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A Veteran's Perspective
Published
Thursday 7th July 2005
Ken Foard, once a signaller with 139th Field Regiment, Royal Regiment of Artillery
Ronald Pittkin was a gunner with the Royal Corps of Signals, the Royal Regiment of Artillery and the 14th/20th Kings
Hussars and served in the Korean War
Monty Rossiter, pictured here with his wife Joan. Monty served with the Royal Tank Regiment
Arthur Hagarty, volunteer aircrew and a D-Day commando War veterans have been gathering in St James's Park all week as part of National Commemoration Week. Here, some of those veterans give a unique insight into their own experiences of war.
Ken Foard, 85, served as a signaller with 139th Field Regiment, Royal Regiment of Artillery. Before the war, Ken worked as an electrician, which inspired him to join the Royal Corps of Signals at 19.
"I was mobilised two days before war broke out. We went down to Woolwich on 2nd September and I was standing on the square on a Sunday morning when war was declared and at that very moment, an air raid siren started.
"My most frightening moment was in Burma when halfway through the night, I awoke to rifle fire and bullets whizzing about. I said to my friend, (another Ken):
"If there was a Jap six feet away, I'd miss him because I'm shaking so much."
And he said:
"Don’t worry, so am I."
"Luckily, it turned out to be friendly fire. At one stage, we were surrounded by Japanese but it turned out to be the first beating that the British gave them. They were so cocky that at one stage, they even brought in gunners without their own guns because they were convinced that they'd take ours.
"In 1940, my regiment went to Eastbourne where we stayed in civilian billets. Six of us lived with a family and I'm still in touch with the last survivor who is now 96. Out of the six of us in this house, I'm the only survivor. I was lucky in some ways. Even today, I still think, why me? Why did I survive?"
Ronald Pittkin, 73, was a gunner with the Royal Corps of Signals, the Royal Regiment of Artillery and the 14th/20th Kings Hussars. He fought in the Korean War.
"If you can imagine a football crowd coming towards you and treble it that would give you an idea of the amount of Chinese coming at us. Then imagine a river as big as the Thames, our Centurion tank weighs 53 tonnes and it wasn't even scratching the ice. My memories are still as fresh today. A boy I went to school with was killed out in Korea. He was hit at six in the evening but it took him until 11 o'clock at night to die. A mortar bomb hit the ground and bounced under a tank and killed him and his mate.
"We got so used to death by the end, we more or less ignored it. If your number is on the bullet, your time is up. We got involved with hand-to-hand fighting and our attitude was to get 'him' before he gets us. I joined the Boys Service at 15-and-a-half and I earned £2.50 a week back in the late 40s.
"My luckiest escape was when we were evacuated down to Cornwall. We decided to fire stones from a catapult at a buoy only to discover too late that it was a German mine. We nearly blew ourselves up!"
Monty Rossiter, 88, signed up in 1934 aged 17. He served with the Royal Tank Regiment and rose to the rank of WO2. Monty is married to Joan.
"If you look at my red, brown and green regimental tie, the red stands for blood, brown for mud and the green for the green fields where we go when we die. "Through mud, through blood and the green fields beyond" is our regimental saying.
"I lost friends and family but I was never involved in fighting. Later we served in Algiers, Cairo and Brussels, Hamburg and Dunkirk. My 23rd birthday fell on VE Day 1940. I remember the war ended while I was in Brussels. I was glad for my regiment. War taught me that I was completely on my own and that I had to get on with it. War was a pretty good time really. We knew what we were going to do and that we were there for a purpose."
Monty's wife Joan added:
"I was born into the Royal Tank Regiment and my father was in the First World War. Sixty years ago, I was eight months pregnant, waiting for my baby son Heath to be born in July while Monty served in Egypt. Our baby was 18-months-old before my husband came home and held him in his arms for the first time."
Arthur Hagarty, 83, served as volunteer aircrew. Arthur became a D-Day commando. After the war, he became a carpenter and joiner.
"Most of my mates were killed and I still think of them today. My whole family were in the services. War made me realise that I'd become a man in days, simple as that.
"I ended up in jankers for going AWOL a few times. I finished the war in the same rank that I started, a private. I went astray often because of pretty girls and I'm still writing to one called Adrienne now.
"I went up to my CO after I got demobbed and he praised me for being a good trusty workman. I told him: "But I did all sorts of things," to which he replied: "Well, did you get caught?" No. He said: "It's a fool who gets caught and I admire a man who doesn’t get caught"!"
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