Bristol basic training
Then to India
Poona Ahmednagar
North West Frontier
Then the war and Basra
Up to Lebanon
Garden of Gethsemane
Old Jerusalem
Libya and Tobruk
Halfaya Pass
Battle of El Alamein
Then home to wed a lass
Then to Eastry Betteshangar
Waiting for D – Day
Normandy and Caen
Tilly-sur-Seulles
Nijmegen and Arnhem
Then the River Maas
With the Yanks in the Ardennes
Sad what came to pass
Finally to Oldenzaal
Soon the war to end
Strange meeting up at Meinstedt
A wicked man no friend
Home at last
Demobbed at York
On the racecourse there
Very fitting for my dad
Who liked a bet
And loved a horse
And now was free from care
Brian Fahy
3 January 2022
+ My father was the man who physically laid a hand on Heinrich Himmler to arrest him and to bring an end to that man’s vicious career as Hitler’s deputy. At the time he was just arresting another German soldier on the loose, but two days later he was informed that the man he stopped was indeed Himmler.
My father’s journey from a little coalmining town in Lancashire into the British Army and then into the war and to a little spot in northern Germany, brought him face to face with a man from Bavaria who rejected his catholic faith in favour of an idolatrous belief in the Fuhrer.
Erris Poetry 