Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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244001
Pte. Jack Blair
British Army Seaforth Highlanders
from:Port Glasgow
My Uncle Jack Blair was a private in the Seaforth Highlanders. He served in France in 1939 and was fortunate enough to be evacuated at Dunkirk where he had taken shrapnel which was never removed from his body. A good friend Don was captured by the Germans and Jack later found out that Don had taken his own life on route to internment at a POW camp.
Jack also served in the North African campaign possibly present and fought at El Alamein and also served in Italy where he fought at Monte Cassino. He remembered crouching in his foxhole at night on many occasions feeling his helmet being touched by a hand followed by a grinning Gurkha smiling at him brandishing a Kukri saying 'you ok tommy sleep well' before they crawled off into the night in search of an enemy helmet.
Jack never spoke about his wartime experiences to his family but told me one evening when I was around 16 a matter of months before he passed away in 1979.