RQMS. Malcolm "Lofty" Petfield
British Army 1st Btn. South Lancashire Regiment
from:Ripon
Malcolm Petfield "Lofty" as he was best remembered joined the ATC 1942 at 17 yr old , he trained and flew the Sopwith Camel. In his time with the unit he won the Heavyweight Boxing Championships. He left the ATC due to eye problems and joined the Navy and trained at HMS Arthur (land based training "ship"). When the call came for troops for D Day he went to the local recruiting office which was set up in a village hall in Ripon . A Yorkshire man in the South Lancs Regiment, I asked him how he became to be in a Lancashire Rgt , he told me "there was a large picture frame on the wall and I liked the badge"!!.
He did a few weeks basic training in Scotland and then onto D Day .He landed at 7.25am on the 6th June . His words : "We landed and I was that frightened I just kept running forward , where too didn't matter I just followed the lads in front" ,As it was he and some others went to the right and ended up getting split up from the rest of the Btn, the Btn made it to Hermanville by 9am ,my father and the others made it back to the Btn mid afternoon.
On the 8th June they were sent down to reinforce Pegasus bridge, spent time around the villages of Plumetot, Mathiau, Cresserons, Giselle woods skirmishing constantly with the Germans. They ended to the east of Caen at 2 chateaus named Chateau la Londe and Le La Londel, they took the first without much of a problem. The other unfortunately caused them to have massive casualties, they were brought back to Hermanville for R&R, regrouped with the East Yorkshire and returned back to the Chateau only again to suffer more heavy casualties .
After the fall of Caen he returned to England 24hrs R&R and rejoined the Btn. He went up into Holland, Venray and then onto Germany where he was part of the occupation force. During his time in Berlin he guarded Rudolph Hess and Albert Speer, during this time he went on a troop ship to Tripoli to bring back war criminals for trial at Nuremberg.
When the 1st Btn amalgamated with the 2nd Btn he ended up in Trieste as part as BETFOR , during his time at Lazarette he met a young lady in Muggia called Elvera Massari who he married and was happily married too for 54yrs up until he passed away.
My father stayed on as a Regular up until the 60's, during his time he was the undefeated Heavy Weight Boxing Champion of the British armed forces Played Rugby which we still have many trophy's and medals for his sporting activities, he served in major conflicts preceding WWII and was at one point attached to the Parachute Regt. He never spoke in detail about his time during WWII , I alway's remember him saying to me "If any man say's he wasn't frightened , he's a liar. There are not words that would even start to describe what it was really like, apart from we were frightened to death"
When I took him back to his first Normandy Anniversary (it was 45yrs later), I asked him where abouts he actually was in the battle area, he could never point to a specific area , but would say "we were some where around here, you didn't take much notice of where you were, you were concentrating on staying alive and doing what you'd been sent to do" When I took him down to Sword Beach at 7.25 on the 6th June (the time he landed), he walked away from me, and for the first time in my life I saw my father actually shed tears, this was a shock for me, because he was not normally the emotional type, or he kept it very well hidden.
