224037 Harold James Betts British Army Seaforth Highlanders from:Northwich, Cheshire My father, Harold James Betts, was in the Seaforth Highlanders during WW2. He often mentioned marching across France but only told us that he was evacuated from Dunkirk some years after the war. In a small cupboard in our pantry was a tiny red tin which contained tomato puree, something unheard of in England at the time, and I remember he told me that he had carried it in his rucksack all the way across France. We never opened it. He came home to a wife and three children, and not surprisingly, nine months later a fourth child, another daughter, was born. (I am the fifth child, yet another daughter). Following Dunkirk my father was sent to a base in Scotland near to Crieff. My mother went up to see him for a week and during that time he was injured riding a motorcycle guarding a convoy. He refused to go to hospital until he had spoken to his wife. The lady who she was staying with told the soldiers that my mother was in the local cinema and the ambulance went there to find her. A notice went up on the screen asking Ada Betts to go to the entrance of the cinema and only after he had seen her did he agree to go to hospital. The surgeon, who had a German sounding name, became Dad's hero as he saved his leg which was badly broken. Incredible really that he survived Dunkirk then was invalided out after being badly hurt falling off his motorbike. Amazingly, the hospital was in what is now the very upmarket Gleneagles Hotel. Many years later, he and Mum visited the Gleneagles Hotel and happened to meet the actor who played Jed Clampet in the Beverly Hill Billies in the bar.
My father's Commanding Officer was called Christopher Miles and when my mother was pregnant with me they thought that perhaps they would have another boy, and I would be given his name. I arrived so they called me Christine in his memory.
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