NCO involved in a secret mission to Normandy before D-day
JOHN JENKINS, who has died aged 100, took part in a top secret mission to northern France shortly before D-day.
Jenkins had enlisted in the Hampshire (later Royal Hampshire) Regiment in 1939 before transferring to the Pioneer Corps.
In 1944 he was one of a small group of men who landed on the Normandy beaches before the invasion to collect samples of sand to establish whether they were strong enough to take the weight of the vehicles and to assess the enemy’s shoreline defences.
On returning to his unit in Essex, knowing that something big was planned and fearing that he might never see his family again, he went absent without leave and travelled to Portsmouth, giving the military police the slip. At Southsea, on the one piece of beach that was accessible, he was briefly united with his wife and baby daughter.
At first light on June 7 (D+1), he landed on Gold Beach, close to Le Hamel, a German strongpoint, and started moving ammunition from the beaches to the front line.
Jenkins, a platoon sergeant in the Pioneer Corps, took part in the battles for Caen and the Falaise Gap, the breakout from Normandy, the push eastwards through Belgium and Holland, the forced crossing of the Rhine and the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.
Henry John Jenkins was born in Portsmouth on November 19 1919 and educated at Highland Road Boys’ School. He left aged 14 and was employed by the Cunard White Star Line as a bellboy and lift operator.
He worked on the RMS Mauretania, which took him to New York and the Caribbean. His duties included greeting guests in the first-class dining room with their choice of newspapers. When they arrived in port, there was no public-address system and he would bang a gong to tell the passengers that they could go ashore.
After the Mauretania was retired, he served on the RMS Ascania until the outbreak of the Second World War.
At the end of the war in Europe he took charge of a coal mine in Germany. His job was to guard the miners and the stores of food, but some of the families were close to starvation and he would often turn a blind eye when some of the men took food home for their families.
On his return to England he was posted to a camp at Warminster in Wiltshire, where German Pows were being held.
One day, he was called to investigate a First World War bomb which had been unearthed in a farmer’s field. As a result he became exposed to mustard gas which resulted in severe burns and several weeks in hospital.
In 1946 he became an Army reservist and served as a Warrant Officer with the 2nd Battalion Wessex Regiment TA until 1969. An instructor in the Dockyard School of Management until he retired, he was appointed MBE in 1969 and awarded the Légion d’honneur in 2015.
For many years, he helped as a volunteer at Portsmouth FC, and ultimately became the boardroom steward. He got to know regular visitors well – including George Best, who once asked him to place a bet on a horse race. The horse won and Best gave Jenkins £50 as a reward.
He also worked as a volunteer at the D-day Story Museum in Portsmouth. In 2016 he became Portsmouth Volunteer of the Year and, in 2019, National Museum and Heritage Volunteer of the Year.
As a recreation, he painted landscapes and seascapes with oils and watercolours. He had a wide circle of friends, and on holidays with his wife, Peggy, he loved meeting people and talking about his experiences.
John Jenkins married, in 1940, Peggy Mitchell. She predeceased him and he is survived by their daughter.