He fought alongside Field Marshall Montgomery in opposition to “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel in North Africa, and stormed the seashores of Normandy on D-Day… so Tony Johnson is aware of first hand in regards to the horrors of conflict.
Yet the previous Army sergeant by no means spoke of his exploits in Egypt, Italy and France, regardless of being awarded France’s high bravery medal, the Legion of Honour.
But on the grand outdated age of 105 he has determined that now’s the time to inform his story, within the hope that the present and future generations can be taught that conflict hardly ever solves something and ought to be averted in any respect prices.
Great-grandfather Tony mentioned he has been horrified to see new wars being fought on European and Middle Eastern soil once more, with neither battle exhibiting any signal of ending quickly.
He was born in 1919, lower than a 12 months after the Great War which was supposed to finish all wars, and simply 4 months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which finally ensured it wouldn’t.
He now needs the sacrifice of his comrades and people who have laid down their lives since then to be remembered and honoured.
On the eve of Remembrance Day tomorrow, Tony says: “I’ve been through war. It’s a terrible thing and we must strive all we can to avoid it.”
Speaking from his dwelling in Worsley, close to Salford, he provides: “Even today it seems the lessons have not been learned. Younger generations should try to remember those who have sadly been lost in wars because they paid the ultimate price.
“That, hopefully, should also teach the futility of conflict and the need to avoid it if at all possible.”
He has two sons, 5 grandchildren and one great-grandchild with spouse Myra, who died in 2021. They had been married for 69 years.
Tony skilled his baptism of fireside on the sandy plains of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942, when the British Eight Army launched into its second, and finally profitable, try to route Rommel’s Afrika Korps out of Egypt into Tunisia.
He can nonetheless vividly recall the struggling which troopers on each side confronted, brutal accidents and sickness which finally noticed him hospitalised.
Recalling occasions which occurred greater than 80 years in the past, he mentioned: “It was a hard place, full of disease and hardship. I would later get a case of jaundice which put my in hospital in Alexandria for four weeks.
But before then, there was fighting to be done.
“I was a frontline infantry soldier with the Green Howards in the southern part of the frontline bordering on the Qattara Depression, and it’s fair to say we were at the sharp end as we faced elements of the Elite Italian ‘Folgore’ Division,” he said.
“In the fog of war there is mainly confusion. There was sand everywhere; it was churned up by moving vehicles and by exploding artillery.
“We fired from slit trenches, and sometimes it was impossible to tell if we actually hit our targets, but we kept going.’
One skirmish blurred into the next.
But some memories remain crystallised through time.
One of those was an incident in the desert, as Tony’s unit moved to another frontline position.
“We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sand and we were navigating using compass bearings,” he mentioned.
“Suddenly we came upon the remains of a German Messerschmitt fighter plane. It was riddled with bullets and had obviously been shot down during a dogfight with the RAF.
“I looked inside and there was the pilot, also riddled with bullets.
“But what I remember most was thinking: ‘he is as young as me, and now he will never go home. ‘
“In war you see things you don’t want to see and which you can never unsee. I will never forget that young German, who we couldn’t even take the time to bury.”
It was in el Alamein that he unexpectedly ran into General Bernard Montgomery
“We had begun to get shelled from our own side, so I and two other lads clambered down a high point on a hill to try and get safely away. We ran straight into a jeep containing three officers observing the situation,
“Lo and behold the one standing up looking through binoculars was Monty.
“He shouted at us ‘where are you going?’
“When I told him what had happened he silently pointed the way back to our unit.
“Soon after that, the artillery barrage stopped – presumably because Monty intervened.”
Victory at el Alamein was the turning point in the North African campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Middle East.
After recovering from a serious bout of jaundice he was promoted to Sergeant with the Durham Light Infantry and sent to Palestine and Syria to train with a brand new unit: the 36th Beach Landing group.
Its job was to facilitate the amphibious landings to come.
The first landing was Salerno, Italy.
“I thought El Alamein was hard but Salerno was brutal“, said Tony.
“I was forced to watch first wave troops getting cut to pieces on those beaches by withering German artillery, mortar and machine gun fire from the high ground cliffs where they held extremely strategic positions.
“When I and the rest of No.36 Beach Group arrived to start bringing up vehicles and supplies to the troops, there was death and destruction still all around us. It was the worst carnage I had ever seen.”
In 1944 Tony took part on the Normandy landings, where he directed the flow of munitions, supplies, vehicles, men and machines as they poured off Landing Craft from supply ships on to Gold Beach, before mounting an armoured Bren Carrier and helping to liberate Caen and Boulogne.
He was later awarded a French Legion of Honour for his efforts.
After the war Tony became a quantity surveyor for WF Fearnley, builders for Lancashire County Council and general government contracts.
Tony is just one of the hundreds of veterans originally interviewed by Gary Bridson-Daley,
It is an odyssey which has resulted into two books bristling with first-hand accounts as he criss-crossed Britain to interview more than 150 wartime survivors.
Most of those interviewed in the ‘Debt of Gratitude” undertaking have by no means earlier than been invited to inform their story publicly. Some had saved their wartime experiences even from their household and family members.
“I wished to seize these vitally necessary narratives and historic testimonies earlier than they’re misplaced eternally’, ” said Gary, 55, from his home Salford last night.
“I have been honoured to interview veterans from all services, backgrounds and cultures over the past ten years , and I believe their stories should be kept for posterity and future generations.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1973981/We-haven-t-learned-our-lessons-about-war