A time to remember all those who served

REMEMBRANCE Sunday is almost with us, when we honour those who died in war. For my part I remember my father and others like him, who showed great bravery but escaped injury and lived to tell the tale.

My father was aged 19 when The Great War broke out in 1914. He volunteered. As he was a bus driver he was shortly employed training others to drive military vehicles. As a member of Royal Army Service Corp he became responsible for getting weapons, ammunition, food, even soldiers, to the front lines in battles in Europe.

Between the wars he served in India, Palestine and Malta, until at the outbreak of the Second World War he was part of the force sent to oppose Hitler’s Nazis.

When the evacuation through Dunkirk began, my father was in charge of a convoy of seven lorries carrying food. As the convoy neared the beaches, a sentry said all vehicles were to stop and be burned to avoid benefitting the enemy.

My father refused to destroy the food but took it to the beach to feed our own men.

He told very little about that episode except that he kept a bottle of whiskey, which he carried onto a waiting ship where he gave it to a sailor in exchange for a bucket of tea and eight mugs.

Through 33 years’ service, my father escaped serious injury, as did many like him, but I would ask that people spare a thought for all those who served but did not make the ultimate sacrifice. The firemen, police ambulance drivers, the women who worked in the factories.

“Bless ’em all, Bless ’em all, you’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean, so cheer up my lads, Bless ’em all” is my sentiment, as the old song said.

Mike Baker Cornwall