Today is Remembrance Sunday, and we watched The King laying his wreath at the Cenotaph on behalf of the Nation.
I think back to my Uncle John, who fortunately survived Dunkirk and Burma so I got to know him.
The schoolboy in the 1925 photo in my thread “St. Partridge Day” he grew up to be an Estate Agent, joined the Territorial Army and was Commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1936. His Gunners Officer’s sword therefore bears the Royal Cypher EVIIIR.
He went to France with his unit, 229 (Eastbourne) Battery as part of 58 Field Regiment R.A. where they fought the Blitzkreig until they had to be evacuated at Dunkirk.
He was posted to India, and fought in Burma as a Gunner as part of 14th Army, losing the sight in one eye.
I lent him George MacDonald Fraser’s “Quartered Safe Out Here” and when he returned it he commented that he had worked out the artillery fire plan for the taking of Meiktila.
Sadly, we never got to go shooting together although I remember him saying to me once he would love to go snipe shooting in Ireland. Perhaps he had shot snipe in India.
