Gunner

PUBLISHED IN 2014 BY DLE-HISTORY PUBLICATIONS - www.billtodd.co.uk

Copyright © Bill Todd 2014

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This book is published by DLE-History, a division of DLE Publications which also comprises DLE-Travel and DLE-Fiction, publishers of the Danny Lancaster crime thrillers  available as paperbacks and ebooks.

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INTRODUCTION

There are guys of a certain age who will always wish they’d asked their dad all those questions when they had the chance.

Like many others, my father didn’t talk much about his war, him sat in his armchair, me making Airfix Spitfires on the floor (put some newspaper down! don’t get glue on the carpet!).

Leslie’s war was nothing special, no storming beaches, no hand-to-hand fighting. He did what thousands of others did, fought, froze, was frightened out of his life at times, made the best friends of his life at other times, soldiered on.

He recalled one soldier touring farmhouses in France asking in a thick Cockney accent, Avez vous lez tomatz?

Leslie never forgot the stench from fields of dead cows, bloated and drum-taut from internal gases as they rotted under the summer sun. Others bleated pitifully because their distended udders hadn’t been milked.

He remembered sleeping in a Dutch brick kiln, the lingering warmth a luxury after bitter nights under the stars.

One day, recceing possible gun positions, they realised they had crossed a minefield and survived because the ground was frozen.

Going on leave, he thumbed a lift from a Jeep that hit a landmine. He was the only one who escaped serious injury but suffered ever after from what the family always knew as his Beaujolais Knee.

When the fighting stopped he remembered having to fire his Sten gun into the ground at the feet of rioters in a displaced persons camp who had been drinking alcohol used as rocket fuel.

Leslie mentioned several of his fellow soldiers were gay and were left alone when they gathered at one end of the