northern France where the regiment had a major battle and indeed this september my husband and I actually went there and found the place, it was high on a hill with commanding views over the whole region, you could see why a panzer division had holed up in the small chateau there. The day was quite interesting for me as the atmosphere was full of the past, being in the chateau ruins made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up! The building has been preserved as a monument to the herefordshire regiment and the date of the battle was the 16th of August 1944. This alone stopped me in my tracks as that was the date my brother was born in 1947. Spooky eh? We spent the afternoon there and the area is now a plce for families to go and spend time together and be in the open air. I'd like to think it's the sort of thing all these people actually fought for, freedom to be themselves.